My Experience Editing Wikipedia

For this short assignment, I chose to edit the Wikipedia article on anonymous web browsing.  The article was thin when it came to information or detail, and so I focused on expanding the information that was already there.  To do this, I looked up the Wikipedia pages for certain words and phrases mentioned  in the Anonymous Web Browsing article, paraphrased what I found, and added it to the article.  I did the same with expanding the lead in the sense that I gave a brief- but more than the initial post- detail of what the article would discuss.  There was one instance in particular that I could not figure out how to expand.  I noticed that “device fingerprint” was mentioned in passing, and as I read the article I felt that it was an important issue.  However, I was unable to find a specifically reliable source to properly discuss the issue, and so I simply added a comment on the edit page saying that it needed to be done. 

Editing the page- though sometimes difficult to read with the code in the “sandbox”- was overall an easy task.  I did not feel overly concerned as to if I had the information 100% correct, mainly because I knew that if there was a better way to say what I did, someone would come along and do it.  Also, the lack of strict guidelines made the article feel more inviting to the addition of any relatable information.  As I worked on the page I felt myself agreeing with Zittrain’s Drachten analogy.  Although I was careful to only add correct information, I felt a sense of camaraderie with the editor community in the sense that we were all working towards the same thing.