Using and Editing Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a huge source of information currently used by internet dwellers. By learning how to edit a Wikipedia page, I have gained knowledge on how unreliable the free online encyclopedia is. Although our assignment was based on sharing reliable, academic information, it is clear that anyone can add anything to a Wikipedia article, and it should not be used as an in-depth source of information for school work, academia, or other professional situations. However, I will likely still find myself using it for a quick reference for superficial topics not relating to school work.

The process of editing a Wikipedia stub was relatively simple once I had found a stub to add to. Since I am a textiles and clothing/interiors student, it was difficult to find stubs that could have a decent amount written about like science topics do. I ended up choosing to edit the stub for recycling cotton. Sustainable fashion has become a bigger trend and it is an interesting topic, so I felt that adding more information to the recycling cotton article could be beneficial to many people as they explore sustainability. 

Reference: A screen capture of the Wikipedia article I edited. Retrieved on 23-3-2012.

Getting into the nitty gritty of editing the article was actually quite straight-forward. When I was younger I played with html coding a lot, so it came back to me quickly. The only issue I had was with one of my references. The website was blocked/protected from Wikipedia, so I had to remove the url, leaving the reference without a link (the title can easily be searched through a search engine, though). Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed searching and learning more about recycling cotton, and then sharing it with the internet. I hope people find my addition to the article interesting and helpful, but I sure hope people know that Wikipedia is not always reliable!

Here is the link to the recycling cotton article that I edited: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_Cotton

Here is a link to my friend Angela's blog post about her experience editing a Wikipedia stub: http://ales204humanecologystudent.blogspot.ca/

-Samantha