User:Fabdoull/essay

"WikiUser for one semester, WikiUser forever!" that should be the slogan of students taking a Wikipedia class because once you know how to use it, no one can remove that from you. I can not remember the first time i started using Wikipedia for personal general knowledge research. Mostly, I used this platform to have a general idea of something I didn’t know or when I came across a new notion while reading a book. In college, one of the first things my English professor told us in my first English class was to never use Wikipedia as a source in our academic papers because it is not reliable. I had always been asking myself what was really happening behind the scene on this platform. Who are the people writing all those articles? What is the process? How are articles reviewed and by who? Is there any form of control or can anyone do whatever he wants? I registered in this class because I thought it was an opportunity to learn more about Wikipedia.

Throughout the semester, we had a number of assignments to complete online but, the course wasn’t completely online. During the week, we had class hours in which the professor explained and showed us what we had to do for the next assignment. Our first two assignments where “Copyedits” and “Add to an article”. I copyedited four articles including American literature, Douala International Airport, Garoua and Douala. The last three articles are places in my native country Cameroon, located in the central African region. I decided to work on Wouri River and Douala International Airport in the assignment “Add to an article” where we had to add some significant content to some articles on Wikipedia. It was “easy” with those three articles because I knew the places, and after reading the articles, I knew exactly what I could add. Also, on Wikipedia, articles covering subjects, people or events from some regions of the world do not have a significant coverage. It is the case for Africa because of the lack of African editors on the free online Encyclopedia. Minorities in general are underrepresented on Wikipedia, particularly women who fortunately benefit from the support of projects like Women in red which promotes the coverage of women around the world on Wikipedia.

Later during the semester, we were asked to evaluate a featured article. We had to write a review on the discussions from the talk page of the article before it was nominated as featured. I reviewed  the List of Azerbaijan International footballers but, it wasn’t very interesting because of the lack of deep review on the talk page of the article. I thought I could choose any article for review so I reviewed the first article a came across. Result: it cost me some points on that exercise. Then came the time when I had to chose a topic to write on. I wrote an article entitled Lee Brian Schrager, it was very difficult to find solid sources to back up information related to him. Things that made it difficult were that he is a living person, he is in the food industry (not considered interesting by most people), and he is part of the gay community which is a minority. My classmates made helpful reviews of my draft and suggested some changes like diversifying my sources  and adding a picture to the article. During this exercise, I also reviewed articles of my classmates, collaboration was key not only in the classroom but also on Wikipedia and this helped me progress with my article and put it live. I regret rushing when choosing my topic because I was not passionate about this article and it took me a lot of time to find reliable sources to build something solid. My article did not appear on the front page yet because my DYK nomination’s hook had a sourcing issue that I had to work on. I received some feedback from other users who read my article to help me with the hook and gave me some suggestions. I also received a lot of feedback from User:Shalor after my article went live. That problem solved, my article was then tagged for copyedit. Fortunately, I did it with the help of User:PopularOutcast who removed the tag after copyediting for flow, capitalization and over citation. I hope my article will soon appear on the front page.

Since I can speak and write in French, I decided to do something different for my second article by translating an article from the French Wikipedia. The article was about a Cave and to be honest, I was more passionate about working on this article than on the first one. I realized that translating an article constituted different problems like for example, translating templates and finding portals which takes a lot of time. It is a totally different experience because the text translation is the “easiest” part in building the article. The article’s name is Arago cave and it is completed but, I will probably ask one of my classmates to help me review it before It goes live. I started working on a new article Portrait of a Negress which will probably be my last article for this class.

More than all those assignments, the most interesting part in this class was learning all what  happens behind the curtain on Wikipedia. A lot of users make sure no act of vandalism remains unsanctioned on the platform. They also make sure no user writes promoting articles. Administrators for example have the “power” to block or banish users from the platform. People not knowing what happens behind the curtain can think articles can be written anyhow by anyone but, there is a constant check by thousands of competent users. During the “Reliability” assignment, I learned from a study that Wikipedia articles on drugs are good sources for student in medical education. On the other hand, the platform has a long way to go in the coverage of minorities. I was also surprised to learn about all the threats women get on the internet.

I plan on staying on Wikipedia and writing more articles. It feels good to know you are doing something useful for millions of people browsing the internet everyday in search of reliable information. I already have my article for the Christmas break: Islamophobia in France. It is an interesting topic that i wish i found earlier during this semester. Being in this class was a pleasure not only because I learned a lot of new things but, I also learned a new way to learn things.