Odalapa

Reflection

Wikipedia is the first what comes in mind when I want to learn about something or someone. I have used it for many years, but never knew exactly how it worked. Although I knew even ordinary people without special education could create and change Wikipedia pages. And still, in my mind Wikipedia was a reliable source of information. I trusted it but did not why. Until we had our first meeting with a Wikipedian last year who explained to us that all the information on the site must be properly referenced.

The task to create a Wikipedia page sounded exciting in a way of gaining practical skill in such popular area. It became better when we were told we can help MoDA and create pages for artists to support the independence of the museum.

I chose to add information to the already existing page about Diana Armfield. Searching information about her for the first time I truly enjoyed looking at her artworks.

As an ordinary student, I left the task to the almost very last moment. Nevertheless, I did research for our edit-a-thon with a senior Wikipedian and found quite a few reliable sources for the chosen page. I was mistaken with a thought that it would be easy to paraphrase the information from the sources. During edit-a-thon I did not change my page, but I practised editing and adding sources which helped me very much after.

When I started editing Diana Armfield's page I discovered that almost all my sources were already used and after adding two hundred words I felt I had to start working on another page.

Thus, I created a page for an Instagram person whom I follow and who has two million followers. I thought his popularity is enough for his page to be created. The page was checked approximately in twenty minutes and was declined with the reason of poor coverage in secondary reliable sources. In this way, Wikipedia proved its encyclopedia status.

Thereafter I faced a question of adding other three hundred words and I did not know how I could do it. I tried to research other people from the list except for Diana Armfield, but either a page was already created and properly filled with information or there was literally no information about an artist (Arthur Gwatkin).

All I could do - keep searching and extracting information from sources I already found. That is what I did. I changed the order of information as well to a more logical way in my opinion.

I feel if I gave myself more time I could reorganize the page better than I did. And still I am satisfied with my work and with the experience I gained during the assignment.