Are you a Wikipedian???. Review on Wikipedia

Are you a kind of person who always wanted to contribute for the larger good, if you are then https://wikipedia.org is just the site for you. I happened to discover it quite accidentally though, I read news on two Chinese girls logging on to Wikipedia and submitting entries to this wonderful site, and how immediately their entries were corrected by the scores of people who are constantly online. I thought of checking it out myself.

About Wikipedia Wikipedia was started in January 2001. Its aim is to create a complete and elaborate encyclopedia. There are thousands of articles on subjects ranging from Agriculture to Astrophysics. But things are not as simple as they look. Wikipedia is an open content portal, which means that anyone can edit anyone else's article. (Imagine how it would be if every user were able to edit others reviews on MS???). Most of the edits are genuine though, they correct spelling mistakes and grammar almost instantly!!! All the 'versions' of the article are stored and can be reverted back as well (E.g., in case of Vandalism). All these can be done by the members of the community itself.

The Site The main page is non-pretentious, just a simple page where in the introduction is given and the bottom half of the page lists out the various categories available on the site. This page is probably the only protected page on the site!! Ie you can't edit this page. The left bar of the page has links to --The main page, which is of course the main page :-) --Recent changes which shows the latest articles that were edited, deleted or added to the list --it shows Your watch list - you can add certain articles to your watch list and can monitor the modifications on them --it lists your own contribution under My Contributions link.

How it works The working is straight forward. You can start with the Sandbox, where in you can practice the posting of article and certain specific Wikipedia coding language and see the results. Then you can create your own user page with 'Wikified' links, Wikified links are those which points to other articles to Wikipedia. The good thing is that you need not even check whether the link exists or not, it would be highlighted automatically if the page exists or will prompt you to create a new page if the page doesn’t exist.

For example, if you put ''I am from [[Kerala]],[[India]]..'', Wikipedia automatically checks whether there is a page for Kerala and India respectively and when you click these links, it would take you directly to the page. Normal HTML tags can also be used in the pages. Overall, its a pretty good initiative. I can't explain the site fully, you have to experience it your self. If you are looking for information on a place or an event in history, then this is the site for you. Also, you can contribute to the community in whatever little way you can.

Like

--Create a new article on a subject not yet available --Fix stubs, stubs are articles that are very small, typically one paragraph or less

--Fix vandalism, like any site, this is prone to vandals as its a open content site. You can help out by identifying and fixing the same

--Correct/modify existing articles. There may be many articles which are not properly written or which contains errors or omissions, you can correct the same

Do give it a shot and you will be hooked. But watch your egos, if you don’t like someone else from somewhere editing what you have written or corrected your spelling and grammatical errors, this place is not for you.

Peace

Ranjith