WEEK 15 -------LIMENGCHEN What I Learned from Editing Wikipedia

This semester, I had a chance to do something quite different: I worked on writing and translating two English Wikipedia articles—one on Chinese Air Force History, and the other on Hong Kong Historiography. The two topics couldn’t be more different—one is military history, the other is about academic writing and historical narratives. Both were challenging in their own ways, but I learned a lot from the process.

I thought it was just translation—but it was way more than that

At first, I thought my job was just to translate from Chinese to English. But once I started, I realized it’s not just about changing languages—it’s about understanding the content deeply and then expressing it in a clear, neutral, and accurate way. For Chinese Air Force History, I had to sort through timelines, technical terms, and sometimes even conflicting sources. For Hong Kong Historiography, the challenge was understanding academic debates and the political undertones behind how history is written. Literal translation wouldn’t work—context mattered a lot.

I ended up doing a lot of background reading, double-checking facts, cutting unnecessary repetition, and rewriting things to make them readable and logical in English—while still staying true to the original meaning.

What stood out the most: being responsible for what I write

Wikipedia is public. Anyone can read what I wrote. That really made me take the work seriously. Every sentence had to be verifiable, every fact had to be backed up, and I constantly asked myself: “Could this be misunderstood?” I also learned a lot of technical details, like how to properly add references, insert internal links, and format the article according to Wikipedia standards. These small things taught me how important it is to be accurate and careful.

It didn’t feel like homework—it felt like real-world work

Unlike typical writing assignments, this felt meaningful. I was contributing to something that anyone in the world could use. Seeing my writing actually published online—and searchable—was really rewarding. And for the first time, all those things I learned in class, like how to cite properly or how to summarize sources, felt useful in a practical way.

More than knowledge—I learned a mindset

This experience didn’t just improve my writing or translation skills. It taught me to take content seriously, to treat information as something that should be carefully built and shared. It also made me appreciate how open knowledge works—how so many of the things we take for granted when we search online are created and maintained by real people. Going forward, I think I’ll approach writing and research with a lot more respect and attention to detail.