Why I did what I did

            For this editing assignment, I decided to edit the article on why Wikipedia is unreliable. It was a bigger challenge than I thought it would be, simply because I did not feel comfortable tampering with an original work, that had its own defined voice and purpose. What I felt was the biggest issue with this article, though, was the lack of elaboration of some points. Also, there were parts in which the article was not clear, and I attempted to change that.

            First, though I did notice the numbering on the list of reasons why Wikipedia is unreliable went from 10 to 1 instead of from 1 to 10, I decided I liked that. I felt like this gave suspense leasing up to reason number 1. The other 9 reasons were very good points, so it kept me wondering what would be the biggest reason why we should not rely on Wikipedia, and when I reached it, I was not disappointed. I feel like if “it says so on Wikipedia” was number one, it would have given the article away within the first sentence. Holding that reason until the very end kept things fresh and interesting for the reader, so I kept it.

            I used the checklist in Working with Words to check my clarity. There were several points in the original article that I do not think were clear. For example, on reason number 4, which read “the number of active Wikipedia editors has flatlined,” I felt it was extremely unclear. On top of that, the explanation was one sentence long, and basically repeated the reason itself. I elaborated on this, to the best of my understanding, and attempted to give the reader more of an insight as to what the article was referring.

            I also used the idea that when writing, you should write something as if you are writing to yourself. In other words, I attempted to make the text clear enough, so that I would understand it if I had not written it. There were parts where the author seemed to have written it absentmindedly. For example, there is a section where he mentions he is about to give three reasons for something, yet goes on to only name two. I am not sure if this was a careless mistake, or a typo, but I made sure to correct that, just so everything was in agreement.