This assignment, when first introduced, gave me a lot of anxiety. There are not a ton of topics that I know a lot about. I had to dig deep to find one I knew enough about to make an edit on.
Anthropology is a secret love of mine, and I’ve done a lot of research and reading on that topic. The article on just anthropology, however, was already too developed. So I decided to go with a “Start Class” article, which meant there was plenty of room for improvement.
The article I chose to edit was Anthropologist. I read the article a few times to see what I could add to it. I wanted to more than just a simple edit. I wanted to add actual information.
In the end, I decided to add information about cultural anthropologists, a sub field of anthropology. To do this, I started by finding sources. I was not adding a lot, so I felt like three sources would be enough information to go off of.
Once I found sources and had enough information, I knew what I wanted to write. This is when I took my information to the talk page. I wrote in the talk page what I was planning on adding.
After adding in the talk page, I drafted in my sandbox. I thought about what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it. I took what I already knew, as well as what I had learned from the bit of research I did.
I felt like I had a good enough understanding to start drafting. I wrote a few sentences, and then deleted them, and rewrote them. I did that about three times until I was finally satisfied with what I had written.
The next day, I took a look at it again. I wanted to add more. Three sentences was not enough. I did not feel like I was explaining well enough what a cultural anthropologist did, so I erased it all and started over.
Finally, I wrote something I was happy with. I did not want to move it into the article just yet, though. I wanted to wait another day or two to make sure no one had any objections to it in the talk page.
The next day, I checked the talk page again. There still was not a single comment on what I wanted to add. I took that as a sign that no one objected to it, and I was good to go.
I did some final edits to what I wanted to add. I made sure it was perfect. I double checked my sources were input correctly. I also checked to make sure none of my work was accidentally plagiarizing.
I decided it was finally time to move my contribution over to the article. I was a little bit nervous doing this. I had never edited or added anything to an article on Wikipedia, or anywhere for that matter.
I knew my information was good though, and that I was adding a serious contribution. With that in mind, I did it. I moved my article over.
Publishing the change felt surprisingly empowering. I was proud of what I added, and it felt good to be contributing to someone else’s knowledge and information.
Even if it eventually gets taken down, this is still an accomplishment in my book. I felt like my contribution was successful.
After publishing the changes, I immediately sent the article to my friend saying “check out the cultural anthropologist section, I did that!” I do not know why I was so proud of something so small, but I was and still am.
Overall, this was a nerve-wracking assignment. I tend to doubt myself a lot, and I felt like this was an assignment that just was not for me. I felt like I was not smart enough, or good enough, to actually edit an article.
The training supplied by Wikipedia truly was helpful. When I could not remember how to move my article, I simply went back and looked at the training module for it.
All of the modules in the beginning were also incredibly helpful. It refreshed my memory on simple things like editing and plagiarizing. I would have been lost without the modules. I would not have known how to work the talk page, or how to find an article.
Overall, this assignment is definitely one of my favorites that I’ve done so far in college. It was fun and interesting. I have never done anything like this. And like I said before, it really was an empowering assignment.
To finally hit publish, and see your contribution added to the article, was a feeling I was not expecting. I was expecting to not care, to just be glad that the assignment was over. But I felt good about what I added.
