Well, that was a thrill!
I edited my first Wikipedia page and it was more exciting than I had anticipated. I was quite nervous to make an edit, scared that I wouldn’t be able to find anything substantive to add. I’m proud to say that this turned out to be a great first experience contributing to a Wikipedia page and makes me want to request more edits.
I was looking for a topic I know well, so I searched for “exercise” since it’s a topic I’ve been studying for a decade and am certified to instruct others on. As I was reading through Wiki’s Exercise page, the section on “nutrition and recovery” stood out to me; it was the smallest section on the page. I’ve studied nutrition and sports nutrition throughout the years in college courses and under nationally accredited institutes (ACE, NASM), so I knew how much beneficial information was missing from this section.
I looked into studies on nutrition and exercise recovery to find an evidence-based general guideline that I could cite for my edit request. I found this study on the 4R’s framework for optimizing recovery through nutrition that I knew would be the perfect addition to the Exercise page.
Here was my request to edit the page:
I was anticipating a long wait to hear back, but to my surprise, a Wikipedian named Dan responded to me within about 20 minutes and said it was a “useful and noteworthy addition”. He added my suggestion to the page immediately.
His recommendation to me was to review how he cited the source I provided and how he formatted the 4R’s list (as you can see in the image below). This was helpful since I felt clueless in how to create a formatted list in my edit request.
It was an exciting moment seeing my small, yet necessary, contribution to an actual Wikipedia page… a real Wikipedia page!
I have social media accounts, I have this blog, and I’ve contributed to other places on the internet, but leaving my mark on a digital encyclopedia felt different. It felt like I was making a positive change in helping provide evidence-based information on something so important and accessible to everyone.
Here’s what my edit looks like on the Exercise page now:
This entire experience made me have a different (positive) view of Wikipedia and the information we see. I liked reading through the past edits that have been contributed to this page as well.
Now that I’ve made my first edit, I feel confident to make more edits on Wikipedia. This experience showed me how diligently Wikipedians work to cite accurate sources and work in a collaborate effort to improve information on the encyclopedia, which has made me trust it much more.
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