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.

I already wrote a blog about Wikipedia editing so to complete this part of my exam, I am writing an ‘update’ to that blog post. Part A was the most infuriating for one reason: I forgot my Wikipedia password and Wikipedia wasn’t sending and emails to me even though I requested it to do just that in order to get my password back. So, that was frustrating. I ended up making another Wikipedia account to do the training module (Kat53715) and that would be the account I make the edits for the exam with.

Other than that major hiccup, the Wikipedia training modules were fine. Not good, not bad, just average. Since I had already done Wikipedia editing, a lot of the stuff in the modules seemed a bit repetitive which was not mentally engaging. It felt very repetitive and doing the same tasks over and over again which isn’t very fun. However, if I were someone who didn’t figure out how to use Wikipedia or if it were my first time attempting to edit a page, the training modules would have been very helpful then.

The modules seem to be geared towards basic Wikipedia editing and to people without much experience in terms of reliable sources/scientific sources. Most of the stuff on the modules can be found through a quick google search. Personally, I didn’t find it helpful at all; being incredibly tedious to read over all the information I already know/could figure out relatively easily.

Over the course of this semester in Applied Plant Ecology I’ve acquired numerous new skills- one of them being Wikipedia editing. Prior to this class I had never edited a Wikipedia page and the task seemed quite daunting. I was hesitant at first because I thought it would be difficult to navigate, but after some experimentation I was genuinely surprised by how easy and satisfying it is to edit a page! I chose to continue editing the Wikipedia page on the candelabra tree (Euphorbia candelabrum)

All throughout high school and university we’re told this preconceived notion that Wikipedia is an unreliable source and should not be cited in any projects or academic reports. After completing my Wikipedia edits, I’ve come to realize that although we shouldn’t cite Wikipedia as a primary or secondary source in a lab report, it certainly isn’t a bad place to start. Wikipedia is a free, open access data source, meaning that anyone is able to read and edit it without restrictions. Open access is particularly useful in science communication as it provides an equal playing field and allows for current ideas to be reinvented and built upon. Restricting access to information that should be publicly available puts limits on discovery and innovation. However, this also creates doubts in regards to its credibility.

The training modules on Wikipedia Edu were straightforward and going through the dashboard was incredibly useful in the editing process. I managed to edit without them for our first 5% Wikipedia assignment but I found that the modules made it much easier and also gave me lots of additional information on Wikipedia policies, evaluating articles and sources, plagiarism and copyright violations and the overall editing process. Both of our Wikipedia assignments have given me a deeper appreciation for open access sites and made me realize how much hard work people put into contributing to pages. Editing on Wikipedia has been a valuable experience for me and has proven that the site has a lot to offer if you learn how to navigate it properly and make use of all the resources it provides. Can’t wait to edit some more pages in the future!

Wikipedia has been my savior for years. From research projects to lab reports to entertainment, this site is one of my favourites to use for its versatility. You can use it to look up the list of episodes for a show you’re watching, to read up on a biography of a celebrity or to learn about plant history. I have used Wikipedia for ages, but have never had the opportunity to edit or contribute to a page. Luckily, in Applied Plant Ecology, I was given this chance, and it was a great experience overall! I felt a bit nervous at first, because millions of people use this site to gain knowledge. I did not want to mess up and accidentally give incorrect information, so I was very cautious in the beginning.

However, I quickly relaxed upon learning that there was a Wikipedia community that monitored edits just in case a mistake did arise. When I was younger, people at my school would edit random Wikipedia pages for fun just to see how long it would take for a moderator to fix it. They were later shocked to find themselves IP banned from editing on the site again, since what they did was considered vandalism. It made me feel more confident in the system knowing that Wikipedia was secure and monitored. I liked that the information I provided to the pages I edited might help somebody one day. It might not seem like much, but a little goes a long way when it comes to science communication!

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!

This past semester in the Applied Plant Ecology course, I learnt a lot of about Wikipedia I did not know. The thought process I had coming into this course was that Wikipedia isn’t a website that you should use and all the information on that website is incorrect. Learning about how Wikipedia works and how it allows you to edit articles in different ways allowed me to understand that Wikipedia helps provide structure and resources to help edit and publish new findings. This also changed my views on this website and I know am a firm believer this website has a lot more to offer!

Dr. Dawn Bazely gave all her students an opportunity to use online resources to complete training modules to better understand the functions of Wikipedia. Throughout this training I learned 5 things that I will forever remember when I am using Wikipedia:

• learning plagiarism isn’t just the normal plagiarizing (3 different ways)
• understanding sandbox is a place to discuss and work with citations and literature
• Wikipedia is a place to grow and learn and understand editing is more than just rephrasing literature
• having a strong reliable source through analyzing articles is important
• citing references are very important and they are needed on Wikipedia or you could get copyrighted

My experience was different than I thought it would be, my first-time editing a Wikipedia page, I was super flustered with the talks, sandbox, with how to add citations. After training, it helped me when I was re-editing the Wikipedia page on Environmental Effects of Mining! I was able to better understand how to insert citations within a section without getting confused. When I re-edited using the dashboard, I was able to add more references without getting confused. I learned that there were multiple ways of plagiarism and it was needed to be understood to avoid acts and copyright issues. I did not know that close paraphrasing was even a real thing that could be done!!

