13.9: Conversing

A second practice successful Wikipedia contributors engage in that reflects a successful practice of research-based writing is conversing. Productive Wikipedia authors situate their contributions to an article in relation to those of past authors, recognizing that making a contribution to an article is like stepping into an ongoing conversation. Wikipedia authors engage in this practice by posting to the discussion page—for example, by asking questions of and responding to other contributors and by arguing for why they made certain changes—and by providing change summaries for their contributions when they edit an article, particularly change summaries that identify briefly why they made a certain change—for example, “corrected factual errors in introduction,” “deleted irrelevant information to maintain article focus.”

As with reviewing, conversing is another practice frequently characteristic of successful research-based writing. You should respond to the sources you use rather than just report on or parrot them. While Wikipedia contributors can literally insert themselves into a conversation on a Wikipedia article discussion page, you can engage in conversation with sources in research-based writing by quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing them; by indicating agreements, disagreements, and connections among them and you; and by showing their insights, limitations, and applications.

Consider the following example. In a paragraph from “Literacy,” an award-winning first year composition essay on the need to “broaden the range of serious reading material for youth to include comic books and the [I]nternet” (16), Lindsey Chesmar acknowledges what two other sources, Bob Hoover (italicized below) and Janell D. Wilson and Linda H. Casey (bolded below), have written about youth reading behaviors and inserts what she wishes to say in response to them (unformatted text below):

The NEA report, “To Read or Not to Read,” [sic] shows
“the startling declines, in how much and how well
Americans read” (Hoover 1). Although many people
could have already guessed, this NEA report officially
states what has been on the decline since the early
1990s. However, it seems as though the NEA left out
some important data when conducting their study.
According to Wilson and Casey, “comic books
have been at the top of the student preference list
for sometime, yet it seems that they may not count
as ‘serious’ reading material” (47). Children and
young adults have been reading comics and comic
books since their beginning. Some educators also
use comics in class as a way to interest students who
would be otherwise unwilling to read (Wilson and
Casey 47). However, literary studies rarely include

comic books in their questions and surveys of youth.
If a young adult spends 3 hours a week reading comic
books, the study will not include that in their overall
findings. It is as if that time the young adult spends
reading means nothing. The NEA itself did not include
the “double-digit growth in recent years” in sales
of books aimed at teens (Hoover 1). This statistic leads
me to believe that teens are actually reading more
than what the recent studies suggest. Leaving out
some young adults’ reading time and the growing
popularity of young adult books could lead to misrepresentations
in the results of the overall literacy
studies. This also may lead the young adult to believe
that what they are reading is not worthy enough, or
“serious” enough, to count towards anything. They
may feel discouraged and give up reading all together
after finding out the things they like to read are not
valid in the literary and educational worlds. (17, italics
and boldface added)

In this paragraph, Chesmar makes clear that she knows important components of the ongoing conversation about literacy and reading: the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released a study that reports reading (amount and proficiency) has declined in the United States and, though popular among young adults, comic books did not count as reading material for the study. She puts sources discussing these ideas into conversation; note the back and forth between the bold, italics, and unformatted text. She then responds to these sources, writing, “This statistic leads me to believe that teens are actually reading more than what the recent studies suggest” (17). Chesmar thereby establishes her role in the conversation: she thinks the NEA report provides misleading results because it ignores certain types of reading material, which, for her, can have some troubling consequences.

Again, I end this section offering a suggestion for how you can use Wikipedia to help you with the research-based writing process—in this case, by putting your sources into conversation with one another and with you. One way to engage in a conversation like Chesmar does is to construct a dialogue between your sources like the dialogue on a Wikipedia article discussion page. Identify topics your sources address and create headings for them (e.g., concerns, benefits, history). Then quote and paraphrase relevant material from your sources and group it under the appropriate heading. Finally, situate these quotes and paraphrases in relation to one another and add yourself to the discussion. Literally construct a dialogue between them and you. The idea is to see yourself as a participant with a voice in the conversation.