User:Amanor1/Reflections

Teachers and professors all advise students not to use Wikipedia as a reference for research papers or any type of general information. This is due mainly to the fact that anyone can sign up for an account on Wikipedia and edit which ever article he or she chooses. Professors do not want students to cite incorrect or misrepresented information in a research paper, so many professors have made it a requirement that only peer reviewed journal articles may be used. When I first started writing papers in high school I can remember using Wikipedia for much of the information in my papers. Then when it was found out that any average person can go in and edit information as they choose, teachers began telling us not to use Wikipedia. I began to forget about Wikipedia as a credible source of information and began to rely more on journals and books for many of my sources.

Recently, however, Wikipedia has laid down several etiquette rules on editing that have been and are currently being enforced for any member wishing to edit an already existing article. Two of the most important rules are that one cannot delete information that has already been posted by another user and one cannot write false or misrepresenting information on a live article. Violation of these rules can result in your user name being blocked and your editing privileges taken away. It is because of rules like these that Wikipedia retains its credibility as a source of information, even if some people choose not to agree. I have realized this more so now that I have edited and contributed information myself to a live article. The editing process assisted me in organizing and displaying the information I had researched on my topic. I feel that editing my first article on Wikipedia was a great learning experience for me and I hope to continue and edit more articles in the future. It felt good to be confident enough in my research to put the information out on a public domain. Before completing this project it had never occurred to me that I could edit an article on Wikipedia. I always associated that as something only professors or researchers would do. Completing this project gave me the opportunity to show my versatility in communication and to show that I can communicate information not only through papers and speaking, but also through the use of technology. It also shows my accomplishments as a researcher of a topic that I knew very little about before starting this project. I know this skill will benefit me with my future career as a medical doctor because much of the health care field is moving toward electronic medical records rather than written records for patients.I hope to edit more articles on Wikipedia and discuss the information with other editors as well.