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Becoming a Wikipedia Contributor
The following assignment has taught me a lot of things about Wikipedia. I am glad that I now know how to be an active contributor to pages on the website as well. Wikipedia provides multiple fantastic sources that help makes the learning process of how to become of contributer or add edits to pages fairly simple to comprehend. I found this brochure on editing in Wikipedia extremely helpful when beginning the process for this assignment.
I believe that I found the most trouble with locating a page that I could edit or contribute to that would add improvement to the original content. After a heavy amount of time browsing through various different pages, I had finally found where I could improve the Wikipedia page on Celina, Texas.
Choosing a page to Improve
Within the past five years or so, I had spent a lot of time in this small city right outside of the DFW metroplex helping my dad open up his very first Texas Barbecue restaurant, Tender Smokehouse. During this process, I had come to gain quite a lot of knowledge about the city of Celina and had come more aware that majority of people from the DFW area were not aware this city was even there! Now that my family has successfully opened two different concepts in the Celina Town Square, the area has gained more traffic. Many people have attributed this growth to my dad, but he will humbly decline this idea when asked.
The last updated population of Celina, Texas used information of the 2010 U.S. Census and after further investigation, I found there was an updated population in the 2017 U.S. Census which presented a substantial amount of growth for the city. That is when I decided that updating the population using this information would add improvement to the page and show evidence of growth within the town of Celina.
Taking the steps
As we were instructed for this assignment, I began by adding a note page in the talk section of the Celina, Texas Wikipedia. I expressed the change I wanted to change about updating the population to inquire if anyone would have an objection. So far, I have not had any replies or concerns but that could of course change at any moment. This could also be due to a small amount of traffic that comes across this specific page as well, with the evidence I found that there was only one other talk section added on this page prior to my comment.
(screenshot of my comment in the Talk section, taken by myself.)
After waiting some time for potential concerns of people or responses, I went ahead and made the changes I mentioned earlier about the population. I used a very similar sentence structure to the one that originally on the page. The original sentence had referenced the 2010 census stating a population of 6,028. Then proceeded to explain that the population had increased from the 2000 census giving where the page then provided the exact amount it had increased by.
Adding The Edits
After ensuring the information I found was factual and I had the correct sources, I went ahead and added the changes and updated the population of Celina, Texas according to the 2017 Census.
(screenshot of updated population edited via myself, screenshot by myself)
As you can see in the picture I added above, I also added the difference or growth between the updated 2017 population and the original 2010 population that was there prior to my edits. After I double-checked the information was 100 percent correct, I proceeded to add the citations to the new 2017 census.
I did find some difficulty with this and moving around the original sources, such as moving the Information of the population in Celina, Texas to the second half of the sentence. This is where I want to add an extra emphasis on how helpful the Wikipedia resources were during the process of this assignment.
Overall Experience and Take Away
Once I proceeded to add in my citations and publish my edits, it was simply updated and my improvements were then posted on the page. Although the entire process and practices to learn how t correctly make edits on wikipedia may be a lot of information for one to process, I am satisfied and excited that I can now say I have the knowledge and have officially contributed and improved a wikipedia page. I hope to continue to use this in the future and hope to eventually start adding entire pages of information on wikipedia rather than just adding edits.
I also want to add that prior to this assignment I always held a generalized idea that wikipedia could not be a source used for credibility, but I was very wrong in this assumption. I just think it is important to check other contributors sources and references before if you are skeptical. Otherwise, this can be a great source with a very wide range of information and research on multiple topics. I highly recommend to those that enjoy writing and journalism to go through the training and process of learning how to correctly contribute to Wikipedia.