With all the training that was done, the contributions I added to Environmental Effects of Mining really showcase all the skills I learnt. I was able to add strong reliable sources from journal articles and review papers, I learned how to cite properly, and I was able to see how sandbox drafts worked. Contributions to Wikipedia taught me that Wikipedia is not only a site that someone gets information from but it’s a site that is like a big blog where a  bunch of sources are coming together and expressing what they know about that one topic.

For the final exam, we were asked to blog the process of how to become a Wikipedian. And here it is!

I frequently use Wikipedia as a secondary source. Its super clear and easy to read. But on other hand when you try to edit or create a Wikipedia page, that’s a nightmare. See the reference part where no one bother to read whenever they view a page. That what a wikipedian has to struggling to deal with everytime they do the job. My work is about Henry Chandler – a ecologist. Luckily this guy is easy to “stalk” so I don’t have to include a lot of reference except from the school pages of where he taught.

The hardest part is how to cite the reference carefully and insert blue links in text. The format for reader is easy to read but for wikipedian, it look like a matrix that you have to be a IT student to able to understand.

Overall, this exercise is different than most of what I did before. But leaning how to make a Wikipedia page is definitely rewarding. Knowing how to do it helps us a lot of how we use it later. After this assignment, I have a different opinion about all the people behind the scene of billions of amazing works that appear in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is normally seen as an unreliable source of citation in reference to gaining knowledge due it being a tertiary form of literature. However, professor Bazely introduced an opportunity in which the ecology class was able to gain knowledge through creating and editing Wikipedia pages.

Professor Bazely’s “Wikipedia Editathon Chronicles Part 1” further explained how “wikipedia editathons” can help us gain an in-depth understanding of why Wikipedia should not be used as a source in academic writing.  

I truly noticed this as I completed my Wikipedia editing since some information was not cited and several pages had tertiary sources as citations.

Additionally, the modules allowed me to understand proper academic writing and citations which would be beneficial even beyond Wikipedia. For instance, I learned to avoid controversial topics in writing and always maintain an un-biased/neutral writing tone. Additionally, notability is particularly important when writing about any topic or finding articles as it would consist of at least 3-5 reliable sources. Additionally, it was important to note that the Wikipedia’s training modules indicate that Wikipedia itself and blog posts are not reliable sources. Reliable sources include: textbooks, literature reviews, peer-reviewed academic articles and books by reliable publishers.

Using all the training modules, the techniques from professor Bazely and research methods from the librarian, I was better able to contribute reliable information to Wikipedia. I was more excited and better able to contribute to the Wikipedia page after learning to cite and compile sources from my final essay and the Wikipedia workshops. For instance, I contributed to the “deforestation and climate change” page by adding several peer reviewed sources on “notable” information which was missing from the article. For instance, I added a heading for “palm oil production” as it is one of the four major contributors to deforestation in the world. This was a source which was highly notable and included several peer reviewed articles with a non-biased tone.

I guess I am proud to say that:

using RELIABLE sources…

Prior to taking Applied Plant Ecology with Dr. Bazely, I didn’t know that “Wikipedia Editing” was something that the globe was raising awareness about. However, by completing my training modules on Wiki Education Dashboard, I have gained a lot of new knowledge about what goes into developing Wikipedia pages and editing them as well. I have come to learn that they aren’t as unreliable as many people think they are…in fact there are a lot of policies made by Wikipedia which requires edits to be verifiable and notable.

In 2014, Dr. Bazely launched the Wikipedia assignment for her students as a way for them to learn about Web-based Wikipedia content, Open Access, and Metadata. From reading her three-part blog posts on Wikipedia editing titled “Wikipedia Editathon Chronicles” as well as an article written by, Farah Qaiser, on a guide to Wikipedia Editing and Edit-A-Thons, I began to realize that it is important to raise awareness for the Wikipedia Editing especially for increasing the coverage of #WomeninSTEM and to get rid of the gender and racial biases. I advise all of you to check out account called @WikiWomeninRed who are aiming to help fix the gender gap and turn the red links to blue!

By completing my training modules, I learned a lot about the policies behind Wikipedia and simply how to edit the right way! I used these new techniques and skills from the training modules to edit and add references to the Wikipedia page: Pueraria montana, also known as Kudzu! Throughout my experience editing on Wikipedia a few of the many new things that I learned and kept in mind while editing are:

• Wikipedia’s 5 pillars:
  • It is an online encyclopedia
  • It has a neutral point of view
  • It is a free content
  • Wikipedians should interact in a respectful manner
  • Wikipedia does not have any firm rules

• Content on Wikipedia is verified with up-to-date and reliable sources that include textbooks and literature reviews….just check out the end of every Wikipedia page! There should also be a good amount of sources and citations, relative to the amount of information that is added. This allows for the information to be fact-checked!

• Images used on Wikipedia should have a “Free license” – the creator of the image allows anyone the use the image without permission.

Just remember, although Wikipedia is a tertiary source of information don’t let that stop you from using it to give you an overview of a topic to start your research!