Wikipedia is widely shunned open-access online encyclopedia. Throughout school it is constantly being said to be a bad citation given its tertiary literature form. Consequently, it is seldomly used or even looked at when students work on assignments and projects. Although, it is a great source of information, the real gold is in the resources, many primary and secondary articles can be found as a references to one or many statements on a Wikipedia page. Professor Bazely for years has integrated students into Wikipedia, teaching them how the backbone of the open access database works, given them the tools to professionally edit and understand what it means to be a Wikipedian.
Using the several training modules on the Wiki Education Dashboard, I learned to efficiently maneuver through Wikipedia. I edited and added references to Cirsium arvense, elaborating on the importance of the flower head fragrance, editing the introduction and adding a section defining the plant’s taxonomy. The Wikipedia modules stresses several factors such as their policies and the actions that the teams take for plagiarism and edits, as such, it was imperative to learn how to go about editing pages properly.
Wikipedia has five main pillars that they preach: Wikipedia is an online cyclopedia, it has a neutral point of view, provides free content, Wikipedians would interact in a respectful manner and Wikipedia does not have any firm rules. As simple as these pillars may be, they have a lot of depth to them. Wikipedians are constantly interacting helping each other see the mistakes we’ve made in our edits, voicing our opinions freely. This means that at all times there will be ateam supporting you on your journey as a Wikipedian.
If you have not yet, give it a try!
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 