I was struck by how easy it was to write and edit the Wikipedia entries; like many others in this class, I didn’t have much difficulty with the procedural aspects. It left more time to wonder about varying quality of the articles. Some subjects were clearly hubs of conversation and active dissemination of reliable information, such as the article on Digital Preservation and the biography of Margaret Hedstrom. Others, such as the community archives article or the Elizabeth Yakel biography seem disproportionately lacking, given the lively scholarly conversations around them that I have seen. I ended up adding a few citations to the community archives article because it seemed so obviously skimpy, with several assertions that lacked citations. I actually found that the community archives article was so neutral vis-à-vis the uses of community archives for activism and challenging institutional power structures as to be unhelpful. On a more hopeful note, I still don’t think I saw any obviously misleading or incorrect information even in the less substantive articles.

One issue that I saw as I compared the meaty articles to the thin ones was the level of connectivity within Wikipedia. The Digital Preservation article was robust because of the active community conversing within its edit page, but also presumably because of the network of articles in which it is embedded. It referred back to other pages that could lead readers and editors through multiple pathways to find the article. As Andy pointed out, the Digital Preservation WikiProject at least pays lip service to improving related articles. The community archives article, by contrast, was included in the archives category in Wikipedia, but had no other links to other Wikipedia articles that could lead readers there, or contextualize the term’s significance. As a WIkipedia use, I love falling down a rabbit-hole of linked associations and find my understanding of the subject compounds, rather than just adds up.