Doing this extra credit assignment has opened my eyes and has shown me what a wonderful tool the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is. I have never used Wikipedia until this class. All my previous teacher have told me that the site was not a suitable source for information and to not use it, so I stayed away from it. Taking this introduction to the internet class has shown me that Wikipedia is not that bad of a place to start research. I have learned that Wikipedia is a good place to go when you are first learning about something or when you need a quick explanation for something. Lately instead of typing into Google a word or a phrase to get its definition or to find out what it is I have been going first to Wikipedia. I find that Wikipedia gives you more of what you are looking for and more information that you want, unlike Google where you have to sift through the information to get what you are looking for. Wikipedia is a great place to start research but a person should never do all their research through it, because the information is edited by the masses and not by professionals or credited persons. Starting this little project, I had no idea how to edit a Wikipedia page. I knew you could but never really paid attention to how to do it. Not only did I not pay much attention to Wikipedia before this class, many people have discouraged me from using the encyclopedia. I never knew how easy editing a Wikipedia page was. I didn’t even know how about doing it until I saw the example in class. Once I saw how to edit the pages in class and read the introduction to editing pages and the tutorial, physically editing the pages were the easy part. The hardest part of this extra credit project was picking what topic to do. Wikipedia has become a very big online encyclopedia, with anyone able to edit it. Because of this all the topics that I could think to edit or to add text to was almost non-existent because everyone had already contributed all the information needed for the topics. This is why I started my own page. This way I could write my article without having to worry if I was going to have enough words to count for the extra credit. This way I could write what I wanted and be unlimited. But trying to find a topic that wasn’t already discussed was also very hard. It took me about two days of talking to many different people to figure out what to do. In the end, my mom suggested that I write a article about a local woman from my home town. Once I got researching and writing the article I became very interested in her. I was surprised that I have never heard of Rose Knox before because she seems to be an outstanding lady for her times. I believe that she is not getting the recognition that she deserves. Writing the article has shown me to go beyond the basics to find something that is unexpected because you will enjoy it more.
Doing this project has also shown me how much I take pride in my work. When I submitted my page I didn’t want anyone to touch it. I liked what I have written and I didn’t want anyone to take information off the page. I wanted it to stay the way it was. When I checked the history I noticed that someone had edited the page and at first I got a little upset because I spent so much time working on the page, but then I noticed that the person just fixed the layout of the page a little. Since then though, no one has touched my page, which I am very proud of. I am glad that the work that I had submitted to Wikipedia was acceptable enough for it to still be posted in the encyclopedia. I hope the page stays up for the future to come because I believe that Rose Knox is a very important lady in history and others should know a lot more about her.
References:
Rose Knox. (2007, April 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01:00, April 27, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rose_Knox&oldid=123399324
http://www.wikipedia.org/
Doing this extra credit assignment has opened my eyes and has shown me what a wonderful tool the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is. I have never used Wikipedia until this class. All my previous teacher have told me that the site was not a suitable source for information and to not use it, so I stayed away from it. Taking this introduction to the internet class has shown me that Wikipedia is not that bad of a place to start research. I have learned that Wikipedia is a good place to go when you are first learning about something or when you need a quick explanation for something. Lately instead of typing into Google a word or a phrase to get its definition or to find out what it is I have been going first to Wikipedia. I find that Wikipedia gives you more of what you are looking for and more information that you want, unlike Google where you have to sift through the information to get what you are looking for. Wikipedia is a great place to start research but a person should never do all their research through it, because the information is edited by the masses and not by professionals or credited persons. 
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