Wikipedia is a knowledge basic website on which users collaboratively modify and structure contents. Editing Wikipedia article was unique experience for me since I was advised in high school and university not to site Wikipedia. Even though, the online encyclopedia is the most popular and widely used websites in the world. This is due to that fact that Wikipedia have open access and it can edit by anyone with a Wikipedia account but there are many researchers working around the globe to ensure that information on Wikipedia is accurate and follows rules and regulations.
Upon the competition of training and learning extensively on the editing and Wikipedia’s core principles, I gained little more knowledge. This is because I already edited a Wikipedia page and most training modules were based on the information I already acquired. However, new things were leaned such as adding an image, guide for writing articles in different topic areas and expanding the draft. Adding five new references to the page I edited and adding it through the dashboard on Wikipedia was bit of a challenge, but it all worked out to be fine.
I would recommend to students to use Wikipedia to get general overview on the research topic but not to site it because tertiary/grey literature is not considered academic source of information. If we find incorrect or misleading information, we can report that with adequate evidence, and it will be taken down. There are some topics which contain little to no information, you can edit the page and add relevant information and I think this a good part. Overall, I never thought editing Wikipedia and after taking this course I learned the importance of Wikipedia and many other platforms such as WordPress and twitter.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 