Week 9 Editing Wikipedia – Between Open Access and Reliable Sources——SHAO TIANYI
This week, I took on the challenge of editing Wikipedia for the first time. I chose two very different topics: South Korean opera and the Chinese figure Lei Feng. The process was more difficult—and eye-opening—than I expected, especially when it came to one of Wikipedia’s core principles: verifiability.
For the article on South Korean opera, I tried to add some historical and cultural context that I had learned through academic reading. While the information itself was accurate, the real challenge came when I had to back it up with reliable English-language sources. Many useful articles I found were in Korean, but Wikipedia’s standards require that sources be verifiable and ideally accessible to English-speaking readers. This meant some content had to be left out, or I had to spend extra time searching for translated or published English references.
The Lei Feng article was even trickier. I attempted to translate parts of the Chinese Wikipedia page into English, thinking it would be a good contribution for non-Chinese readers. However, I quickly ran into the problem of sourcing. Much of the available information about Lei Feng comes from Chinese state media or educational materials, which are often not considered “independent sources” by Wikipedia standards. As a result, even though I could translate the text accurately, I struggled to find references that would be accepted on the English Wikipedia. I had to rephrase, limit subjective interpretations, and remove anything that might be considered promotional or unverifiable.
This experience taught me that editing Wikipedia is not just about contributing what you know—it's about proving it in a transparent, neutral, and well-documented way. It’s also a lesson in global information access: the difficulty of transferring knowledge across languages and cultural contexts becomes especially clear when the rules are strict.
Overall, I came away with more respect for Wikipedia editors and a deeper understanding of how collaborative knowledge really works. It's a careful balance between openness and discipline, and being part of that—even in a small way—was a valuable learning experience.
This blog post is a good example of the complexity and challenges of Wikipedia editing, especially in a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic context. You elaborate on the importance of verifiability and reliable sources through specific examples, such as editing the Korean Opera and Lei Feng's articles. In particular, in the editing process of the Korean Opera, you encountered language differences and literature sources, which also reflects the difficulties of cross-language translation. Lei Feng's article is more challenging because most of the information comes from Chinese official media, which usually does not meet Wikipedia's requirements for independent sources.
ReplyDeleteIn the editing process you mentioned, how to reword and delete subjective interpretations reveals Wikipedia's strict requirements for neutrality and transparency. This not only allows people to better understand the editing process of Wikipedia, but also helps readers understand the importance of information verification in global knowledge acquisition. The article also emphasizes the balance between openness and discipline, presenting the profound learning and thinking brought about by participating in Wikipedia editing.
Overall, the content of the article is true and clear, which allows readers to deeply understand the difficulty of Wikipedia editing and have a clearer understanding of the principles of open access and reliable sources. The article can be more vivid and specific by further analyzing the specific editing details and increasing the experience of interacting with the Wikipedia community.