Writing for Wikipedia or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Coding

If you wrote it on Wikipedia though…

I have a new found respect for Wikipedia contributors. For our Wikipedia Creation, I decided to fill a void in the Wiki-verse. I am an intern with the David Mathews Center for Civic Life (not that Dave Matthews), and the 501(c)(3) organization is nowhere to be found on Wikipedia. I reviewed the DMC website and publications and honestly thought that I could just copy, paste, and cite right onto Wikipedia, and immediately see my polished new article. Wrong. Let me take you on a wildcard blog post journey through the steps of writing for Wikipedia.

1. Create an account. Easy enough.

2. Find where to create an article. Naturally, I googled how to do it and found the Wikipedia page (duh). This led me to Article Wizard, which (I know you’re shocked) is not all that magical. Article Wizard takes you through lots of questions to help you decide whether or not you should write a Wikipedia article. These questions address subject, notability, sources, and content of the proposed article.

*The actual Article Wizard has never been seen, but I assume he looks like this*

3. After choosing the correct answers to all of the Wizard’s questions, I got to this:

Is this where I change my MySpace wallpaper?

4. A) What the heck is that? And B) Why does it look like editing my old MySpace profile? Luckily, for those not-so-savvy at coding, Wikipedia provides a Cheat Sheet to help.

5. After a lot of paraphrasing (since Wikipedia is super concerned with Copyright Law), a lot of “viewing previews” (since I just learned how to fake code in 20 minutes), and a lot of hoping for the best, I finished my Wikipedia article and got to submit it for review!

6. The last step is waiting. Lots of waiting. Wikipedia can take more than 3 weeks to review articles before they’re posted. So much for instant gratification.

Buzz kill.

This looks pretty serious to me

This whole experience has made me respect Wikipedia a lot more. Yes, “anyone” can go in and edit or write articles, but that “anyone” is pretty limited. I was also really surprised at Wikipedia’s take on copyright, especially since Wikipedia itself is often considered the most plagiarized website on the internet. It brings me back to the issue of who owns information. Why shouldn’t I be able copy and paste chunks of an organization’s website to Wikipedia? Wouldn’t that make the Wikipedia article that much more reliable?

Although my finished article might never make it out of Wikipedia’s purgatory, the in-progress version should be available.