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.
