Make up classes. What I've learned & How is it different from traditional assignment- Gyongmin Moon, 문경민

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


This is the first time that I contributed to Wikipedia, or any other encyclopedic platform. Before this semester, I've only experienced Namuwiki and Naver encyclopedia to get ideas for my advertising planning document. First, I thought that Wikipedia requires some kind of special and professional ability such as coding, but Wikipedia found to be rather easier than I've imagined. Even though I still don't know every feature in Wikipedia, I'm sure I now can at least be called as an apprentice Wikipedian. The source editing is still a bit tricky, but with the visual editing feature, I have confidence that I can make a whole article just by myself. I also learned that Wikipedia is a real active two-way communication platform. I knew that people could discuss with each other through the 'history' page, since I saw it in the Namuwiki, but the 'talk page' system was quite shocking. It is a bit old way to chat with one another in the year 2020, but still, having a place to talk in a dictionary is an unpredictable thing for many people, at least in my perspective.

The biggest difference of this lecture's assignment against other traditional ones is that we, the students, have to interact with the person outside our university, or even country. Because of this factor, sometimes troubles do happen. The one that can be observed most frequently is that since most of us are beginners in Wikipedia, our editing doesn't suit the requirement of Wikipedia, causing them to be deleted by experienced Wikipedians. Yes, it is a relief that professor Piotr still counts the deleted edits as completed ones, but who would ever like to see their work being deleted? Like this, Wikipedia assignment sometimes feels like doing a survival camp in the wild. But on the other hand, due to this fact, it makes me more cautious when editing the article and makes me become more focused when publishing my work.

Besides this 'light-pressure' in my mind, I find Wikipedia quite a fun place to hang around. Even though I can't spend much time in it because of my other schedule, I can easily log in to Wikipedia during the times when I'm taking a subway or bus, and edit a sentence or two. I also liked the part that I can change my signature and user page. But, I still can't do this all by myself, because of my lack of knowledge in coding. These are my opinions about the time that I spent on Wikipedia. I hope that I can learn more before the semester ends.

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