Wikipedia has always been a thing that has been almost front page on the internet since creation. Every time I did a Google search for something I didn't know, Wikipedia would be one of the first hits, and every time it helped me out of my jam. Wikipedia, obviously enough, is a mother-load of knowledge for anyone to come in and help themselves too. The thought of being able to be a part of that with something of my choosing was quite a thought. It's always been the same old song and dance through school of “Wikipedia is bad” this and “Wikipedia isn't a reliable source” that. True, it's possible to find an article that doesn't make sense and has obviously been subjected to vandalism. In “The Charms of Wikipedia”, Nicholas Baker provides a look on a past edit on the subject of aging: “Aging is what you get when you get freakin old old old.(1)”. Even though vandalism (like the previous example) is possible, Wikipedia provides a new and efficient outlet to distribute knowledge.
Starting on the article, I was having a hard time thinking about something local to do that would actually have enough information to squeeze out 1200-1500 words on. To my demise, I wasn't finding anything that I was interested enough in to do a paper on and/or had enough information on. When I turned to the “requested articles”, I easily found something that I could probably pull off. After getting my topic, the searching began. Although, when you research a religious “secret society” for a Wikipedia article, it's pretty difficult to find neutral, third-party sources. So, I delved into what I could find on the very biased site, and went at the situation from a different angle. Instead of finding information about the society itself, I looked at it's beliefs and how they related to it. A couple web sites and a couple books later, I had enough information to start writing.
The writing itself was rather easy since it was a topic I was interested in. Refining was the biggest problem in the process. It was hard to find information that would be neutral enough to pass on Wikipedia, but I was still having problems finding third party sources. Eventually, I found enough to satisfy the Wikipedia moderators and now it's up and going strong. Looking back, I can certainly say that Wikipedia writing is different from any other writing's I've done in the past. From earlier writing, it's quite a different process than writing a Wikipedia article. Retrieving sources (at least in preliminary stages), incorporation, summary, and quoting remain the same between all styles of writing in my opinion.
Wikipedia requires you to stay neutral, a change from the norm for most people. In revising: retrieving sources (for more details), incorporation, summary, and quoting seem the same, but evaluating the sources to incorporate and writing styles make the biggest changes. Sources become more difficult to find once you get into finer details, at least finding sources that aren't associated directly with the topic itself. More difficult subjects (secret societies and heavier religious topics for example) have a multitude of books on the subject, but are very closely related to the topic itself. Newspapers seem to be the best source of “third-party” sources, but those can be hard to find with the more “under-the-radar” topics. The writing style change didn't trouble me as much as expected, but it obviously was a big change. Wikipedia also shows the new take on one editor to a piece of work. In “Wikipedia is good for you!?”, James Purdy makes the argument that “Effective Wikipedia contributors revise articles frequently. They take advantage of the wiki capability to edit the articles they read. (219)”
Wikipedia is a social network for knowledge. As different editors find your page, they can make changes themselves or suggest changes through a discussion section. For example, if an editor has a question about a specific part of a topic you didn't cover, you can go look for it and place it in the article. Also, if you don't, there's a possibility for another editor to see the comment and do it himself. The more edits an article gets, be it with suggestions or straight edits, it's feasible to say more edits amount to a better article. Better articles provide more helpful information to those searching. With the different editors joining in, it helps with providing new insight to articles. James Porter, in “All Writing is Autobiographical”, would also say that the edits help show more personalities. “I have my own peculiar way,” Porter describes of his own writing, “of looking at the world and my own way of using language to communicate what I see....I have begun to understand...that all writing, in many different ways, is autobiographical (58).”
Starting the article, an article that was related (in article type, for lack of better description) was a good place to start to get a better sense of formatting the article. That puts a new facet on the thoughts of plagiarism. Is is plagiarism to use the template, or is it expected on a site like Wikipedia? It also adds to the social context that Wikipedia provides with templates being used by many different articles. With similar templates for related articles, it proves that Wikipedia also plays it's part in intertextuality.
Through edits, it also provides a new look on the “finished” article. In most papers in the past, there's a finished product that is graded and no more revisions or additions are accepted. Wikipedia doesn't discourage edits, but expects them. With possible edits at any time, it really shows that an article is never “finished” on Wikipedia (besides those articles that are 'semi-protected', but besides the point). Thinking about it now, I think it's amazing that knowledge for one topic can be changed all the time with additions or subtractions. It's understandable that such changeability like this puts Wikipedia in a bad scope for using in papers. Purdy discusses, however, that “As Jim Giles reports... Encyclopedia Britannica has errors in some of its articles, too; he claims that Wikipedia is almost as accurate as Britannica for a series of articles on science topics...(207)”
Encyclopedias are obviously neutral sources by nature. I would go so far as to say that the changeability of Wikipedia is more desired than print encyclopedia's. Print has to be redone over and over again if new information comes out. This requires lots of money and lots of time to go back and edit. Wikipedia makes editing as easy as sitting at a computer for an hour (also taking out the monetary costs).
I find myself now checking the posted article pretty frequently now, to see if any changes have been made or if the article gets deleted. It's an interesting feeling to be that third party observer, looking (monitoring) to see what others think of your own work and how they change it. This can allow for new insights to your own knowledge on how wide you should look at your topic and how in depth you should go into each part of your topic. From the drawing board, for instance, right off the bat someone wanted to make sure that I wasn't affiliated with the topic myself. It might just have been for the specific purpose of Wikipedia rules, or that it was a religious article and they wanted to make sure I was just staying as a third party and not just trying to “represent my brand” of sorts.
Wikipedia adds an entirely new world of knowledge distribution. You can get anything from in depth information on a band to a list of foreign holidays and practices, to in depth analysis of a song and how it was made. The world is at the fingertips of everyone who can get onto a computer. I believe it's a great addition and provides many advantages to working methods. Wikipedia allows you to search faster and find what you're looking for more efficiently. New information that arises (or wasn't thought of in the first draft) can be added quickly, making all articles more “up-to-date” since it can be added as things are happening. The social thoughts on writing are changing, and Wikipedia helps people adapt to the changes. Wikipedia provides that place where writers everywhere can share information and learn how to become better writers for future endeavors. In short, as Baker describes it, “Wikipedia is just an incredible thing.(1)”
References:
- Baker, Nicholson. "The Charms of Wikipedia." Rev. of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual by John Broughton. The New York Review of Books 17 APR 2008 1-3 Web. Oct. 3 2011
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/mar/20/the-charms-of-wikipedia/?page=1 - Purdy, James. "Wikipedia is Good for you." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Parlor Press 2010. 205-224. Print
http://writingspaces.org/essays/wikipedia-is-good-for-you
- Porter, James. “All Writing is Autobiographical.”Writing about Writing: A college Reader. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 57-65. Print.
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