Hello to Everyone and Welcome to My Blog on Editing a Wikipedia Article!
For this blog, I will be talking about one of the most intimidating things I have done in a very long time: EDITING A PAGE ON WIKIPEDIA! I hope it sounded as scary typed out as it was for me in person. Honestly, I cannot even explain how much time I took to create the edit I did in order to get it as perfect as could be (and also to not have expert Wikipedians yelling at me). Maybe, though, just maybe, my harrowing (enter exaggerated voice here) experience will help someone take a leap to go from small edits to larger edits on pages on Wikipedia.
So in terms of what article I chose to edit, I went for some form of media on TV because I tend to be very knowledgeable on certain shows. I specifically chose to look at stub articles based on the training we had during the weeks leading up to making the choice. I found a stub article on the reality TV show “American Beauty Star.” This article seemed very underdeveloped so I chose to find sources to edit the limited information on this page. What I wanted to do was add the season 1 and 2 casts, however, after searching for sources I could only fully find the cast for season 1. So my first step was to actually contact someone on the talk page for this article and ask whether the edit I wanted to make was acceptable in their opinion. I got a very polite response back to go ahead with the edit and be bold in my edits. I loved that part of the feedback…..be bold…..something I tend to shy away from being, especially on the internet.
So my next step was contacting another Wikipedian that was my original contact with the Wiki Education Foundation and who was available for help at any time. I contacted this person because even though I found three solid sources, one had language in their permissions section that made me unsure of whether or not I could use that source. Again, I got a very informative response about indeed being able to use that source, however, with the caution to also find great secondary sources. I completely forgot about the types of sources I needed to use and this response actually pushed me to go back to the training again to ensure I was using the correct types of sources.
My last step in this process was to actually edit the Wikipedia article on the show. I added my season 1 cast, three sources/references, and added the wording as far as what edits I was going to make. Then it was all about the waiting game and just staring at the computer screen to find potential errors after publishing (am I the only one who would do this?). To my surprise, shock, and extreme happiness, it only took about 10 minutes for someone to fix the placement of my sources BUT my edits look like they’ve been accepted!!!! Here is the link for all to see my contributions!
I must say, as scared as I was to go through this process, actually contributing something to a digital media website makes me feel amazing. I think from past blogs, one can see that my online footprint is less than most, so to be able to accomplish this is a big deal. So all in all from my experience, I hope you try to make a Wikipedia page more accessible with real information for others as well. From one Wikipedia rookie to potentially another, I definitely think this activity helped to enrich my digital media literacy.
Until the next blog!
