Fearless Editing: Wikipedia

Fearless Editing

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Throughout my educational career, Wikipedia has arguably been the worst/best website to gain critical information from. The skepticism of where they draw their opinions and accusations and quickly being posted on the website that is always the first search engine to appear in any search, is beyond me. Upon conducting my own research of Wikipedia that resulted in me searching through their website to reading other articles that speak on behalf and about Wikipedia I found that everyone was struggling with the same issue. I found it amusing when I found grammatical errors, especially when my assignment asked me to edit and article.

Editing, Moran’s "The Top 10 Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely On Wikipedia," had intrigued me because of my interest in finding out the truth of Wikipedia but also with how I write my papers. As a writer, it is important to be aware of your flaws so you repeat them less and less to where you have completely gotten rid of it. To a certain extent, we as writers attempt to untangle grammatically incorrect statements and attack others opinions to revitalize our own but Jones made it clear that we all have different and multiple standpoints. Once catching my own issue being shown throughout this article I realized I did not want my professors to interpret my writing as insubstantial for the level I am supposed to be. Small errors is my main forefront of writing errors and editing and actually seeing these edits from a different standpoint allowed me to fully see what my problem is.

Wikipedia wants its viewers to have access to all the information in the world about anything in the world, even if it results in inhumane false information. Editing Moran’s article was almost ironic to me because its subject was Wikipedia. However, one thing I did read that I could also apply to this assignment was Kaufer’s theory of public policy writing. The famous quote, “any publicity is good publicity” came to mind when learning about Wikipedia. Just because it is displaying false information does not mean it does not make a great guideline for students and bloggers, etc. about knowing which search engine is actually reliable. “I have found them especially useful for guiding students to responsible summaries and evaluations of policy arguments already applied to a controversy by others.” (Kaufer57)

On another note, in Moran’s article I found a reoccurring error in which it began at the beginning of every new point he made. I noticed that he would at times open a statement with the details than opening with stating the subject of which you are going to be talking about. I rearranged the paragraphs and reworded sentences with an overuse of commas and dashes.  When Kaufer went into detail about deciding among the competing analogies to a resolution, he went into detail how students have the knowledge and instructions they need in order to fulfill a skillful resolution on their own. Having a good understanding on what is true and of how certain premises are taken can also be applied to editing an article, like how I did for this assignment. 

Work Cited:


Kaufer, David S. “A Plan for Teaching the Development of Original Policy Arguments.” College
Composition and Communication 35.1 (Feb 1984): 57-70.


Jones, Rebecca. “Finding the Good Argument, or Why Bother with Logic?” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, Volume 1. Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2010. Available online via WAC Clearinghouse at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/writingspaces1/ .