Wikipedia: My reaction to the action.

Needless to say, Wikipedia is an adventure in and of itself. Despite what my freshman English professor thought, Wikipedia is great! While some may not consider it scholarly thereby discrediting its sources, Wikipedia can actually be considered so because it is peer reviewed. While it is not reviewed in the same manner as scientific journal, the author of an article may never really know who will read his or her article, therefore motivating him or her to create the best article possible. As a folksonomy, Wikipedia is a means by which to classify ideas and symbols. All articles are subject to community standards and guidelines; however some poor articles do slip through the cracks. But what it so great about Wikipedia is that it fosters critical thinking; that anyone who may be reading a given article can question the truth behind it and make adjustments accordingly.

To be honest, it was hard to find something that was not already contained in Wikipedia's archives. Instead of writing a new article I decided then to add to a previously existing article. But before I did so, I conducted an experiment or what I like to call a wiki-periment. I found an article about Long-Term Potentiation, which in biological psychology terms refers to a learning process and/ or a reinforcing effect that is aided by the synaptic plasticity of a neuron after simultaneous firings of that neuron take place. I wrote about 100 words of meaningful well thought out text that was not in the original article which I thought was very relevant to the topic. Obviously I was wrong seeing that it was only two hours after I posted my "revision" that someone deleted it. I was frustrated and a bit disappointed and I could think of no reason why someone would delete a perfectly pertinent and verifiable addition to an article. Perhaps it was the person who wrote the initial article, I do not know. All I do know is that someone thought I was wrong, while I was not! I do not think that complete text and paragraphs should be able to be deleted from articles. Rather, if a person feels the need to revise and article they must keep the same sense of material and stay true to the intent of the article. I also feel that there should be a higher power that governs whether or not a piece of information should be kept or discarded. In the current manner, any person can go around deleting facts and details simply because they are too stupid to initially grasp the concept.

On a lighter note, my recent Wikipedia contribution in regards to behavioral and neurological control of thirst is still alive and well. In fact, this past week, I checked to see if anyone had modified or deleted it several times a day. In my case, neither of the aforementioned occurred. I was surprised that no one had at leas edited my submission, but perhaps it was just that good? Please excuse my arrogance.

I felt that this project was very useful for it helped me to understand even more the concepts and ideas that we have learned in class. For me, there is no greater way to learn about something than to take part in it, and I came away with a new understanding of both folksonomies and online communities. While this was an extra-credit project, it may even be beneficial to a future class that this be a mandatory project. It was not strenuous, yet it cannot be described as easy. It required research and careful attention to articulation and planning. If I were to rate this project in terms of its ability to teach and reinforce, I would give it a ten out of ten. It made me relate preexisting knowledge to new models of classification and brought about unplanned situations where the only constant variable was the outcome; sharing knowledge.