Wiki-Follow-Up

I edited the Wiki entry on my high school, St. Joe's Prep, in Philadelphia.  The edit involved me mentioning that the Prep served as a "feeder school" to Jesuit Universities such as Fordham and Scranton.  However, by the end of the week, my section was removed from the page.  Perhaps I should have backed it up with some research in order to keep my section alive.  Alas, RIP feeder school section.

Wiki Follow Up

So far, no one has re-edited my edited post on Wikipedia. I have gone back and added more though, in order to be more thorough. The fact that I had the urge to do this again contributes to my feeling that Wikipedia may grow to be a very useful source for information in the future. People are diligent and I think you will be able to find more accurate information the more people begin to participate in Wikipedia, rather than just using Wikipedia.

"They" edited it!

I was quite proud of my contribution to the Wikipedia page of my favorite basketball player, Mike Dunleavy Jr. I was glad to have been the one to add the fact that he ended his playoff drought of 9 long years as a Golden State Warrior and as an Indiana Pacer.

I've been checking back on the page to see if anyone would take out the information, although I was confident that it would stay because I had sources to back up my entry.

I'm currently watching the Indiana Pacers - Chicago Bulls game and I had an inkling to check Dunleavy's page. To my surprise, my paragraph was edited by an anonymous poster. Reading through it I saw that whoever it was simply condensed it and made the language more consistent with the rest of the page. I didn't mind it, and I was actually impressed that someone actually visited that page in the first place!

So as I watch my Pacers struggle to hold on to another lead against the powerful Bulls, at least I know that people are starting to take notice of the tight group of players Larry Bird has put together. I'm just hoping I won't have to edit Dunleavy's page in the off-season saying that his contract wasn't renewed!

Reflection on becoming a Wikipedian

I found this last assignment to be very difficult. The most challenging part about this assignment however was finding a topic to write about. It took me a while just to come up with a few ideas and then after narrowing down those ideas I realized that not all pages on Wikipedia are open for anyone to edit. For example, My hometown and high school were restricted for only certain users to make sure only accurate information goes on the page. In the end I selected one of my favorite television shows called Modern Family to write about. Then I hit my next obstacle; what to write about. I honestly sat at the computer and stared at the screen blankly for 15 minutes, mainly because I didn't know what to say. Finally, after reading the page for another 15 minutes I realized that not much was said on the setting of the show. Not that the setting is all the important or interesting but I thought that maybe some people would appreciate the add in. Apparently, what I said wasn't liked by the person who looks over the page because just a day later the section on the setting was taken down. Although I am not surprised or really that upset about it, it does feel weird that someone can just go on the internet and take away my hard work. I found this assignment in every way to be challenging and difficult and I really do respect the people who musts constantly update the wiki pages because there is not a lot to say. Everything I know is pretty much already on Wikipedia and writing something worth keeping is a very hard thing to do.

On Becoming a Wikipedian

I am proud to say that my Wikipedia entry is still there. I also found this to be a tough assignment because I wasn't sure what to write about. It seems like everything I like has an individual Wikipedia page, and they are all relatively extensive to boot. I started looking at pages for locations by my house, such as the local parks and my high school. I found that they each had a lot of details and I wouldn't have been able to expand upon anything while also supplying a source. I started looking around my room, picking up even the smallest items--chap stick, a nail clipper, a tootsie pop--but I didn't know anything that wasn't already there. From there I started thinking of the most obscure items I could think of, and I was consistently shocked about the amount of time people have spent contributing information about seemingly insignificant objects. I can see how once someone edits an article, they get the Wikipedia bug and have to keep coming back for more.


Finally I remembered a conversation I had with my friend about old cartoon shows like Hey Arnold, Doug, Rocco's Modern Life, and more. I came across the entry for Courage the Cowardly Dog, and noticed that there was no mention of the music that can be heard in the show. My friend and I agreed that the music is a staple of the program, and is a huge part of what made it special. For us, it was definitely the single most memorable element. I recalled an interview I had read with the composers for the show, and together with the knowledge I already had, I wrote about the music. Even though I only added a single paragraph, it took a lot of time. I knew that plenty of people would reference this entry either to learn about the show, or reminisce about the old days. When people got to my paragraph about the music, I wanted to make sure they recalled the same warm feelings and memories that I did, so I tried to use plenty of examples.

I cited the interview at the end of my entry and submitted it. I was pretty proud to see it on the page, and I've been refreshing all week to see if it is still there. In the middle of the week I noticed that someone had inserted "citation needed" after a few sentences. Since all of the specific details I wrote about could be found in the article I cited, I added the citation after each sentence that called for it. I actually was a little annoyed about having to go through this extra step because I placed the citation at the end of the paragraph and if the person who changed it to "citation needed" had just read the interview, he would have seen that it was all coming from the same place. Nevertheless, I added the citations, and kept checking back in. A few days ago I noticed that someone removed all of the citations after the individual sentences, and now there is a single citation at the end of the paragraph. I think it looks much cleaner this way.