With a background as a freelance journalist, the project found its way to my desk. I started with the Old Mill District. Understanding how to write the news, rather than market-speak, really helps when working on a Wikipedia page. Objectivity is crucial and so is showing your supporting documentation—in fact, if you don’t, your page will come down faster than you can tweet about it going up. (More info about public relations and Wikipedia can be found in a great interview by PRWeek last spring.)
Working your way through the labyrinth of “help” and “how-to” pages is almost as bad as filing taxes. Wikipedia states that anyone can edit pages—and in its simplest form, yes, that’s true. But creating a page—complete with photos—is more difficult than it sounds. I asked a few techie friends for their advice and they laughed at me and said they still hadn’t gotten around to figuring it out, themselves.
Not encouraging, but I kept at it—finding documentation and getting feedback from the marketing director for the Old Mill District. She was a great help with this project—sending me photos and answering my questions quickly. Finally—ta da!—the Old Mill District page is finished!
But what’s this? “This article may require clean up to meet Wikipedia quality standards?” Yes, my article was tagged. Though anyone can edit Wikipedia, a set of what I call “online librarians” live for the joys of editing and flagging Wikipedia pages. They can be annoying—but in the long run, they help keep Wikipedia as factual as possible.
So, in your opinion, how can I improve the Old Mill District article? In the spirit of Wikipedia, let’s make this a group effort!
No comments:
Post a Comment