Editing Wikipedia: My Experience with Sweet Valley High

For this assignment, I edited the Sweet Valley High Wikipedia page, and I didn’t pick it randomly. When I was a teen, I used to go to the library all the time and check out those books, along with Sweet Valley University. I remember actually sitting there, flipping through them, getting pulled into the drama, the characters, and the storytelling. That was one of the early things that made me interested in stories in general.

Looking back, it lowkey played a role in why I’m into storytelling now. So choosing that article wasn’t just about making the assignment easier, it was something that actually connected to me.

What I added was pretty simple. I put in a sentence about how long the series ran and how many copies it sold. Basically, that it ran from the 1980s until the early 2000s and sold over 200 million copies. It wasn’t anything huge, but it was real information and I backed it up with a source.

The process was a little confusing at first. I had to go to the Talk page and post what I planned to do, and I wasn’t really sure where to click or what to say at first. Then when I got to the editing part, I had to figure out how to actually insert the citation. That was probably the most annoying part, just trying to understand how the formatting works with the little <ref> tags and everything. Once I got that part down though, it really wasn’t that bad.

I used a source from Mental Floss, added it in, and then published my edit. After that, I checked the page and saw my sentence there with the little citation number next to it. That’s how I knew it worked. I also checked my contributions page and saw my edit listed there, which was kind of cool because it showed that I actually did something on a real website, not just turned in an assignment.

Honestly, it didn’t feel hard once I understood what I was doing. At first, I had questions and was kind of confused, but after going step by step, it got easier. I thought Wikipedia was going to be really strict and complicated, but it actually wasn’t. As long as you follow the basic rules and use a real source, you’re good.

One thing I did think about was how editing is even allowed in the first place. At first, it feels strange knowing that anyone can go in and change information. That made me question how reliable it really is. But after doing this assignment, I see that it’s not just random people posting whatever they want. There are rules, and everything has to be backed up with sources. That’s what keeps it from turning into complete chaos.

Overall, this assignment showed me that editing Wikipedia isn’t as complicated as it seems. Once you get past the confusion at the beginning, it’s actually pretty straightforward. You just need a good source, keep it neutral, and follow the format.