Wikipedia Exercise

We were asked to edit a Wikipedia entry and see what happened. I couldn't imagine any Wikipedia article that I would be knowlegeable enough to criticise, much less edit, but, in surfing around the 'pedia, I came up with the entry for my suburb, Surry Hills, NSW. There were no grounds to disagree with what was there, but even without researching the topic properly (i.e. looking up the entries for other urban suburbs), I felt there was plenty of opportunity to expand the article from its meagre self.

The existing item did have dot point lists of churches and heritage buildings in the area, so I felt it was only appropriate to add lists of cafes/restaurants and pubs, both of which abound in this inner city region. I also added an item on our newest, rather iconic, public building, the Surry Hills Library and Community Centre.

Learning how to make the edits, and to use Wikitext was good fun, just technical stuff. Wikipedia itself provides lots of help.

I suspected that a Wikipedia entry on an Australian city suburb would fall into the obscure category and would suffer the same fate (i.e. neglect) as the hoax item on Seigenthaler and JFK's assassination.

Actually, it took a mere 27 hours for another contributor to edit my edit, for the express (and probably justified) purpose of "restoring encyclopaedic style". You see, I used subjective assertions in my contribution to the effect that Crown Street "is the heart of the Surry Hills community, featuring an eclectic mix of cafes and restaurants and funky fashion and homewares stores". My editor obviously regarded "funky" and "eclectic" as adjectives unsuitable for Wikipedia. He basically just deleted them. I won't object, but an item without adjectives can be pretty bland! (For reasons I don't understand, my editor left my equally subjective use of "excellent and diverse" intact elsewhere in the stuff that I had added. Maybe he/she enjoys the eateries of Surry Hills.)

But it goes to prove the case. You can't just post what you like on Wikipedia. Sooner or later, someone will see it and do something about it. All articles are indeed just "works in progress".