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Approximately 7 days ago my life changed, in a good way. For the first time in my life I contributed to the internet. How did I do this you may ask? Well, I added an article to wikipedia, which is one of the hottest things on the internet. WIkipedia is an online encyclopedia, that allows for anybody to enter or edit articles in the website.

So I got the assignment that I had to write an article about something in wikipedia, but I did not know what to write about. Wikipedia has articles about pretty much anything you can think of, and these articles are pretty thorough. I thought I was stumped, until I looked around my dorm room and saw my acoustic guitar. Luckily, wikipedia was short of information about washburn guitars (the type of guitar I own). I did not want to just write about how great my guitar was or try to promote my guitar or washburn guitars. Instead, I wrote about the history of washburn guitars and the washburn guitar company, as well as the types of guitars they make currently.

Overall, I found this project to be harder then I expected. This is because I did not recognize the vastness that is Wikipedia. The online encyclopedia has literally hundreds of thousands of articles, and this makes it hard to write insightful information. Also, it is very hard to write original and creative information on something when there is already a lot of information on the topic or product on wikipedia, as well as on other places on the internet. Information that is irrelevant or useless gets deleted within minutes to be added.

This was a problem I encountered when writing, writing original content. The problem was address by Derek (my teacher), and I immediately recognized the problem also, and changed the content to something I found more appropriate, accurate, and original. So my article on washburn guitars has been on wikipedia for a week, and has not been changed, which comes as a surprise to me. I know that millions of people use wikipedia for means of acquiring information. I am sure that people have read my article, and I am also sure that there are people who might not understand or agree with my content. So if you have read or will read my article, and want to change it, please go ahead and change what I have written, as this is how the website operates. I understand how wikipedia works, and I actually support it.

I believe that the way wikipedia was designed makes it so that the best information stays on and information that is bogus or non informant will be deleted. It is different from the form of a blog, in that information that is offensive for instance will not be ignored, but rather removed. So as I said before, please take a look at my entry on washburn guitars, and do with it as you please. The link to it can be found here.