Many different courses are asking their students to analyze and edit Wikipedia articles. Have you ever edited Wikipedia yourself?
For this activity, familiarize yourself with editing Wikipedia by finding a Wikipedia article in your discipline that has inadequate or wrong information. Write a one or two sentence revision that includes a citation to a reliable resource, then either:
- Go to the discussion page and suggest your revision, or
- Edit the page directly with your revision and citation.
Complete this Activity
After you do this assignment, please share it with the comment below so it can appear with other responses. If your response exists at a publicly viewable URL, you can add the information in the box below. If you have edited Wikipedia before share what your edited.
I have been doing some work in Wikidata for my library, so I was a little bit familiar with Wiki norms. For this activity, I went digging around and found a list of articles that needed some work on musicians. I opened a number of articles to see what they needed, looking for something I could help with. I found that the article on Bill Withers was missing a citation about the Grammy Hall of Fame, so I searched out a citation for that and learned how to structure citations in Wikipedia. I tested it out in my Sandbox and used the Show Preview feature a lot, testing out what the changes I was making in the wiki markup language would look like in the actual article, then I copied it into the actual article. I think I did it right, but I’ll keep an eye on the article and see if other people change my work. (I’ve put the link in the Website field for this comment.)
I have done some work with Wikidata for my library, so I was a little bit familiar with the wiki projects, but I had not edited a Wikipedia article before. I dug around and found a list of articles about musicians which needed some work, looking for something I could fix, and I found that the article about Bill Withers needed a citation in the introduction. I searched for a source for the fact given, found it, and learned how to cite sources in Wikipedia. I copied the article to my Sandbox to test it out and used the Show Preview option a lot to get it right, then copied the final version into the real article. I’ve included the link in the Website field on this form.
I really appreciate the chance to reflect on this activity. I’ve been a great user of Wikipedia over the years, and over the last couple have started contributing, both to the public Wikipedia, but also to the UBC Wiki instance, and have increasingly started incorporating Wikis into my research and also into my pedagogy. Just like with open access publishing, I think many of us are happy recipients of products and platforms like Wikipedia, but not enough of us contribute to sustaining these kinds of spaces. In addition, as I’ve learned through my colleagues and through some pretty revealing reading, historically marginalized communities, female scholars, and Indigenous communities are highly underrepresented and often misrepresented on platforms like Wikipedia. Together with my students, I’ve taken a stab at improving Wikipedia entries, in both English and in other languages. I’ve also been impressed by how scholars at other institutions have used Wikipedia as a language learning platform, for glossary work and found ways to integrate Wiki into research and teaching modules. I’d like to explore this a lot further.
I enjoy working with Wikipedia in the context of my professional role, where my colleagues and I maintain a Wiki for our Learning Commons student staff team. For the purpose of this activity I added some details to a template our student staff team created for the submission of work and linked this Wiki page to our WordPress site. I’d love to explore more ways to integrate the use of Wikis into my professional role; its collaborative nature is very helpful as well as its structure.
Question to reflect on: Why did all of my teachers growing up frown on Wikipedia as a credible source of information? Now that I’ve worked more with it I understand it to be an empowering source of creating and bolstering sources of information. I’d love to work more with my student staff on this.
For my Major’s seminar in my English BA at UBC, I took on a Wikipedia page generation project to add a suffrage activist who had no entry at the time. It was easily the most engaging and fulfilling projects that I did for my undergraduate degree. Today, I revisited the page and linked it to other pages (the notable people list for her hometown, and an article listing notable suffrage activists), to improve its discover-ability. Like Emma has said above, I think the collaborative nature of Wikipedia is one of its many great strengths, and having conducted extensive research to fact-check and provide proof of my information, I think its reputation as an entirely unreliable source is unwarranted. Perhaps we can promote how to read Wikipedia wisely (i.e. checking for citations/sources in Wikipedia pages) in classroom environments?
For anyone interested, this is my project page – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreola_Williams_Haskell
At the University of Toronto, for the month of February, the academic libraries within its domain collaborated on a month-long edit-a-thon for Black History Month. The purpose of this edit-a-thon was to expand on the coverage and representation of notable Black Canadian figures on Wikipedia so their histories and impact can be better documented. Though it doesn’t relate to my discipline, I did contribute to edits for this project by revising and adding more information for the wikipedia pages of multiple figures such as most recently Thom Allison, a Canadian actor and singer. My edits for this individual incorporated an infobox, new headings, filmography and stage history tables, updated citations, and updated career information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thom_Allison&action=history
This was my first time editing a Wikipedia page and making a contribution. It was easier than I thought and gave me the idea to create informative pages regarding my area of research. I can start my open project related to Wikipedia paes.
For this activity, I added two lines with reference of a journal article. “Energy efficiency for green buildings can be evaluated from either numerical or non-numerical methods. These include use of simulation modelling, analytical or statistical tools.[25]”
The change can be observed on page link below
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_building
This was my second time editing this page and adding new information. I see now that my first edit, over two years ago, was poorly done and user Derek R Bullamore had to go in and add the correct references that I left “bare”. I noticed for the first time that you can send thanks to these editors in the History tab.
I will keep an eye on my newest edit: I learned a few things and think I made a better fist of this one but it will be interesting to see if someone needs to go in and edit/fix what I did. It kind of sucks that I am likely creating more work for these kind strangers but, I really tried to get it right his time.
