Hey!
This week I have been working on my own wikipedia entry. As part of this ALES 204 assignment we had to find an article stub (an incomplete article) on Wikipedia and add our own information to hopefully make it a "good" article. We also had to choose a stub that had something to do with our field of study. I am doing a major in companion and performance animals so I chose an article on an aspect of equine performance that I am personally familiar with, free jumping. I found it easy to write the actual information as I have done free jumping myself numerous times, however actually getting it on to wikipedia was another matter. I have to say that I struggled with the coding, especially when adding references. It was nice to see that they had some copywriter enforcement for downloading pictures but it also made my life a little harder. Gone are the days when anything on google images seemed to belong to you as well. Other then that things went quite well.
For some reason I can't add my screen shot picture so you will just have to look at the link. This is a picture of a horse I used to own, Duke, free jumping
I really enjoyed this experience, I have looked at Wikipedia articles many times and its nice to think that other people will now be looking at the information that I put up. Even though the information can be edited by anyone, for the most part it seems to be a good, open system that encourages the sharing of information and not the possession of it. I finally got to take a look at how that website works and it felt good to have some input this time. At the same time I also agree with Brianne Cheng's blog post that Wikipedia is not a legitimate source for a paper, however it can be used to look at other references. While it is nice to be able to freely share information, when it comes to a scholarly paper sources, articles that are written by professionals in the field are more appropriate.
Until next time,
Kira Macmillan
