Wikipedia truly is a unique, unparalled
site. It was launched on January 15th, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry
Sanger, and only ten years later it includes 20 million articles in 282
languages (Wikipedia, 2011). I know when I’m trying to get general information
on a topic, Wikipedia is the first site I check! So when my next ALES 204
project was to add more information to a stub on Wikipedia, I thought I could
pick an interesting topic and the assignment would be easy as pie.
I chose to update a stub on Hardware Disease, which is commonly found in dairy cattle and an illness I find interesting. I quickly discovered that although writing the article was easy, trying to format it was a whole new ball game. I read countless help pages and looked at samples from other articles before I finally figured out how to make a reference to the same citation multiples times throughout my article. My goal for my next Wikipedia article is to figure out how to add a picture, a task I gave up on this time around. I can tell you one thing, I have even more gratitude for the authors who routinely contribute to Wikipedia, because there is much more to it then writing out a few sentences! Also, I know with certainty I could never be a computer programmer. I get too frustrated when I find out the error I’ve been trying to fix for the last hour was due to two missing square parentheses!
But without further ado, here is a screenshot of the article that introduced me to the world of Wikipedia coding. You can also find the entire article here.
From jkhay (2011), Edmonton. Retrieved November 11, 2011 from http://www.flickr.com
For comparison sake, here is the original stub:
From jkhay (2011), Edmonton. Retrieved November 11, 2011 from http://www.flickr.com
This
assignment did make me more aware than ever that truly anyone can edit
Wikipedia. I was able to make an account and edit almost any article I wanted,
with the exception of a few that have restricted access. Looking through the
editing history page, I do think the undo edit button is a great idea. If
someone changes an article with the sole goal of vandalism, it is nice that
their work can be easily removed and the article can be reverted back to its
original form.
Looking
through my fellow students blogs, I stumbled across Erin's blog talking about her Wikipedia article on Swedish Red Cattle. Reading her blog made me feel better, because I discovered I was not the only one having problems referencing the same article multiple times!
That’s all for today folks. Remember, be grateful for the people who write the articles for Wikipedia, but take everything you read with a grain of salt!
That’s all for today folks. Remember, be grateful for the people who write the articles for Wikipedia, but take everything you read with a grain of salt!