Add/edit 1: In 2018, the UBC student newspaper detailed the tensions around the piece.[9]
Add/edit 2: In 2019, one of the Grad Class Gifts to the UBC Vancouver campus included “$5,000 to be allocated to the revitalization of the Goddess of Democracy and a Tiananmen Square 30-year recognition ceremony.” [10]
Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_of_Democracy
I chose to edit the UBC wiki about UBC’s Jump Start orientation program. It was much easier to edit than I thought, which was great!
I agree with the comments made by Emma and Minori – I too was always taught that Wikipedia was not a reliable source. However, I believe Wikipedia can be a great source of information if we are checking to ensure those details are accurate, and the many skills that come along with editing Wikipedia would also be very valuable for students to learn.
Jump Start page on the UBC Wiki: https://wiki.ubc.ca/Jump_Start
My first time editing a wiki. I know changes can be reversed, but still was nervous adding and deleting.
I picked a wiki about Ismaili (disambiguation). This is a topic of personal interest for me. I added a name and link that I thought
would be useful on the page. I have to say that I found some very useful information there, but this is a wiki in progress.
No articles just links, like the name suggests, “Disambiguation refers to the removal of ambiguity by making something clear.”
Page: Ismaili (disambiguation): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismaili_(disambiguation)
Since I teach pre-licensing courses for prospective real estate agents in Texas, I spend a lot of time talking about our regulatory agency (the Texas Real Estate Commission). It turns out their Wikipedia article is really bad. At a minimum I decided to update the “contact us” link to the correct page on the agency website, and I also deleted a picture of the agency’s previous office building that was on the page.
Way more needs to be done to make this page acceptable, but deleting the picture made me feel like I’d accomplished something, however small.
I spend a lot of time in class talking about the Texas Real Estate Commission, and it turns out their Wikipedia page is beyond basic. At a minimum I decided to delete the picture on their page of their previous office building and update the link with the agency’s contact info.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Real_Estate_Commission
For a course project, I created multiple Wikidata items related to Asian Canadian theatre in Toronto and decided to continue in that vein for this Wikipedia edit. Although there is a rich community of Asian Canadian theatre-makers in Toronto, few are documented in Wikipedia (or Wikidata). I decided to edit the page of David Yee, an Asian Canadian actor and playwright. I added a couple details and citations about his work with fu-GEn Asian Canadian Theatre Company, a company that he co-founded and now works as the artistic director for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Yee
I was introduced to editing Wikipedia through a course on Knowledge Equity and Justice this month. I worked on the article for Dorothea Palmer, who is a Canadian birth control and women’s right activist by contributing to new content and adding 7 citations.
Here is part of a sentence I revised: .”..a former employee of the Parents’ Information Bureau, was arrested on and charged under section 207(c) of the Criminal Code for advertising information on family planning and birth control by means of a pamphlet.”
These were the two new citations I added for this sentence.
1) “DENY CHARGE OF OBSCENITY: Birth-Control Work of Dorothea Palmer Claimed “Good”, DEFENSE CLOSES CASE, Prejudice Is Admitted by Catholic Doctors, Counsel Says”. The Globe and Mail (1936-2017). Toronto: ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail. 11 February 1937. p. 2.
2) “OTTAWA WOMAN ACCUSED IN BIRTH CONTROL CASE: Social Worker Faces Criminal Code Count Miss Dorothea Palmer Is Alleged to Have Furnished Information to Eastview Woman”. The Globe (1844-1936). ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Globe and Mail. 21 October 1936. p. 11.
Here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothea_Palmer
In anticipation of leading a Wiki-edit session later in the summer, I took a look at the WikiProject Okanagan page. The edit I made to my page was pretty insubstantial (removing a link to a community association that was redirecting to an online gaming site), but even then there was a bit of a sense of anxiety about making changes to a public document. Being an active participant seems a far cry from passive information seeking, which is something to consider for my session.
Using a wikipedia activity in a future class is something I look forward to integrating into my pedagogy.
I made a very small edit to a page, providing an additional external link to an excellent resource for Urdu language materials from an Indian non-profit/literary heritage organisation. This is a page that I’ve considered adding to at greater length since there is a lot of material in Urdu that could be translated and added here. But this is a nice first step. Would be a great exercise for students too, even just adding these kinds of resources to these pages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khwaja_Hasan_Nizami
Many years ago, I created a wikipedia entry for my friend Jim Wong-Chu after his death. Jim was a mentor to many writers, and a community organizer who created a number of legacy projects that have contributed to the arts and cultural history of Canada. I recall that at the time of the entry, my intentions were to acknowledge his legacy and honour his work and life. Amazingly, in the past three years, it’s been wonderful to see the entry continue to grow and evolve. In terms of pedagogy, I’ve learned much more about his life. This crowdsourcing certainly achieved beyond my expectations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Wong-Chu
I recently added some additions to local southern Alberta artists, using exhibition catalogues from our library collection. I love adding to Wikipedia, I wish I had more time to do it. Feels really concrete and useful!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianne_Bos (I’m YYC Librarian).
I added some additions to the Wikipedia page for the film Do the Right Thing directed by Spike Lee. These edits were for a previous university course I took. Here is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_the_Right_Thing