Third Week

Wikipedia! That has to be the key word for this week. Not only because the first part of the Wikipedia assignment is coming up but also because this week got me to learn new things about one of the most famous websites in the world (probably). I knew the way Wikipedia worked generally, I knew it is essentially a community-driven portal. However, before two or three days ago I really had no idea on how it really functions, how much work it actually takes to contribute to Wikipedia.

Before this week, I thought it fairly easy for someone to log in and correct an article, find a picture to post or update some information. In fact, several times I have wanted to click the little links saying things like "add a citation" but have only stopped once being presented with the account creation screen. It just was not worth the time. After all someone else could do the job just as easily, right? Wrong. Indeed, looks can be deceiving. Upon closer look I realized that things are not necessarily as easy as they first seem to be. If a citation is not there it is most likely because it is so hard to find a reliable source to cite from. If a picture has not been uploaded chances are that it might be a very rare picture which is not readily available for anyone. 

Then there was the problem of finding a viable article or two to work on. I thought that it would be easier and more fun if I were able to find an article in a field that interests me and in which I have some knowledge. However, after an hour scrolling through the "Help out" section my hopes had taken a dent. It is not easy to find articles dealing with any big themes, events, personalities or products that need to be revised or updated. Even articles on things such as recent sporting events had been impeccably updated. In fact, the whole exercise forced me to reverse the usual roles. I was not the guy looking to find something on Wikipedia anymore. I had become the guy that needed to find what was not on Wikipedia, and then add it. Easier said than done. You simply cannot just go on Wikipedia and write on the first thing that comes to your mind, because someone else has already done that

So I had to change my tactics. I switched from looking for articles dealing with big themes or events to articles talking about smaller component parts of those themes/events. I also stopped looking for them in the lists of thousands and thousands of articles needing help in Wikipedia and started to Google the articles I'd be most interested to work in, hoping they would have the "help needed/suggestion" banners at the top. It took a while but in the end I was able to have some success. I came up with a list, but I am still a bit worried that some other Wikipedian will get to those articles before I do. In that case, we're back to square one. Fingers crossed...

It is the end of my second week in CSC 104, and since these blogs need to be written weekly I do not have a lot of news to report. I am a bit worried that the class is getting a little bit more complex, especially for someone who is not in the computer science disciplines, such as me. When I say this I am referring mainly to the exercises for the second quiz which do not seem, on a first view, as straightforward as the exercises of the first quiz. To be fair, however, I have yet to do any meaningful work on them, so my hope is that by working on them I will be able to understand them better.
Apart from that, class today was fairly interesting. I particularly enjoyed the demonstration of the bits transmission message. I thought the idea on the part of the professor was brilliant, far better than just explaining the concept using words, or the occasional slide. It was an original approach to explaining how the process works and how much harder and sower it must have been prior to the invention of computers. Well worth the walk in the extreme cold.

First blog post

Well, here goes nothing. This is the first time I have engaged in blogging of any kind, so for now this is probably going to be an exercise in free writing. But since that could probably mean going on tangents and talking on and on about things that are unrelated I will try to keep this structured around the course as the instructions advise.
CSC 104 is the first computer science course I have taken at the university level, despite me being in the fourth year of my studies here. The reason for that is that this is not my field. I am a political science major and this is serving as a science half-credit for me. Since I had to take one, I thought why not try a basic computer science course? After all, computers are becoming more and more central in the every-day lives of everyone. Whether you are a journalist, historian, political scientist or a doctor, chances are that you have a computer and that it plays an important role in your daily routine. Therefore, knowing something more about computers and computing would not hurt.
I can claim to know some basic things about computers and programming, however my only course on some very basic computer programming was back in high school, and the memories of that had almost completely escaped my mind. The first two weeks of this course however have done a good job of bringing back some of those memories. So far the course has been not only informative, but also enjoyable and enlightening in a way. As a bonus, at least judging on what I have seen so far, the learning curve is steep but the difficulty curve is not.
 All in all it has been a refreshingly different experience from the year-to-year and day-to-day routines of my field. Not only is the subject matter and the teaching style new, but along with them comes a package of what I find unique and curious things to try, such as the task of  physically going to a computer lab in the Bahen Center in order to set up the CDF account (Note to self: I still have to do that by the way). Oh, and of course, let's not forget that because of this course I just started my first blog. Who knows, it might become a habit...