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Wikipedia is such an interesting and fun tool to use when used properly. Wikipedia is also something that can be a bit controversial because of the ability for anyone to be able to correct, add, and take away information from an article that was written. Wikipedia brings many people together to create and share ideas about any and everything that can be talked about in the world; from music to major events that happened in the world. This opportunity to correct an article that was written by someone else was a little uncomfortable for a couple of reasons but it was a good experience.
Editing an article that was created by someone brought me to an uneasy place for some reason. It was not the fact that I was placing incorrect information to the article but it was merely the fact that I did not want to mess with someone’s hard work. I worked on an article that discussed Beyoncé’s, The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour. The article talked about the process of the entire tour from the costumes to the advertisement and to the amount of revenue that was brought in from the world tour. The article was very well written with just a couple of misspellings and maybe some rewriting of some sentences. The article also talked about people who were involved during the tour as well as the major events that happened around the tour.
My experience with editing this article was not a horrible one but it did put into perspective what kind of access people had with this type of technology and it made me a little uncomfortable to change much. This is because I did not want to step on anyone’s toes per se but luckily there was training for the Wikipedia changes and how to edit an article. I appreciate the training being accessible and showing how to avoid the tragedies a bad edit on Wikipedia. The process is fairly easy and fairly self-explanatory. I really appreciate that there was a source to help you choose an article to edit so that you would not have to go to another site to actually copy and paste something to edit. This cuts out some tendencies for plagiarism and copyright issues.
The process works for an article that has many issues and wrong information. This allows for more corrections and additions for the article. The citing tool is very simple to use as well. It helps those who do not really know how to cite websites easily and does the work for you for the most part. The visual arrangement for the editing site can be a little confusing for a first time user because I for sure had trouble trying to find some of the links and buttons such as “edit”; do not judge me. Wikipedia has a format that just confuses me a little and that is okay, as I mentioned earlier, the process is fairly easy and fairly self-explained to use the system and edits.
Another key part of the editing process is having the original writer confirm and sign off on the editing that will be done by you. I think that that is a great way to get permission from the creator to have that ability to change what is already created. It gives the creator a chance to make sure that their work is not done in vain and to allow the creator or deny the additions to the article. The only downside to this is that the creator may not always respond to that request. The creator may not have been logged into their account in such a long time and may have not seen that article since it was created. This is why I say that I feel a little skeptical of the whole editing someone else’s article because what if someone does not get the proper permission to change something? Anyone can just create a change and make something incomplete or provide the wrong information to the article. I guess you would place this information on the web and hope that people will be respected enough to provide factual and strong information.
Overall, the entire process was something to learn from and it is amazing. Learning that you can change people’s information from the comfort of your own home and have an impact on the world is something to think about. This process was insightful to see how trustworthy and untrustworthy information on the internet can be. This teaches me to be truthfully media literate when it comes to researching information on the internet for anything and to fact check everything that I would consider to use as information to digest.
