Writing for Wikipedia – an Editor’s Insights
February 4, 2008 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
Wikipedia is a relatively new phenomena, and it can be a wonderful resource on an amazing number of topics.
Part of the draw of the Wiki is that, in theory, they are editable by the masses. The idea is to create truly collaborative work. Many, including me, find figuring editing anything but straight forward.
Mary Rotman, over at O’Reilly FYI, announces a new book that may help solve this problem. Titled Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, it was written by Wiki Editor John Broughton. I’m looking forward to this one.
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.
Anne,
it is no secret (well, not anymore) that Wikipedia is far from being a truly collaborative mass editing content. Every other week or so I see notices that some corporation has been silently editing articles, or that some editors had some secret mailing list to secretly approve or deny posts by certain secret criteria and so on.
While I neither support nor deny such allegations, they themselves suggest that Wikipedia isn’t nearly as authoritative as it should be.
However, I applaud John Broughton for making money on it. Good move!