User:LikesPickles/Essay

Essay
Dr. Aaij's English course about the ins and outs and writings of Wikipedia taught me more about Wikipedia than what I ever would have anticipated myself learning before beginning the class. The reliability of Wikipedia users was previously doubted by myself because I figured that since anyone could write an article and change or add to an article it would cause the article to have untrue information. This would lead to false information for other users to find and use. My assumptions, I quickly learned, were not only false, but entirely backwards. Wikipedia is, in actuality, a vast community of contributors that want to add knowledge that is supported by reliable sources to help nudge a reader in the correct direction with general information on a subject.

Critiquing
Critiquing an article that is not an article written by oneself is far easier than writing an article or even revising your own work. Before any changes to any work should considered though, the talk page should be checked for any suggested changes that the Wiki community has found slightly controversial and thinks a discussion is required prior to any published changes to an article. A huge debate I found in an article that I was contributing to had an extensive debate on the talk page about what name the United Kingdom should be referred to as(United Kingdom, Britain, England, etc.) An easy way to contribute to articles is by linking words that should be “wiki-linked” and un-linking what does not need to be linked. Another simple way to contribute to an article is to read over the information and make any wording that is slightly confusing or “off” easier to understand and read for the average English reader. Personally, adding to certain articles was easy if the article is chosen properly because I already knew a bit on the topics of which I was adding to. I chose a very under-done article about a model of motorcycle that I own. It was very easy to add information to an article on something I already knew so much about. I added sources to cite all of the added information and made sure existing information was supported by resources that were already cited on the previous version of the article before my revisions.

Revising your revision & summary
Before publishing your revisions, one has to proofread their own revisions to make sure no harm to the article was done, summarize what he or she did for what reason, and explain why it benefits the article to have those contributions. Proofreading before publishing revisions to someone else’s work is always wise because when reviewing over changes you were originally going to make, you realize that your revisions to language or organization may not help the article, but may in fact harm it. This could be caused by changing something in an article and making it not in the author’s intended order, one could incorrectly revise spelling of something that may be spelled differently in another place in the world (color vs. colour), or one may mis-write information entirely, leading to someone having to revise your poor revision. If a revision is too poor it could be labelled as vandalism and can be entirely reverted by some users but repeat vandalism contributions could lead to blocks on an account or even permanent banning if the case is serious or ongoing. After all revisions have been checked over, the user must briefly summarize what changes they made and why it benefits the article. This summary should be anywhere from a phrase to a couple of sentences. Comparing the two articles (selecting “diff” next to your own contribution in page history) should put both articles side by side showing exactly where the revisions were made and showing the revised article below the differences. My revision of the motorcycle article did not appear to be a great contribution but information in the article is now reliable, undisputed (so far) information that is supported by a source.

Peer review & Feedback
Peer review was a part of my class’s article writing process because having others give a summary of what needs help in the article is beyond beneficial. I often read right over grammatical errors in my own writing because I know how my own writing is supposed to sound in my head but my message may not be clearly written or may be ill-explained for the ears/eyes of someone who has no grasp over a concept that I am writing about. For example, most people would not know much about a GSX-S750 Suzuki Naked Sport Motorcycle but most people know when English is confusing or could make more sense. Peer review also helps one organize an article better and in a manner that makes information easier to read such as dividing paragraphs into sections that they focus. We were assigned to peer review two of our peers’ Wiki articles and inform them of what could improve the article in hopes that the input would persuade them to change those things. I advised my peers in my reviews of their articles to emphasize the notability of their subject and extrapolate on that and the origin of the subject’s notability. I actually had a problem with this myself. My first article was about a car modifier/tuner from Japan that is overwhelmingly popular in the car enthusiast community but is not very well known outside of that so this made it very hard to find sources that supported the man’s notability for Wikipedia. I swallowed my pride and accepted the fact that I needed to begin a new article entirely (Mainly because Dr. Aaij said I “probably should”). Other than peer review, comments from Dr, Aaij, and comments from Shalor I did not receive much feedback from other Wikipedia users. This may be exclusively because of my exclusive article subject choices though.

Wikipedia itself
Throughout my time using Wikipedia over the course of the semester, I have determined that my assumptions were entirely incorrect. After contributing what I have to Wikipedia I have realized that the majority of users want to aid in providing its audiences with accurate, reliable information and want to provide proof of such for others to take from and create their own work or ideas from. The Wikipedia class itself differs from most other classes tremendously. The information that students acquire from the course can be carried on and called upon whenever it is needed for future subjects in school by showing students how to use Wikipedia to find reliable sources on a subject, considering Wikipedia is not supposed to be a reliable resource for information in academic backgrounds. I think it is important for more people to understand how Wikipedia works because with the information that I have learned in this semester alone, I have learned how to formally write an unbiased summary of a subject (a Wiki article) and I also learned how to properly find resources about a subject that already exists on Wikipedia in case I need to find information on a very secluded subject. Everyone could greatly benefit from learning to use Wikipedia and if everyone knew how to properly use Wikipedia information would be more accurate, false information would take less time to be corrected, and there would be a plethora of additional knowledge added to Wikipedia. If everyone learned how to properly use Wiki, it could change the world’s outlook on Wikipedia entirely and may even lead to it being the future center of all information; The superior online encyclopedia.