Wikipedia

It took me awhile to figure out which Wikipedia articles I could successfully contribute to.   I thought I would have no problem, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that no matter how much I may think I know about certain things, it is another thing to be able to produce facts about those things that are completely authoritatve, accurate, and objective.

At first, I was trying to make a big-league contribution by thinking I could edit an article about Gandhi.  I have been acquiring an in-depth analysis of Gandhi’s life in another one of my classes, so I thought that I might be able to contribute something to the article. I soon realized that the article was “locked” and that I didn’t have the authority to edit the post. (Looking back, that’s not too much of a surprise.) 

I finally decided to contribute to an entry about my high school.  Agoura High School had an entry that lacked much up-to-date information. I used a profile of the high school that I found online to round out the article a bit. This also made me realize that even though I went to Agoura High, I needed to find information that was precise and objective before I could write about it. Relying only on my own experiences would cause me to write with bias, perhaps featuring certain aspects of the school, while ignoring others.

I also contributed to an article about a music festival that I attended in San Francisco this past summer called Outside Lands. The existing entry did not include much information about the various aspects of the festival, so I added some more information to the article.

I really enjoyed this assignment because it is really cool to see something you wrote show up instantly, especially on a page that other people are likely to read.  I also enjoyed figuring out how to create different sections by looking at the code used in different parts of the articles.  Overall, it was a really good experience, and it reinforced my sense of wanting to write in the future.