Changing History Wikipedia Style

I chose to edit two separate Wikipedia pages. The one page I edited was Bishop Carroll High School (Ebensburg, Pennsylvania). This is my high school. There was very little information included on the site. What I did was add a section about the athletics at the school:

Athletics
Bishop Carroll offers many different athletic teams including:
-Baseball
-Basketball
-Cheerleading
-Football
-Golf
-Softball
-Soccer
-Track and Field
-Volleyball
-Wrestling

The second article I edited was The Hunger Site. This article concerns The Hunger Site, which I am a frequent visitor of. The Hunger Site is also linked with five similar sites, so I added a Related/Affiliated Pages section:

Related/Affiliated Pages
The Breast Cancer Site

The Child Health Site
The Literacy Site
The Rainforest Site
The Animal Rescue Site

I left these two revisions sit for a night. After checking back in the morning, I found something exciting. I had changed Wikipedia! While it had only been one night, no one has removed or altered my additions yet. I think because I added very basic information that no one was out to quickly change it. Also, The Hunger Site's article had not been edited in two months and Bishop Carroll's had not been changed in one month. Because these pages are not frequently edited, my changed may not, if ever, be altered.

Reading over my classmate's blogs, I found their experiences to be really interesting as well.
Jessie edited two different pages. She found one entry to be completely erased and her other addition was not changed at all, even though she had made spelling errors. Dani found the same results: a complete erasure of her one addition and nothing done to her second addition. Maddie added to a Wikipedia page and found that the information she added was not changed. Jed felt wrong about making large alterations to the pages. He added small bits of information and saw that no one changed his changes.

Overall, I think this was a great learning experience about Wikipedia. I felt like I held a higher power when editing the Wikipedia pages. I could change an encyclopedia! That being said, the fact that I, a college freshman, can change an encyclopedia entry certainly makes me realize that this encyclopedia is definitely not always reliable.

So my final word is the same word I started out with concerning Wikipedia: It's a great starting point. Users can find links to follow and base information on Wikipedia, but they should always quote other, more academic sources.

Assignment Post