Creating the Thesaurus

Since I joined the beta for the game Super Snail in March of 2023, I have been a part of the team of "wiki archivists" that record facts and tips related to the idle mobile game. For the most part, my contributions were behind the scenes, providing screenshots with data for the early parts of the game that other players were long past, but gradually I became the go-to person for categorizing the pages we were creating en masse. The wiki holds over a thousand pages and over 90 categories, which as not adequately populated. It is in the context of my dissatisfaction with the existing state of our categories that I decided on this topic.After a conversation with Dr. Bullard, I created this thesaurus by first limiting the scope of the subjects it would cover for the purposes of this assignment.

The thesaurus at hand, which you can view on Google Docs here, was created in about 3 hours, including brainstorming the extent of the thesaurus and cross-referencing the wiki to ensure the details were accurate.

Receiving Feedback

The main issue I encountered while creating this thesaurus was that the category functionality of MediaWiki did not align one-to-one with the traditional thesaurus format. In feedback from the course teaching assistant, Bri Watson, they mentioned that I should "[try] to avoid multiples with BTs, its rare in real life, but it IS allowed in this assignment." Wiki categories are very often subcategories in multiple hierarchies.

Other feedback I acquired asked me to consider:

• Whether the categories served a particular audience (i.e., players vs developers) x3
• Being careful about USE/UF pairings, such as "when you mention 'Zadako USE Ghost Zadako',[sic] it would be clearer if you can also list the UF for the pair"

Overall, however, I was given the feedback that my thesaurus was extensive and showed understanding of the concepts behind thesauri.
In implementing revisions, I think that I would pare back the amount that I covered and focused more on the principles of thesauri over creating a controlled vocabulary system that would actually be implemented on the wiki. I was aiming for a system that would be useful to players, but the aims of the assignment became lost in the process. I also would be more careful in proofreading the final work that I submit. Even now, doing this reflection, I notice that I missed adding relations to the "Snail Form" preferred term.

Giving Feedback

In doing this assignment, I found that I actually learned more about thesauri from giving rather than receiving feedback. As it is still early on in the course, I struggled to differentiate the value between more technical feedback (e.g., you missed a relation here) and more overarching feedback. In some of my reviews, I learned the value of having clear preferred and lead-in terms, as some students seemed to use UF/USE where they may have meant to mark a term as a related term.

iSchool Graduate Competencies

Below is a self-identified list of competencies that this activity engages as it aligns with the iSchool MLIS Graduate Competencies:

3. Organize and manage information to facilitate access, reflection, and use in a range of contexts

4. Employ information systems and current technologies to address real-world situations, informed by social and cultural perspectives

5. Reflect in an informed and critical manner on information infrastructures and practices, acknowledging the role of power and privilege, the ongoing influence of colonization, and the value of diverse worldviews

7. Demonstrate effective collaboration, decision-making and leadership in team settings

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