Writing for Wikipedia 101.
My first time writing for wikipedia, without much experience or learning, i had to dive in whole-heartedly. For many first timers to Wikipedia, the whole experience, even the whole journey can seem daunting and frustrating, especially when one is short on time.
It is crucial to give yourself enough time to edit, re-edit and publish your wikipedia article.
As a hobby, I’ve always loved writing; writing poems, writing papers, writing letters, anything i could write. But writing for Wikipedia, was my first venture into writing for the digital world in a formal manner. I've written posts for Facebook and Instagram, but writing for Wikipedia opened a whole new world of writing for me.
My Writing for Digital Media Class not only opened doors for me to improve my skills as a writer, but gave me a new medium for writing.
So i will not only be sharing my experience while writing for Wikipedia, but also my experience writing for digital media in general and in hope that my experience will help other writers in their quest as skilled writers.
So here it goes.
Contributing to Wikipedia.
Whether you’re writing an original article, or editing an already existing article, you will need to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia’s information page, which describes in detail Wikipedia’s editing community and what will be expected of you as an editor in Wikipedia. It is essential to follow the guidelines, as this will help make the whole process less cumbersome.
Plagiarism.
This one is a big deal, especially when it comes to digital writing. I’ve always written for paper, so plagiarism was always an issue we had to learn to avoid. But not many equate plagiarism with writing for Wikipedia. You may think it's easy to plagiarize when writing for a digital medium (after all, its digital right, everything is online these days), but its not. And even if it was, its not acceptable. The rules of plagiarism for Wikipedia may be different from paper, but the rules still apply. Follow the guideline to avoid having your edits or article flagged for removal.
Citation.
This one was actually new for me. Yes, Digital Citation is actually a thing, and until now, I had no clue how to cite when writing for a digital medium. Honestly, this should be one of the first things you learn, before writing for any digital medium.
Luckily, Wikipedia makes inserting in your citations relatively easy, compared to citing an MLA paper document. You will come to find that coupled with the vast amount of information online, and Wikipedia’s citation formats, you can easily cite your sources, without problems.
Choosing an article to edit vs writing an original article
Okay, so this one is personal for me. For a while during the semester, i was stuck between editing an already existing article, versus writing an original one.
I mean who wants to jump in the middle of an article and start making edits when you have no clue, what’s going on in the talk page, or where to even begin.
Your first instinct will probably be to just write your own article. “its original right?, what can go wrong”. That was my first taught.
But the truth is, anything can go wrong. As a beginner, you should settle for making an edit, to a rather smaller article. Nothing too complicated, just an article that isn’t fully developed.
You will find tons of poorly developed articles on wikipedia, and with a little bit research, you will find the information you will need to fill them up. Work your way from there, eventually, you can create your own original article.
Talk Pages
Wiki talk pages can be scary on your first time. So much conversations going on, you don’t even know when or where to jump in, which brings us back to my previous point, poorly developed articles usually have the least conversations in their talk pages, so you can jump in and start a conversation going. Learn how to sign off each conversation on your talk page.
This has been my experience so far writing for Wikipedia, and i can honestly say that I may not have the highest grade in my Writing for Digital Media Class, but my passion and interest for writing has been re awakened, so much that I’m going further into digital writing to take more classes and get a certificate in technical writing and digital communication at the Middle Georgia State University.
