Week12 -- My Wikipedia Editing Experience This Week --WU WENHAO

 WU WENHAO, 2021080464

This week, I encountered a valuable learning moment in my ongoing Wikipedia editing journey, particularly while working on the English article Real estate in China. In a previous attempt, my contributions to the page were unexpectedly removed by an administrator. At first, I found this deletion puzzling, especially since I had already included academic-style citations and ensured grammatical accuracy throughout.

After reviewing the edit logs and consulting with my professor, I realized that one critical oversight had led to the removal: one of my references contained a URL ending with the word “chatgpt.” Even though the content I submitted was entirely written and verified by myself, the presence of that URL gave the misleading impression that the entire section might have been generated by an AI tool. This was a subtle but important detail I had not considered before.

Another contributing factor was my initial use of CGTN as a supporting source. While CGTN is a major news outlet in China, Wikipedia policies do not generally regard it as a reliable source, especially for content related to politics or economic analysis. Recognizing this, I revised the citation list, replacing CGTN references with academic publications, such as World Bank reports and peer-reviewed journal articles from Elsevier and Springer.

I also took the opportunity to improve the tone and phrasing of my content. In hindsight, some of the sentences may have appeared overly structured or generic, which can resemble AI-generated text. To address this, I reworded several key parts to make the prose more natural, nuanced, and reflective of human editorial judgment. After these adjustments, I resubmitted the revised content, now supported with more authoritative sources and written in a more encyclopedic tone.

Through this process, I gained a deeper understanding of how even small details—like a URL suffix or the choice of source—can significantly affect the credibility and acceptance of contributions on Wikipedia. It also made me more aware of the growing need to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated content in collaborative platforms.

This experience has further strengthened my respect for Wikipedia’s editorial standards and the community’s efforts to uphold content integrity. Going forward, I will be more vigilant about my citation practices, source quality, and writing tone to ensure my edits are both valuable and sustainable. I also hope to explore more urban and economic topics on Wikipedia, with greater confidence in navigating the platform’s content policies.

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