Week1: The Experience of Editing Wikipedia-SHAO TIANYI

 When people think of Wikipedia, they often imagine an endless stream of hyperlinks, anonymous edits, and fact-checked trivia. But what many don’t realize—at least not until they try editing—is how profoundly human the experience can be.

I began editing Wikipedia not out of some lofty ideal, but out of a simple sense of absence. I was reading about the history of the Belgian Congo and realized that the Chinese-language articles barely scratched the surface. Key details—forced labor systems, copper mining during WWI, the role of European companies—were missing or underdeveloped. So I started small. I translated a few paragraphs, added citations, and cleaned up some links. What followed was something much more immersive.

Editing as Research

To write even a few lines responsibly, I had to dive deep. Not just into Wikipedia’s policies, but into academic texts, historical data, and primary sources. I found myself reading economic histories, colonial records, even propaganda leaflets from the 1920s. And then came the challenge: how do I write this neutrally? How do I translate “mandatory cultivation” without sanitizing what was essentially systemic exploitation?

Wikipedia forces you to be honest with your language, but also disciplined with your tone. It’s a strange balance—conveying the weight of injustice in a sentence that still fits into an encyclopedia.

Editing as Translation

Working across languages adds another layer. Many of the most nuanced sources were in French or Dutch. The English Wikipedia had detailed entries, but translating them into Chinese wasn’t as easy as running them through a machine. Terms like plantation economy, forced labor quotas, or colonial fiscal policy require cultural and historical context. Often, I’d pause mid-sentence, researching whether a term even existed in Chinese academic discourse—and if not, what the clearest substitute would be.

This wasn’t just about accuracy. It was about responsibility. Every translated phrase becomes a bridge—or a wall—between readers and the past.

Editing as Memory Work

What struck me most was how editing Wikipedia felt like participating in a larger act of memory. Colonial history is often filtered through the lens of the colonizers. In Chinese, there’s still very little discussion about African colonial experience beyond textbooks or oversimplified narratives. Writing about it—even in a neutral tone—felt like restoring fragments of someone else’s history that had been forgotten, or worse, ignored.

And that’s when I realized: Wikipedia isn’t just a platform. It’s a living archive of human knowledge. What we write there becomes part of how others learn. What we leave out shapes what others forget.

What I’ve Learned

1. Patience matters. Wikipedia is collaborative, and edits can be reversed, debated, or restructured. That’s part of its strength.

2. Sources are everything. You can’t just “know” something—you have to show where it came from, and whether it can be verified.

3. Language carries weight. Even neutral writing isn’t neutral if you don’t think about who your reader is and what context they’re coming from.

Final Thoughts

Editing Wikipedia isn’t glamorous. You won’t get likes or retweets. You won’t go viral. But you’ll leave something behind that might quietly inform hundreds, maybe thousands, of readers over time. And sometimes, that’s enough.