Diving into Wikipedia

     As a longtime fan and avid user of Wikipedia, I have known for years what Carra Leah Hood discovered in her text Editing Out Obscenity: Wikipedia and Writing Pedagogy; Wikipedia is to be used as a diving board into a pool of resources. Regrettably however, the website is often misused--most notably by students--as if each individual page is an instantly reputable source. This of course is not the case. The number of articles listed in need of editing is astronomical, exemplifying its inadequacy as a source itself.

     I was tasked with editing a pair of articles, the first chosen from a short list, and the second chosen from said astronomical options.

     I am passionate about education and generally enjoy learning about various systems for improvement of the typical model. For this reason, I chose Alternative Education as my "short list" Wikipedia entry to edit. Immediately upon visiting the page, I noticed quotation mark continuity issues in the "Terminology" section. After a few edits, I moved on to "The Career Academies Initiative" portion where an accidental space led to a lengthy block quote that, in turn, created a box that stretched without returning to the next line. This resulted in an unnecessary horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page that was then eliminated upon my removal of said unintentional space.

     My other article was chosen after reading through extensive lists of uninteresting or unfamiliar topics.

     Most recently cast into the spotlight during the 2012 presidential election cycle, public broadcasting has been an American staple since Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency. On November 7, 1967, Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act into law, thus establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). As a result, the United States now airs television and radio stations Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR), funded primarily by the CPB and by donations from viewers and listeners of the channels.

     Choosing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 page for my larger edit revealed surprising requirements. Initially pegged as an entry in need of "copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling," I found myself spending a significant amount of my time also checking the source material in order to check the information's legitimacy and keep it relevant. The overall meaning of the article was never seriously hindered by the errors; the page simply needed some cosmetic work and a little citation investigation.

     Originally, I assumed nearly all of my edits would be grammar and spelling marks. For the few basic line edits I did, When Words Collide--a primary textbook for our Advanced Writing and Editing course--helped guide me through the changes. Specifically beneficial was the chapter entitled, "Punctuation: Graceful Movements, Confident Stops." What I wound up with after those simpler edits however, was about a third of my corrections being on the topic of linkage. Unnecessary descriptions of terms that have their own pages; source material that is out of date, irrelevant, or has no useable content; blatant plagiarism--all found within this hardly-more-than-a-stub of an article.

      It couldn't be much more clear that the way Hood and I see Wikipedia is the only possible way for it to be academically viable. Source material within each page can be relied upon in scholastic settings--providing the link is still working and the content therein is useful. Sometimes it may require a few attempts at diving in before the big splash happens.