Week 2: Wikipedia

When first hearing that we had to read about wiki’s for this week’s topic I straight away thought beauty something interesting which I have actually focused on before. Although I have dealt with wiki’s on many occasions if I was asked by someone to explain what a wiki was, I’ll be honest probably wouldn’t be able to provide a good definition. Reading the actual definition provided which states a ‘Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly’, I was able to understand exactly what a wiki is and its capabilities.

I also did some reading about the advantages of creating an account as opposed to anonymous editing and these are just some of advantages below:
- You can customize your preference page
- Create new articles/pages
- You can upload images and rename pages
- You can claim your edits
- Create a watch list with all pages you are watching

For anyone interested in knowing some more about ‘Why they should create an account’, they can read up on the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account%3F

You may be amazed but I have never taken it upon myself to actually edit a wiki, rather I have read them and used it for definition purposes when I am not sure of word/phrase. As a requirement to locate an article which needs improving and to make those improvements, I located the ‘Preston Lions’ page a local soccer team which I follow that has a page on Wikipedia that contains very outdated content. Already being a registered user, I made some changes to history of the club which was slightly outdated as well as the playing squad and other bits and pieces here and there. I had some issues though with Wikipedia actually allowing my content to stick as it would revert to existing content a few minutes after I made the changes, so like some of the other bloggers I took a screenshot of some of edits I made just so that that they can be seen. This is the link to the page I edited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Lions_FC just incase Wikipedia has decided to allow the changes to stick, my edits are in bold.

Original Page

Edited Page

I also read about some of the criteria required to write a new Wikipedia article, which I believe is very strict and that most people writing articles obviously DO NOT follow. A lot of the content on Wikipedia is relatively accurate and reliable but you always get the occasional article that isn’t which is the downside. I myself like Wikipedia because everyone is able to contribute their ideas to topic areas and increase other people’s knowledge, but the downside will always be the freedom people have to edit others quality work and replace it with a whole lot of jargon.

I also have a powerpoint presentation for anyone who would like to know more about Wikipedia which myself, James, Annie and Ana completed last semester, don't be afraid to ask me if you would like me to send you a copy of it ;).