Postwrite Project 2 [PW2.1]

After completing the WikiTravel project, I now have a greater understanding of the Wiki genre.  While creating a Wiki, it is important to be very selective of what information you choose to include.  In our WikiTravel itinerary on Foxwoods Resort Casino, we could have included dozens of mundane details concerning the contents of the casino, but instead of trying to incorporate these irrelevant details -- like the number of tables or the MGM's long list of performers -- we intentionally excluded them.  As the focused nature of our itinerary shows, we spent a great deal of time filtering out all the unnecessary details that come along with the biggest resort casino in the United States.

The most rewarding part of this assignment was posting the final product on WikiTravel for the world to see.  Much like the blog genre, the fascinating part of the Wiki genre is the fact that anybody can contribute to this massive source of information.  By uploading our itinerary, we are now a part of this growing database of usable information.  Seeing your work on the World Wide Web for anybody to use creates a special feeling of accomplishment.

Although I found this project rather enjoyable, we hit one major wall during our creation of this itinerary.  I feel the Itinerary genre was not well enough defined in class, thus making it difficult to create an Itinerary that successfully attacks the prompt.  Many of the itineraries on WikiTravel are step-by-step guides -- and ours is not.  It was never explicitly stated that our itinerary should mimic this style.  I feel our take on the Itinerary genre was far more effective, because it presents the reader with all his or her options, while still giving the user flexibility.  In the future, I would explicitly define what the instructor was looking for in an itinerary.

One piece of advice I would give to future students is: pick a topic you are genuinely interested in.  Although with a neutral genre like a WikiTravel article it is unadvised to develop Pathos in your writing, it will be much easier to research and write about a topic you are interested in.  If you are writing about something you do not care about, the reader will notice.  As a writer, I always try to pick a topic I am legitimately interested in.