When I was told to edit a Wikipedia page, I initially thought to myself, “ Wait!, What? Are you joking?” I am far from being worthy of editing a Wikipedia page. I’m not an expert on any topic. What could I possibly contribute to the page that is not already stated? I then thought that I might be able to find some grammatical errors that are most likely present in the webpages. These would be the changes to the pages that I would probably make if I had to make some modifications. I would never hunt grammatical errors in Wikipedia on my own time because practically everything else I’m doing right now is more meaningful than this.
If I had to edit a Wikipedia page, it would be on a topic that I know much about or that I had experience with. This led me to consider editing my high school’s page. More specifically, I would discuss my high school’s band program, which was a significant part of my life in high school. Currently there are only a couple sentences about the program, and I would like to elaborate further. For instance, I would list and give a brief description of all the trips the band went on during my four years in the program. I would love to add anecdotes of my personal experiences, but this is not appropriate for the page. I might attempt this to see how long my comments stay on the web page.
There is a trend in the posts...what we feel most confident on offering an opinion on is what we would choose to write an article on. Our respective high schools seem to be a common theme throughout all of our responses. I had the same initial reaction as well to the thought of editing a Wikipedia page!
ReplyDeleteThe thought of editing grammar on Wikipedia never occurred to me! That is something that people of our credentials should be reasonably suited to do, and I would not be weary of such a person editing a source. I agree, too, that I would never hunt down things that need to be changed on Wikipedia. As the article discussed, the editors of the site are not paid. I don't see myself ever feeling so personally responsible for accurate information that I would spend hours of time editing Wikipedia without pay.
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