Wikipedia is the encyclopedia of information that you can edit and add to. Today, our job is to contribute to that information by adding and editing information on Wikipedia. The main phrase here is “Be bold!”, and for most of us that were not wikipedia contributors, it was a new experience.
We had a little bit of trouble with the internet but we still pervaded in editing. The guide we used was http://goo.gl/Zz8P3
This is an interactive session where we all add and edit information for some of the founding Systers of the organization. It is quite surprising how little information is provided for some of these prominent women! It’s an eye opening experience, and shows that anyone can add to wikipedia.
Ours was Jeanne Ferrante, who did significant contributions in compiliers at UCSD. We first got an introduction to wikipedia, and a later introduction on how to upload images. (An introduction was needed since we needed to upload pictures with a kind of creative commons licensing) We first tried editing the page, and later divided up the tasks.We first started writing on a notepad, since we all feared overwriting changes and making sure we all had the same version. After we all had our sections written, one by one, we went to the page and added our section.
We added the information but there’s so much more information that we did not get a chance to add in. In our group, we also discussed a bit on how anyone can add information and how that has been a good or bad thing, especially if you do not have an account address.
It was a really good experience to contribute to wikipedia, and be contributors to it. We learned how wikipedia works, the kind of work that people do as contributors, and how much information is left to be put on wikipedia.