In my last practicum, I decided to edit two large Wikipedia pages that contained vast amounts of information. I edited the pages "HIV" and "Obesity". In finding material for these pages, I had to read through recent articles so that the material I added would be relevant and not currently covered by other editors. After searching through Google News, I decided on a new study about obesity and a new release of findings on HIV. Finding and skimming through articles was surprisingly easier than I expected but it was more work than I would normally put into editing a Wikipedia article. After finding the information that I thought was relevant, I had to read through the Wikipedia article in order to decide where the information would fit. Editing itself was easy, since they input the new toolbar and since I had already edited other pages. Editing a semi-protected page was a lot more interesting and fun that simply editing a small page because the potential for viewing is much higher and I felt like I was participating more with Wikipedia because there were so many other editors on the same page.
In a continuation of the last practicum, all three articles that had not been detected still did not post any warnings about potential fraudulent. I decided to remove the falsified material because I doubt the material would have gone detected for a significant length of time since the pages were probably not viewed often if at all.
Overall, I learned a lot about Wikipedia and editing pages. I was somewhat surprised at the amount of work that one has to put in to edit simply one Wikipedia page. I do not know if Wikipedia could continue on it's current format simply because editors have to continually have the motivation to edit pages. It will be interesting to see how the politics of Wikipedia will change as users lose the initial "wow" of editing the site.
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