Week12 -- My Wikipedia Edits -- GUAN YUE

 

1. Summary of My Edits This Week

This week, I focused on adding interlanguage links between the Chinese Wikipedia and the Cantonese Wikipedia. The pages I worked on include “豉油街-zh” (Soy Street), “Maxim's Cakes,” and “豉油街-zh yue.” These are all related to Hong Kong, but before editing, they were either missing links to each other or not linked to other languages at all.

One case that stood out to me was the article on “Hollywood Plaza,” a shopping mall in Kowloon. The Chinese Wikipedia had an article, but there was no corresponding page or link on the Cantonese Wikipedia. Since it’s a local space in Hong Kong, I thought it should at least be connected across the two language versions. So I manually added the links where needed.

These kinds of edits may look small—just inserting a template or a few words—but they actually help a lot with how information flows across different language Wikipedias. Building these connections helps readers notice that related pages exist in other versions, and it makes Wikipedia feel more like one global platform rather than a bunch of separate sites.

2. New Things I Noticed

While editing, I realized that many Hong Kong-related topics exist only in the Chinese Wikipedia but not in the Cantonese version. This surprised me. I would have expected Cantonese Wikipedia to cover more local content, but it seems like it still lacks many articles. For example, places like “Hollywood Plaza” are part of everyday life in Hong Kong, but there’s no Cantonese article about them—only the Chinese one. This gap between language versions was more obvious than I thought.

Another thing I noticed is that even if two articles exist in different languages, the links between them are not always there. Sometimes I had to manually add the interlanguage link myself. That made me realize that connecting knowledge across languages isn’t automatic—it really depends on editors paying attention to the details.

Also, even though Chinese and Cantonese are mutually understandable to many readers, they are treated as separate languages on Wikipedia, with different communities and page structures. That’s why I think linking the two versions is still meaningful. It helps combine information and also respects the habits of people who prefer using one language version over the other.

3. A Question for Discussion

This experience gave me a new perspective. I usually work on translating or expanding content, but this time I focused on something smaller: connecting pages. It made me realize that editing Wikipedia isn’t only about writing new articles. There are also lots of behind-the-scenes tasks that matter just as much. Even something as simple as adding a link can make a big difference in how easy it is for readers to navigate information across languages.

So I started thinking—should Wikipedia do more to highlight these “non-writing” tasks for beginners? We often assume that editing means creating pages, but small edits like fixing categories, improving templates, or adding interlanguage links are also important. They help the whole system stay organized and easy to use.

It might be helpful if there were a list of easy starter tasks for new editors—like “find pages in your language that are missing interlanguage links” or “connect related articles across versions.” That way, more people might feel confident to start editing, even if they’re not ready to write a full article yet.