Wilmington, Delaware | Final Post

First Impressions of this Wikipedia article, and disccusion of my contributions

When I first encountered the Wikipedia article for my home town (March 22), I was very impressed since, it contained an extensive and accurate collection of information. I even learned a little about the place I've called home for almost my entire life. When I browsed the history logs I was amazed by how often the article was edited (at least one edit a day). For my first two edits I was unable to come up with any relevant information to contribute to the already existing sections, so I created new ones. Each time I created a section I inserted subsections and added one or two facts to each . For my third edit I was finally able to come up with information to add to an existing section that was created by someone other than my self.

The following is a more detailed description(than given above) of my first two edits.

EDIT ONE: Section Title- Media, Subsection Titles- Radio, Television, Newspaper

EDIT TWO: Section Title-Shopping, Subsection Title- Malls

Below are links to my previous posts discussing the edits I made:

Edit One

Edit Two

Edit Three

Community's Reaction to my contributions:

Over the course of this project, only my first edit was altered, the other two were left untouched.

Details of alterations made to first edit:

The section heading was not changed. The Radio and Television subsection was merged into one with a new title- Radio, Television, and Film. The information I added to Radio and Television and Film was included in the newly designated subsection with no additional information added by others. Also, the Newspaper section was renamed, Publications, and contained only the facts I had contributed, with no new facts added. Finally, a third subsection was created titled Portrayal in the Media, and numerous facts were added some of which were taken from a section titled Trivia, which was then deleted.

My Interpretation of Community Reaction

At first it struck me as odd that the titles of my subsection were broadened (Newspaper changed) without any additional information included, which would have warranted broadening the titles. For example, no magazines were added to the new Publications section, but then I recalled that this was one of the beneficial characteristics of Wikis, which was to have other people expand on your ideas. By not removing my contributions, but instead either leaving them untouched or building on them suggests that the community felt they were worthwhile and enhanced the quality of the article. Overall I was satisfied with the changes that were made to my additions and felt they improved what I had written.

Article Progression
The activity of the article remained at the same high level throughout the entire length of this project. And the quality of the paper improved over time. The edits made by other people (with the exception of those made to my additions) fell under the following four categories:
1. Vandalism (curse words); 2. Removing of vandalism ( which usually occurred within minutes suggesting the article was monitored very closely); 3. Grammar improvements (made up the majority of edits); 4. Addition of facts (all interesting, accurate and insightful).
Below is a link to a page comparing the article as it was at the start of this project with the most recent version.
Comparison