Wikipedia Rocks!
I can’t believe that I contributed an article to Wikipedia! I did not know that it was going to be so easy to write an article for such a popular online encyclopedia. I feel like I added a painting to a highly esteemed art gallery. Now I can see why so many people get addicted to writing and editing articles on Wikipedia. Even though your article might change drastically over the days, months, or years, it still feels like you’ve written a page in history.
I wrote about George Washington Bush for my Wikipedia article. This article was a stub to begin with so I thought that my article would not be edited by anyone. I was shocked to see that people edited my article every day. Every time I checked, there was some sort of change made to it. Some were just minor grammatical changes while others were changes made to several paragraphs. Now the article does not even resemble my version of the article. There is very little left of what I added. I think my article changed so much because it was not written very well. It was written well enough to get the topic started but it is definitely written a lot better now. It is written perfectly with impeccable grammar and sounds like something you would read in a history book.
I learned a lot about Wikipedia from this assignment. I learned it is very easy to add or edit articles. But I also learned that there are Wikipedians out there who are very particular about what is contributed to Wikipedia. I think that some people just sit on Wikipedia and edit all of the new articles that get contributed to Wikipedia so they can make it perfect. There are people who are just looking for grammatical fixes and then there are people who are perfectionists who want the article to be the best of the best.
I never really had any strong opinions of Wikipedia before this assignment. After using it, I feel Wikipedia is, for the most part, a reliable encyclopedia in which you can contribute information as easily as you can get it. I really like that Wikipedia has people who maintain the articles by cleaning up any vandalism. I am surprised how they can keep it so clean because I know there are a lot of people who find it amusing to write random things and ruin other people’s work. There is nothing that I do not like about Wikipedia. It allows you to not only learn things but also to teach others about something you know. I also like that it gives you the freedom to question what you read. You can easily ask the contributors of an article a question or give them feedback. It is amazing how Wikipedia is essentially bringing people together and helping us learn from one another.
