My assignment this week was to find a Wikipedia stub and add to the article. Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia containing articles on everything from cheese to bioinformatics; the selection is truly encompassing. However, anyone in the world can create an account and write an article so precision and objectivity are very hard to analyze. I chose an article on the Barton Spring Salamander. I must admit that this task had seemed quite daunting to me as I am, once again, not the most knowledgeable when it comes to technology. But after the lecture, I realized that perhaps it wasn't as complicated as I had thought. When I saw the edit page that was full of codes, my fears came back; but with a bit of patience, I began spotting patterns and making connections between the codes and their respective functions. As I started linking the words from the article I was editing, I began realizing just how large the Wikipedia data base really was. I had known this before but I grasped more of its immensity during this assignment. Within one sentence, there could be 3 links. If the specific word had no link itself, it was often bridged to a similar word. The amount of information that is now in Wikipedia truly is amazing.
Here is a picture of the article on Barton Spring Salamander I edited on Wikipedia. My part was the environmental impact section. Annie Li (2012). Retrieved from Annie Li computer March 23, 2012.
But this widely used media has a few downsides. The most obvious one is that the mass number of users complicates the screening process. By screening process, I mean the the correction of mistakes and prevention of vandalism. The most data that is added, the harder it becomes to sort through it all, eliminate mistakes, and catch abusers. But the invention of bots has eased the process a great deal. These computer-based "editors" are coded to recognize basic errors; in this way, accuracy is increased. Even though machines can be cheated, there are so many users on Wikipedia that mistakes are quickly caught and removed. Another problem is the conciseness of the articles themselves; if everyone can write in it, how can you be guaranteed relevant and updated information? The answer lies in Wiki's philosophy; the idea is, not to make it easier to make mistakes, but to make it easier to correct them. There are more people on the internet that take these forms of social media serious than there are not. Thus the very "problem" is the solution.
As for social media, Wikipedia provides another means of getting your work known, even if it's anonymously. This Flikr page shows someone who's picture was put into the Wikimedia Commons and then placed on the cover page of Wikipedia. This man's work is a good example of how the different social media we have learnt in class connect and interact with each other; the man placed an attribution and and share alike condition on his work using Flikr, someone placed it within Wiki's version of Creative Commons and now, his work has made front page!
All in all, it was a somewhat stressful but oddly satisfying experience of leaving my mark on the internet. Lauren also update a stub article on Wikipedia. She edited the article on Dourine in horses and has used many references to maintain credential within her article. Please have a read!
