The World of Wikipedia

Looking at the nature of this course, I was not that surprised when our teacher told us to edit a Wikipedia page. Seeing as we have already dabbled in the businesses of Twitter, Blogs, Google, and YouTube, I figured it would only be fitting to learn about the processes of Wikipedia. Although it was only a joke, there were many thoughts that were going through my mind when we first received the go-ahead to make an edit. Since Wikipedia is used by millions of people all over the world that are searching for a wide variety of topics, I realized that I must be very cautious and thoughtful in anything that I chose to add. I knew that any false information could easily be reverted by the watchful administrators, or by other monitoring users. My first thought would be to edit a page that very few people view, such as a page about the Banana Pancake Trail (it’s a real thing) or a page about Ohio State University. However, I realized that with the amount of people that use Wikipedia, someone is bound to be looking for something about the Banana Pancake Trail or about OSU, otherwise there wouldn’t be an article about it. Therefore, anything I edited would inevitably be seen by someone, even if it wasn’t up to par with the rest of the article. I wouldn’t want to decrease the credibility or integrity of Wikipedia by inserting my own nonsense into a topic that I barely have any knowledge of because that would just take away from the very foundation that Wikipedia prides itself on – user generated content that is reliable and informative.

If I did have to edit a page on Wikipedia, I would choose to edit something that I am knowledgeable about, and not about something like string theory or quantum mechanics. Therefore, I would probably edit my high school’s wikipedia page. Coming from a high school with 3,000+ kids, I would have expected a much better page that highlighted the successes of our academics, sports programs, and music programs. However, the page only provides scanty descriptions for each respective section. However, as a member of the marching band for three years, I would definitely choose to add more to the section about our marching band. I do not feel the current page sufficiently highlights all of the aspects of the band, nor does it emphasize the amazing success that the band has had for several decades. I feel that if another student viewed the current page, they would not get a true depiction of the band, but if I edited it, I could provide a unique insider’s viewpoint of all the inner workings of the band, which is something that other people could not.