When I was asked to edit Wikipedia, I got anxious for sure. I knew that Wikipedia is a web-based encylopedia that anyone can edit, but I have never thought about editing it myself. That is probably because I'm not an expert in any fields and thus I don't possess specific information or knowledge that can be added to the encyclopedia. I just felt that I'm not ready yet. Then I realized how it takes a huge confidence in oneself to contribute to editing Wikipedia. I thought about all the people who bravely participated in sharing their knowledges in Wikipedia and hoped that someday I would be as confident in myself as they are and actually edit a page of Wikipedia on my own.
If I had to edit Wikipedia now, I would probably choose a topic that I'm most familiar with. Since I am an econ major, I could, with a lot of researching and flipping through my textbook, contribute to editing a page about economics. I could write definitions of some economic terms, or explain some of the phenomena related to the field of economics. However, it is very likely that all of the economic terms or concepts that I know of are already included in the Wikipedia, so I doubt if I would ever have a chance to actually edit it.
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In my blog post, I shared the same feelings when asked to edit a page. I felt a little nervous and definitely not qualified to make changes. I thought other people, like you, would feel the same way and that as a result Wikipedia would remain free of false information. After reading other people's posts, however, it seems like there are actually quite a few people who find it exciting or even entertaining to edit a page- qualified or not. This definitely challenges what both of us originally thought. I suppose it's important then that the people who operate the site do what they can to keep it in check.
ReplyDeleteI like how you brought the ideal of how confidence is needed to post one's contributions on a wiki page. This emphasizes of how those who are confident enough in their own knowledge of a topic leads to their attempt to share this ideal with the world through Wikipedia. Also, I am like you, in that I never even thought about using Wikipedia as a medium to share knowledge, but rather just as a superficial information source that I can easily utilize before delving deeper into more scholarly sources.
ReplyDeleteI like your point that it takes a great deal of confidence to edit a Wikipedia page; I never really considered this idea. I too would write a Wikipedia page on a topic that I knew a lot of information about. For that reason, I would probably create a Wikipedia page for my high school band program. I think most of us would be in that same situation where all our knowledge of a subject would already be part of a Wikipedia page.
ReplyDeleteI also thought about how i was not ready to post anything on wikipedia, but i really like how you proposed the idea of having confidence in posting information on wikipedia. I disagree with the fact that you would only feel confident in posting information that you found in a textbook, as I am sure there are many things that you know that are facts and are not found on Wikipedia. for example i proposed to edit pages about soccer or music or pages of the sort.
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