Thursday, April 2, 2009

My Wii Wiki World of Wonder(tongue twister)

My experience on wikipedia was a rocky one. I decided to do my project on the health/psychical benefits of playing WiiSports. I researched about 3 sites that provided links to studies on the physical effects of playing the game. Two of the studies were conducted at accretied colleges by big time professors and reserachers, while one study was conducted by a regular blue collar worker in England. Unsurprisingly, the university studies were kept and the one conducted by the blue collar worker was ommited when a user edited my entry. I noticed that entires that provide links from popular accredited research institutes are retained while lesser known ones are not. Even though the study conducted by the british blue collar worker had coverage from several major media outlets such as FOX and NBC, and was a comprehensive study that included day by day and week by results both annotated as well as visual progress, it is still considered, at least in the eyes of the secret society of upper echelon wikipedia editors, as not being legit enough. I struck up a brief conversation with one of the major power players of the wii wikipedia world(try saying that tongue twister 3 times fast) and he told me that while my info was good, that he along with many of the editors on the site tend to side with research studies done by institutions of pedigree rather than personal ones. He wasn't necessarily disputing that the study of the blue collar worker was bad, but simply not credible enough. I appreciated his honesty, but I feel that part should have been retained. I am not mad that they basically re worded and shortened my entire entry, Im not the best when it comes to structure so it probably warranted an edit, but I felt that all of info should have been retained. Other than that I actually found my experience on wikipedia to be a simple and smooth, albeit bias, experience

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