My Wikipedia project on the Mickey’s Mellerdrammer was a very interesting experience. I’ve used wikipedia many times before in the past to look up information, but this was my first time actually creating or editing an article. I choose the stub article Mickey’s Mellerdrammer because I felt the article was controversial enough that the Disney corporation or Disney fans may edit the article to portray Disney in more favorable light.
Going in to this project I had this notion that since anyone could potentially edit a Wikipedia article the data and details were not always accurate. And for the most part this project confirmed that for me. When it comes to absolute verifiable facts like; “Columbus discovered the New World in 1492″ Wikipedia is for the most part very accurate. And the sources that validate those facts provide more reliable details than the actual articles themselves.
I always suspected that any controversial subjects were often changed back and forth with competing views on the subject, as of 5.5.2008 no edits have been made to my article.
One of the parts of the assignment I’m most interested in seeing how it develops over the long term; is the link to Mickey’s Mellerdrammer to the Uncle Tom’s Cabin wikipedia article. The Uncle Tom’s cabin wikipedia article is considered by wikipedia to be one of the best wikipedia articles published by the wiki communiuty; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community.” As of 5.5.2008 no one has removed my linkage to Mickey’s Mellerdrammer; which I consider pretty cool since wikipedia considers it such a good article. My little linkage I guess is my little contribution to an important article.
Overall the whole process was a really good experience. The Media Wiki application and other wiki applications are being used more and more in the workplace (Mine included) and knowing the Wiki markup formatting, and process is helpful. Knowing that the not everything you read on Wikipedia is free of bias or is 100% accurate, is a valuable lesson any student researching a project should be aware of, and therefore wikipedia should be used as a general source for basic or common facts. Wikipedia should not be used as the only or primary reference for research projects.
