Starting this assignment was incredibly daunting, because it sounded like so much work, time, and effort. I really had no idea how to go about choosing a stub to edit, a problem common among my peers (Shelley), but I decided to dive in. I started by searching through biology stubs that relate to my field of study. I finally found a stub about animal spines, the external modified hair type, not the bones in our backs. Studying animal biology, I felt my knowledge was extensive enough to complete this stub.
I found this stub interesting, because evolutionary studies are a major focus in the scientific community. Spines are an excellent example of how animals change and adapt their bodies for protection. Wikipedia is an incredible source of information, and I use it all the time. Every time I'm curious about something and Google it, I always look at the Wikipedia entry first. I'm not saying that everything on a Wiki is going to be accurate, and its certainly not suitable for academia, but it's an amazing place to start.
The format for editing Wikipedia articles was completely foreign to me, and it took some time to become comfortable with it. Once I got started it went pretty smoothly, though I did have some difficulty deciding when it was appropriate to add references and citations. Another issue I found was that many other articles contained similar information. For example, much of the information under the spine stub, could be found under the article for porcupines. This made me realize how much information on Wikipedia is repetitive. How many pieces of information can be found in numerous other articles?
I have to admit that I was unenthusiastic about this assignment, though now that it is complete, I feel good knowing I contributed to something like Wikipedia that thousands of people use every single day.
-Hannah
Image citation:
Wikimedia commons. from: http://www.wikipedia.org/. retrieved 3/28/2012
