I love Wikipedia. I know, I know… it’s not a “reliable” source, right? Are you sure about that? While it is subject to people with specific agendas editing pages, other people with the goal of keeping Wikipedia useful are constantly monitoring pages for changes. For example, every time I edit a page on Wikipedia, I always click the little checkbox that says “Watch this page for changes,” so it will e-mail me any time anyone else edits the page. That way, I can watch to make sure the information that goes in there is reliable. There are so many pages being edited and created on Wikipedia every day, that you have to think that for every person with malicious intent, there’s at least one other like me who guards the content they create/contribute.

Today’s 23 Things activity first asked us to edit an established wiki. Since I have edited Wikipedia several times in the past, I decided to go ahead and just do another one for the fun of it. You can see from my editing history that I have edited about 5 pages on Wikipedia in total (including the page I edited for this activity–the “World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade” page). Some have been very minor edits (spelling/grammar, etc.), while others have added entire subsections to the article.

The second part of the activity asked participants to contribute to an already existing “23 Things Kansas” wiki set up at wetpaint.com. Since that project is technically over, I didn’t want to resurrect the wiki unnecessarily, so I created a wiki for my MS degree at Pittsburg State University. The idea behind the wiki is that current and past students could contribute to the wiki to help current and future students navigate their way through the program. The site allows sharing of files and adding of comments, so it could potentially be a very useful tool to students of the program. If you would like to edit the wiki, please just e-mail me or comment on this post with your e-mail address and I can add you as an editor.