I think that the Wikipedia exercise was a good look at what can happen with an information source that can be added to and edited by anyone. This was my first experience with Wikipedia, and I am pleased to say that my article was taken down relatively quickly.
My article was on the Romanian Army’s involvement in the revolution of 1989. I chose this topic because it was the most change in such a small amount of time: the government was the most oppressive there and the people were the most broken. It might be a bit romantic, but I liked the idea of the people smashing their government and executing their leaders. Romania was the only country in which there was no political action taken before the revolution. Everything else I had read in Stokes’ book indicated that other countries had liberalization, internal, or external; Romania did not, and that was more interesting.
In my Wikipedia article, I wrote all the information I had, which was just a few paragraphs. All of the information was corroborated, but there was not much in the way of detail. When I did my research for the paper, I was able to find actual reasons for the rebellion of the soldiers: short conscription periods, de-professionalization, executions, purges, etc. Though I had included some of this information in the initial article, I didn’t have everything in the article.
A problem with my article is that there was a lot of information in the parent article; there was a lot of information about the revolution scattered about, but there was not much information about the army. I had the choice of either futilely changing the article many times to add minimal information, or making my own page with minimal information. I decided to make my own page and link it to the main page. My page was left alone for awhile until it was auto edited for tags, and my own few edits. Eventually, it was just deleted by an editor, with a comment on how it was *a mess*. I have to say that the concept of tagging and linking was confusing to me, I really detest coding, even as simple as the Wikipedia coding for linking; I know the concepts, but I’m not that good with the implementation.
My article was made with very little knowledge, other than the information that I got from Stokes, and by the time I had done more research, my article had been deleted. The peer reviewing system works just as well in Wikipedia as it does in the classroom, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is thought of as a more credible source given a bit more time. I think that in time, I might make another article on Wikipedia, but next time, I’ll start with more information, and attempt to be a bit more steadfast in my interest with my article. It might be interesting to write another article next semester, with my research done, and more valid assertions formed with support.