This week we were tasked with editing on Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that’s been around for a couple of decades now, I had a hard time finding something that I could contribute to. I tried to find something that I was interested in that was niche and maybe not covered as much on Wikipedia. One of my guilty pleasures is watching soap operas and I learned that Wikipedia has a vast amount of information on soap opera storylines, characters, actors, etc. Most U.S. soap operas have been on for 50+ years and Wikipedia comprises a lot of that history.
I started looking at articles about soap operas I watch, trying to see if there was anything that I could add. As someone who watches Days of Our Lives, I came across an article listing all the characters that have been added to the show in the 2020s. I noticed that a new character that recently appeared in October 2024 wasn’t on this list. Finally, I felt like I had something I could add to Wikipedia!
I knew I needed to find a relevant and credible source to back up this information. Wikipedia’s verifiability policy requires that any material added to Wikipedia be backed up with a credible source. This ensures that information added to Wikipedia is based on facts and not on opinions. I found an article from TV Insider. This is a website that covers news related to television. It backed up all the information I wanted to add; the character’s name, the character’s first air date, the character’s connection to other notable characters, the actor portraying the character, etc.
Next, I went to the talk page and added a new topic, explaining what I think should be added and linked to the TV Insider article. As of now, I haven’t received any replies, so I decided to do the editing. Even though Wikipedia doesn’t have firm rules, there are a lot of policies and ways that you’re supposed to do things. Trying to follow the policies and guidelines made it a bit confusing at first. I feared messing up the article. Following Wikipedia’s citation guidelines helped me and I feel like I got the hang of it. Here is the article with my contribution added (it’s still there as of writing this).
In school, I was told not to use Wikipedia because anyone could edit information on there, and that it wasn’t reliable. In theory, anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, but they must back up what they’re saying with a reliable source. My view of Wikipedia is more positive, and I now believe that Wikipedia is a great starting point for research. As Pete Forsyth explains, Wikipedia should be seen as a platform rather than a publisher.
Instead of citing Wikipedia as a source, Wikipedia should be used “as a guide to find more reliable sources, and then citing those sources directly.” This experience has helped me to think of Wikipedia as a reference aggregator. If I’m researching a topic, I can go to the article for that topic on Wikipedia and dig into the references used in the article at the bottom of the page to use in my research.
I believe that Wikipedia can be a useful media literacy tool. When checking the validity of a claim or source, we can use the SIFT method (Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage and supporting evidence, and Trace claims back to their original context). Wikipedia is a tool that can be used as part of the investigative step of SIFT. This was an interesting experience, although I don’t think I’ll become a Wikipedia editor. However, I will continue to be a consumer.