The Simplicity and Power of Wikipedia
The assignment this week in class was to explore Wikipedia, and if inclined, to improve it some way. I have used Wikipedia a lot as a quick reference, but I have never edited it. I actually jumped right on and started making edits (I saw a few lines that said You are Logged In), however, I realized afterward that the changes I made were recorded, but only the IP address on my computer was shown. So, I set up an account, which was very easy, and started reading. The assignment was to read about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That which I read was quite accurate. I did make some changes, but all of them were grammatical changes. For example, I italicized the Nauvoo Expositor, since it was the name of a newspaper. The sentence was: On June 7, 1844 an anti-Mormon newspaper called the ‘’Nauvoo Expositor'’ was published in the city. I also added a comma in between the words, shoot and killing in the following sentence: In June 27, 1844 at 5:00 pm in spite of the promised protection by Governor Ford, an armed mob was allowed to enter the jail and shoot, killing both Joseph and Hyrum, while wounding Dr. Willard Richards and John Taylor who were there visiting them. I also added a hyphen in another sentence.
I was happy by how easy the whole process was. I think this is a reason why so many thousands or people are adding or editing articles on Wikipedia. It’s simple and doesn’t take a lot of time! I love that so many people are involved in this work. The old adage, “Many hands make light work,” is true.
Editing this page on Wikipedia also reminded me that the LDS Church is making a similar effort in the Family History area with their indexing project. In essence, any individual can register with the LDS church and then become part of a worldwide effort to index the names found on 2.4 million rolls of microfilm and make accessible to everyone on the Internet.
“Of course I recognize that some people will add information who may not be completely knowledgeable about the subject matter, or may not have a degree to show their specific expertise in an area. To me that really doesn’t matter. If there are errors, they will be correctly quickly by others. In class, someone gave an example of how they changed the birthday of Joseph Smith to a date that was incorrect. They posted it, and within less than ten minutes, someone had edited that change and put the correct date. It’s amazing. It’s peer review to the 150th power!