In the given assignment, I decided to edit the Wikipedia page about Thomas Smolej: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Smolej. I chose this topic, as it was not a highly monitored and edited page, yet it still could have been improved. The first time I have read the article, I have come across the fact that the Career section was very short and did not provide a lot of information about his scholarly work and publications.
I went out to find credible sources that could justify an addition before doing any edits. This proved to be more difficult than I thought. There were fewer readily available sources as compared to major people, which made me understand the significance of sourcing to Wikipedia. I resorted to checking Google Scholar to ensure that Smolej is an author in the field of literary studies, and it provided me with a factual and verifiable argument to make.
I then followed the instructions and visited the Talk page first:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Thomas_Smolej
There I identified myself as a new editor and that I was going to increase the Career section by inputting sourced information about his publications. This move helped in making the process feel more of a teamwork than I previously anticipated. I could not edit freely as I needed to think about how my input would be perceived by the people in the society.
After several days without a reply, I proceeded to make my correction by inserting a sentence of his scholarly publications and giving a reference. I then kept an eye on the page to see what was going to happen. My edit was still there, and this was encouraging and demonstrated that even small and well-sourced edits can be worthwhile.
In the case of screenshots, I added a screenshot of my Talk page post and a screenshot of the edit I did in the article, and the page history with my contribution.
In general, this has certainly altered my perception of Wikipedia. I had previously viewed it as a fast and convenient source of information but had not given much thought to how this information was made or upheld. Today, I view it as an organized, community-based platform which is extremely dependent on precision, origin, and cooperation. It is not so easy as anybody is able to edit anything. There exist expectations, standards and a process that should be adhered to.
Another aspect of knowledge-building that this assignment helped me realize is related to the Internet. Even such simple task as adding one sentence takes research, verification, and communication with other people. It made me appreciate the individuals who are making contributions to Wikipedia and ensure that it is a credible source.
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