Week15.2（6.14Fri）Reflexive report （YANGPEIFU）

 1. What did I learn while editing Wikipedia?

By looking it up, I learned that Professor Piot had been giving students Wikipedia editing assignments since 2006, long before the idea of ​​using Wikipedia as a teaching tool became as popular as it is today. Regular Wikipedia courses began in the United States in 2010 as part of the Wikimedia Foundation's public policy initiative. The initiative quickly developed into the Wikipedia Education Program, which is now recognized in more than 60 countries around the world. Thousands of students participate in it, adding millions of bytes to Wikipedia every year. However, the idea of ​​teaching with Wikipedia has some older roots. Why should I learn Wikipedia editing? First of all, editing Wikipedia has changed my impatient personality. Editing Wikipedia was a very difficult task for me at the beginning. It required enough patience and perseverance. I had to constantly improve and listen to the opinions of other excellent Wikipedia editors to have a good quality article. At first, I didn't understand why I should learn Wikipedia editing and what benefits it would bring to me. Secondly, editing Wikipedia taught me how to find reliable sources and collect accurate information. Wikipedia is a document-based encyclopedia, so I cannot use my own subjective opinions to edit it. Therefore, I learned the ability to critically, identify biases, and verify facts before incorporating them into articles. English is not my native language. I studied Korean, so editing English Wikipedia is also a difficult thing for me. I need to repeatedly check whether the articles are clear and concise. I will use a lot of grammar correction software and learn a lot to help me write and edit. There are also many technical skills in Wikipedia. I learned to be familiar with the technical aspects of editing, including using Wiki tags, navigating the Wikipedia interface, and using various editing tools. Finally, I think that there are many benefits to learning Wikipedia editing. It is worth learning. While mastering editing, there is also the sublimation of technology and thinking.

2. How is this assignment different from more traditional student assignments? 

I was taking traditional classes while I was editing Wikipedia, but the assignments were different. Wikipedia is publicly visible to the whole world, and anyone who knows Wikipedia can access and modify it, but traditional assignments are only visible to professors or teachers. There are thousands of students, but there may be fewer assignments that impress teachers, and they will not pay too much attention to the average students, so the students' level will stagnate. Everyone can make comments on Wikipedia assignments for corrections. The collaborative nature of Wikipedia, and editing Wikipedia usually involves interacting with community contributors, requiring collaboration and consensus, while traditional assignments are usually completed independently. There are also group assignments, but they are prone to some conflicts. Wikipedia emphasizes reliable sources. Wikipedia strictly requires citing reliable sources and following specific citation guidelines, which may be more stringent than the requirements of traditional assignments. And the continuity of Wikipedia and tradition, Wikipedia articles are living documents that are constantly updated and improved, while traditional assignments are no longer modified once completed. Wikipedia emphasizes maintaining a neutral point of view and teaches students to present information objectively, which may not be the focus of traditional assignments. Editing Wikipedia requires learning and using technical skills, such as Wikipedia markup language and various editing tools, while traditional jobs generally do not involve these skills, and generally only require writing and editing skills, at most WPS skills. In general, Wikipedia jobs and traditional jobs have their own advantages and disadvantages.

3. Is it more fun?

In my opinion, whether Wikipedia editing is interesting or not depends on the person. For me, when I first came into contact with Wikipedia, I didn't know anything and was very frustrated. I worked with my companions to complete a Chinese Wikipedia, which had to be constantly revised. The review time was very long, and there were other problems after each revision. After slowly getting familiar with it, I began to feel a little comfortable, and then my article passed the review and saw that my contribution was used and referenced by a global audience. In addition, although the process of learning and mastering new technologies and editing tools was difficult, the satisfaction after learning was also very happy. I also learned to find reliable sources. In today's era of mixed true and false news, it is very important to find the reliability of authoritative sources. In general, it is still quite interesting. You can choose to edit what you are interested in, and the satisfaction and sense of achievement it brings also enriches my study abroad career.