Summary of Wiki Edits

As this semester comes to an end and I look back on the work I did to the Wikipedia articles that I chose, I see the value that Wikipedia offers. Because it is constantly changing, it is always up to date and has input from so many users so it is usually more extensive than any other encyclopedia or site on the internet. If at any time a user adds information that is wrong, it is spotted right away and deleted, so it does have some sense of validity. These are the articles that I edited:

• Drew Lachey: All of the edits that I made on this article are still there now, although other people have added to the page since then. The article changed a lot recently as Drew got further and further in the competition Dancing With the Stars.
• Hollywood Video: The first edit that I made on this article was deleted shortly after I wrote it when someone else completely changed the whole page. Apparently the mission statement wasn't important to that guy. After that person made such a big edit, more people began adding things that he left out. My last 2 edits are still there.
• Wantagh: This article was not as busy as the others I edited, all of my edits stayed the way I wrote them and the article changed only a few times since I started editing it. I guess maybe Wantagh isn't really a hot topic to search in an encyclopedia.
• Rent: I was so mad about the first edit that I made to this article because I completely rewrote all of Act I, and the edit never showed up under my name. I don't know if it was because I wasn't logged in or maybe I am just a tool and didn't save it right, I don't know. But this was a really interesting artice to watch change. Since the movie came out this summer and was released on DVD in February, the number of Rent fans keeps rising. One of the most interesting things about this article was the fact that a lot of people kept writing about things that happened in the movie but weren't part of the play, but there are always people watching on Wikipedia to correct those mistakes. The edits that I made have all stayed, thats quality right there.

The articles that I picked were pretty well developed already when I picked them so most of my edits were just small pieces of information added in. It was really cool to see how the articles changed and developed in just a few months. It was also really interesting to get to see how Wikipedia works, and even though I had never heard of Wikipedia before this class, I know I will definitely use it for research in the future.