The Community Behind Wikipedia

I decided to edit the Genre page for my project. I feel that I know a lot about genre, after taking many classes on it, and could be another pair of helpful eyes to the page. At first, the page looked generally fine. I went through and found some places that were asking for citations, but when I further researched these things, I took out what couldn’t be cited and left the ones that could. After spending a few hours looking for other things to be changed, I began to feel that this would be a much harder task than anticipated.

            I found Zittrain’s “The Lessons of Wikipedia” very helpful throughout my editing. He discusses one of the main attributes, which is the discussion page that comes alongside every main page. “This allowed people to explain and justify their changes, and anyone disagreeing and changing something back could explain as well” (Zittrain 134). This section helped me to do my changes to the page. I read through these discussions a bit and tried to pick what I felt needed changing or more information. The discussion page gives other users reasoning for why they believe a change should or should not be made. That gave me some guidelines on what to look at, which was very helpful.

            Editing other peoples work helped me to understand what users go through to find the information that is necessary for the topic to be fully explained. It is a much harder process than just looking at their sources and finding the information. The research requires looking at numerous facts and websites to clarify what is written. Zittrain’s article also discusses the ethos that a person must have to become an editor of Wikipedia. “It embodied principles of trust-your-neighbor and procrastination, as well as “Postel’s Law,” a rule of thumb written by one of the Internet’s founders to describe a philosophy of Internet protocol development: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others”” (Zittrain 134).

            The other thing I used to help guide my editing is “Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy” by Carra Leah Hood. She gives two examples of Wikipedia pages; one with offensive wording and incorrect facts and another with edits that make the page a proper looking Wikipedia article. While the Genre page I edited did not have that many edits to be made, I did look through for things similar to Hood’s first example to be sure that it was worded in a grammatically correct way. “A finished version of a Wikipedia entry exists only in theory, however; since entries are rarely locked or tagged “read only,” a reader can take on the role of an editor at any time, thereby updating, fussing with, or otherwise adulterating an entry that has remained stable for a while”. (Hood Explanation in Process).

            This section made me realize that as often as people use and change Wikipedia pages, there is always more that can be added. This is an ongoing process; new users will come across these pages much after a change has been made and completely agree or disagree with it. On top of that, there is always new information coming out that can change a definition of a word or topic.

            Wikipedia does not have rules exactly, but guidelines for those who are trying to become an editor or user of the site. I did a lot of research on these guidelines, which seem to be working as of now, but there are people who change things on Wikipedia to incorrect information. This is something that Wikipedia has tried to keep a hold on, but it does happen. With that, Wikipedia made it so that administrators can block certain users that keep coming up from being able to edit pages.

            After making the edits and reading through all the information, I feel that Wikipedia is doing their best to keep their information credible. The research that goes into these articles and sources is very hard to keep track of. The administrators of this site have a tough job, but from what I’ve read, I believe it’s paid off. The way that Wikipedia is set up, with the discussion board, guidelines for editing, and overall layout of the site, are great resources for any information you may need, but it is still good to know about how to check sources and facts on their site. I think this editing project really showed me more about the site than I imagined was a part of it. While it is complicated, I think this idea of a community of endless information and debates keeps the mind fresh.

Cites:

Hood, Carra Leah. “Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy.” Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.

Zittrain, Jonathan. “Chapter 6: The Lessons of Wikipedia.” The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Print.