Wikipedia and Me

I've always used wikipedia for school and personal curiosity, and always knew it was edited by the general public. However, I would have never considered editing or adding to an article myself.  I'm happy to report, after this assignment, I can say wikipedia editing is something I enjoy doing.  

When we were given this assignment, I was initially intimidated by the prospect of my own work being available to the entire english speaking world of internet users.  It made me worry that something I wrote or reported was incorrect and that I would be seen as someone who was trying to write about something they actually had no knowledge for.  However, once I began the process of writing my article, I began to feel more at ease and accept that my article may be edited in the future, but that that was OK.  I also noticed that the aspect of my writing being available to the public made me more careful when citing sources are summarizing information. I had to be sure that anything I wrote could be verified and proven to be correct.  I don't always have this level of accountability in all of my research projects.  

I chose to write my article on the White-footed Sportive Lemur. I actually wavered between a few different subjects.  Initially I was pretty set on writing about a breed of dog. Thinking my personal experience and my field of study, companion animal science, would give me a base knowledge at least of the terminology. I was sceptical to try another subject, in case I came across a lot of terminology I was unfamiliar with or if I wrote something that an expert on the subject might read and view as a "rookie mistake". However, after rejecting a few possible stubs about dog breeds for having too much uncited information, or not enough available information, I decided to look beyond dogs.  I actually got the idea to look at primates from my friend in ALES 204, Lynda who I had thought, from the brief picture she showed me, that she was doing a primate.  I liked the idea and began to look there as well. I see now from her post that her animal is actually a type of ring tailed cat. 

Soon I found the Sportive Lemurs. They are a type of lemur of which there are quite a few varieties.  This gave me the opportunity to pick one that had been more widely researched but had not been written in wikipedia on.  And so, I decided to write on the White-footed Sportive Lemur.  I was quite happy with my choice, it still pertains to my degree of animal health and is something I'm interested in.

What I found to be most difficult about this project was writing the article in the wiki software format.  Figuring out how to make words italic or create references and links was fairly tricky at first.  Then applying them and being sure not to miss one punctuation often required a couple tries.  But I suppose this is good practice for writing references in other papers I write.  I need to have the punctuation correct to every space and period.  Another tricky part to this was finding a photo to use for my article.  Because this animal is endangered and not widely known about, the only photos were taken by researchers. Often who had written an article. However, their photographs were all very strictly copyrighted, and when I looked further into the conditions of the copyright, it was forbidden to reproduce in any form, commercial or not.  I ended up staying with the only photo available on wikicommons, a map of the lemur's habitat in Madagascar: 

Author: Chermundy
Source: http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/11618/0

It was quite disappointing to me. I found many really cute and informative pictures of these lemurs, even of their teeth. However, the only way to legally use these photos would be to contact the publisher and discuss the terms of their copyright. A task I did not have time for unfortunately.  That is another point I have learned from this project - Not to disregard copyrights.  Shamefully I can admit to taking screen shots of copyrighted photos to use in past projects.  Though they were not published on a public form and were cited, I've learned now that it is important to respect these copyrights.  

Overall, I enjoyed this project. I think my results were quite good! See my article here. I may even consider editing wikipedia articles in the future. Perhaps articles on subjects I have taken courses on and have a base knowledge.