Wiki Article: Updating a Stub

This is a screen shot of the WikiPost I made in Lab and pasted into my paint program

In this weeks ALES class, we were assigned to find a Wikipedia article that needed some work and additional research. Choosing a stub that was both interesting and appropriate for this class proved to be slightly difficult. A stub is a Wikipedia article that has been posted but that either does not have academic references or it is not written very well, or both. The wiki stub I chose to do was called Pregnant Patients' Rights.

This assignment was set up to not only show us how to work on some academic research but to learn how unreliable certain Wikipedia articles are. The presentation that was given in class today was helpful in a sense that it showed us that with some time and effort, Wikipedia posts CAN be reliable and useful but it is your responsibility to look in depth about the references they have used. Wikipedia can be a good starting point if the topic you are looking into is a foreign topic, and it can lead to good articles. Erin, TA, stated in class today that "using only Wikipedia is like eating only a diet of Big Macs".

Sydney and I have spent our past labs working together and getting to know each other. She has decided to do her Wikipedia stub post on The Royal Alberta Museum, you can view her post here. Her and I both found it difficult to find a stub that had enough information to run with, but not enough information that it was a "good article". "Good Article Criteria" is a Wikipedia article that has been posted that is well written, has verifiable facts and covers multiple points surrounding the topic.

Though this assignment was tedious and a bit time consuming for the final product that came out of it, I did learn how to edit a Wikipedia stub. There are different kinds of updates, the main one that you want to avoid is vandalism, like you want to avoid with everything in life. Vandalism of a Wikipedia page will result in not only the post being deleted but your account being disabled as well. Once I read through the wiki: how to, page Wikipedia became fairly easy to navigate my way through and get my stub updated and well referenced.

I hope you enjoy my post, and take a peak at Sydneys blog as well!

Until next time, cheers!

Kelsie