W15 / What did I learn while editing Wikipedia? How is this assignment different from more traditional student assignments? Is it more fun? / jeongyoon Oh 오정윤

 I learned a lot from editing 10 Wikipedia articles every week, writing articles about Wikipedia's main project. I've learned a lot, but if I have to summarize it, I can reduce the number of things I learned while editing Wikipedia during the semester to three.

 

 First, I read many articles through Wikipedia editing. In order to know how to write an article at first, I have to read the article already written. During this process, I was able to read many articles and study the forms and characteristics of documents that only Wikipedia sites have. At first, I read articles for study purposes, but it became a habit to read articles, so I read more and more Wikipedia articles regularly and it helped me greatly to improve my personal knowledge.

 

 Second, it helped me learn objective writing. In Wikipedia, when writing a sentence, it must be an objective article based on a fact, not a subjective opinion. I always attach a reference to the sentence as evidence. As the days of writing on Wikipedia increased, writing based on evidence became a habit, and this habit applies to me when I write reports in other classes. Personally, I really appreciate Wikipedia for making this habit natural.

 

 Third, I realized once again that Wikipedia is a really systematic search site. Of course, even before I took this class, I knew Wikipedia was a reliable search site. But when I actually contributed to Wikipedia through this class, I realized that there was a system that was more free but strict than I thought. There are countless supplementary explanations and modifications among users, the necessity of references and hyperlinks, and the strictness of categories. Because of this fact, it may not be easy for novice users to get used to writing articles together for the first time on Wikipedia. However, since it has a systematic system, I think users can trust this site more.

 

 These three reasons are what I learned while editing Wikipedia. In particular, the first and second reasons directly affected me. The process of writing Wikipedia articles was, of course, a class assignment, but it was really fun, and I'm sure other students in this class will agree. Above all, I learned in detail how to effectively use and contribute to Wikipedia through class, so I am most happy that I can use Wikipedia freely even after class.