Assignment 2 - The Way of the Wiki - Part III

Last Post – 18 October 2007
On the 15th of October one of the users tagged my Afslaan article as copied content from the website. This was done by adding a tag into the text which automatically adds a content box into the page stating that it might be a copyright violation of the original website. After some further reading on how to negate this deletion, I deduced that you can delay deletion by adding the {{hangon}} tag to the top of the text. This inserts a template container, stating that the deletion should be delayed whilst further information and licensing is acquired. Furthermore, they request you to state why the page should not be deleted on the articles discussion (talk) page. I added the relevant request on the talk-page, stating that the information on the original Afslaan website is my work. When I was an active member in Afslaan, one of my portfolios was to create and manage a website, so all the content was originally created by myself.

Directly after these posting being made and delays put into place, I re-edited the entire article into my own words and made sure that there were no more copyright infringements. However, after visiting the article again today, I saw that it has been completely removed by a Wikipedia administrator.

I quickly reposted the article, but it was deleted again within 20 minutes of reposting. The administrator left me a message stating exactly why the page has been removed and what avenues are available to me to dispute the deletion or for possible reposts. This would involve getting the webpage administrator to grant me permission to use information on Wikipedia and also edit the original website to include for redistribution under GNU licensing v1.2 or higher. Due to time-constraints for this assignment, I unfortunately could not get the article up and running before the deadline.

My first article has also been visited and a minor change has been made. Basically a user has removed my User-tag which I added to the end of my article, as to make the article more general to Wikipedia and less personalized.

Overall, I find that Wikipedia is a good encyclopedia for posting articles, but users should KNOW the rules and understand – clearly – the licensing or respective guidelines that have to be adhered to when editing, creating and posting articles on this site. Wikipedia has a wide community which regularly keep tabs on recently created articles, false information or copyright infringements. Many of these users are just general users, who, out of their own accord, want to keep the site as relevant and truthful as possible. Many times, these users will tag articles and/or information and then administrators will be notified accordingly. The administrators then have the right to review the post and note and act according to the general rules and guidelines as set out by Wikipedia. This type of open-community editing greatly advances the overall Wikipedia standards and policies as described in my first post for this assignment.

As for the quality and value of my articles:
I have only posted two articles and an image. Both of these articles were non-existent before and my contributions were quite significant in size and quality, portraying relevant information on each topic. The articles contained truthful information from reliable sources and I personally feel that this could enlighten others who read these. I am quite disappointed that one of my articles (Afslaan) has been removed, as this was my most significant contribution, but after reading all of the guidelines, I fully understand why.Even after this assignment, I will keep a watchful eye on my articles to see how they might change and evolve in the near future.