Wikipedia! Growing up, in school you knew when writing a paper or report, Wikipedia could not be cited as a credible source. But I never really looked into what Wikipedia was all about until I read their Five Pillars. The main points are:
- Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
- Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view
- Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute
- Editors should treat each other with respect and civility
- Wikipedia has no firm rules
When I went to add a citation on Wikipedia, I found it difficult to do research and find an adequate citation. When I entered the quote that needed a citation into a search engine, I found web pages that used Wikipedia as their source for the same information, but not other information on the quote. I looked through about five different quotes and came up with the same results every time so I hit a dead end with that mission.
I had better luck with a different task! I signed up for a Wikipedia account, and edited an article on Transport in Jaysingpur. I did not make content changes, but I did make grammatical changes.
It felt good to contribute to a website that other people access almost every single day. If you have a chance, you should edit something on Wikipedia! You may find something that you want to edit, or not but I am pretty sure that you will explore a part of the website that you did not even know existed!
Wikipedia is all about collaboration and working together to get accurate information out to the public. Of course every once in a while someone changes something as a joke, but it usually gets resolved quickly. Wikipedia is a great site to explore and get to know past the “let me look up how old this actor is” that we all do!
One response to “Wikipedia”
I am sorry that the citation hunter exercise was a bust for you, but it reveals that time-consuming research is needed to properly cite some of the information lacking citations. Or, perhaps you uncovered that the only place that information really lives is on Wikipedia, and it cannot be verified by a citation. It’s also interested to me that you chose to make grammatical changes to an entry, and that you consider those changes “contributions.” I agree with you that the form and format in which information is conveyed can have a direct relationship to its content and the success of its transmission.