Alex Sains on 12 Jan 2007 04:59 am
Wikipedia - should I, shouldn’t I?
With the world’s finest human editted encyclopedia, one can never be sure where to venture. I have attempted editting as an unregistered user, both having had my edits deleted, and accepted as part of the wiki.
What I wonder now, is whether I should attempt to become a fully-fledged member of the project. I think it’s fascinating, and worth doing, but I do not know if my English and knowledge “skills” are up the challenge. Certainly I see a lot of brash and poorly written edits; more so do I see vandalism and spam, but do I really want to get myself into another WebChat?
I hope in the coming months I will have the guts to actually register as a Wikipedian, but I have my doubts.
on 12 Jan 2007 at 12:11 pm 1.Anonymous said …
English and “knowledge skills” are by no means a prerequisite to participation in the project. That doesn’t meant they’re not useful; they are, especially if you plan to significantly expand an article, but while article writing is probably the most important task it is by no means the only one.
Fixing vandalism and spam, as you mentioned, is also important; this requires a basic knowledge of Wikipedia’s processes, and the ability to tell a good edit from a bad one. There’s no shortage of general maintenance work sitting around waiting to be done, either; one you know what needs doing and how to do it, there’s plenty to keep you occupied. And if you feel up to it, there’s nothing to stop you participating in policy discussions and having your say in the overall development of the project - on a wiki almost anything can, given consensus, be changed.
on 12 Jan 2007 at 5:16 pm 2.Alex Sains said …
Thanks for the contribution.
I guess my English skills are fine as it is. I don’t really know why I cited that as a problem. I am reasonably knowledgable on certain things; British politics, video games, etc.
I may continue to make small edits as an unregistered user while I get to grips with all the reading material involved.
Cheers again for your thoughts!