Discovering a "wiki"

So this week in ALES 204, we learned a little bit about something I'm sure everyone has come across, Wikipedia. Now speaking mainly for myself, I have always used Wikipedia to look up just minor information on subjects I was unfamiliar about. I've never used it as a source when creating an academic work, but I use it regularly to look up quick bio's or current events. It wasn't until this week that I really came to understand what Wikipedia was indeed about. It was interesting to see how it actually works and made me question a little more deeply about where the information that I resort to so readily is in fact coming from.

I chose to write my article on Green Weddings. This was something I didn't really know a lot about and just doing this project taught me a great deal about this subject matter. When I was browsing other student blogs I came across Rebecca's blog. When I was reading her post "get involved", it really made me consider how important it is to help out in an area that is really important to you. As someone who cares about the environment, a green wedding is great way to bring awareness and show that being eco-conscious is possible in all aspects of life. When Rebecca talked about looking up on delicious about virtual volunteering, I started looking up Green Wedding articles. Given, a lot of these articles were not something I used in my actual research, still I found it helped provide me with a great starting off point to commence with looking at what were the basics. By doing this, I found that my research after was a lot more focused.

 At first I found it really confusing to try to write my article while trying to work with the wiki code. I didn't really appreciate the work that has to go in when a contributor wants to write on a page. After working with it for a bit (and clicking the "preview" button a million times), I started to get the hang of it. I found the most challenging part of this project though to be trying to find reliable sources that would provide me accurate information that I could cite. It really gave me an appreciation for how hard it is to find reliable and non-bias information and how easy it is to just grab a quick website to cite just so it appears researched.

Navarro, Mireya. 2010. Green Weddings, Planning your Eco-Friendly Celebration. Article. March 20 2012. http://simplycouturewed.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/green_weddings_book.jpg

By doing this assignment, I really saw how important it is to really inquire about where the information you gather is coming from. It is so easy for something to appear factual and be nothing more than just some words someone threw together. It also helped me see how important it is to keep your writing voice neutral when creating an article. When a large amount of people are contributing to a wiki like Wikipedia, it is so easy for someone to throw in their own bias to steer public opinion, rather than presenting neutral facts. By doing this assignment, I have come to learn that in the future, I need to be more wary about my information that I come across. Not only for academic purposes, but in all aspects of my life including my career. It is hard to be knowledgeable if your information has no real knowledge in the first place.