But Rauwerda isn't just "borrowing" stuff from Wikipedia. She's also contributing to it by editing articles.
"Overall, the process is very easy," she said. "First, you would make an account, and then press the little pencil icon on an article. There are some pages for more controversial issues, like the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine or abortion, that are often vandalized. For those pages, you would have to have an account for a certain amount of time and have made a certain number of good edits before you’re allowed to edit them."
However, she said that even many new editors might feel unsure of what to fix. At least that's what she was going through in the beginning. But as you dig deeper, opportunities start to present themselves.
"There are so many pages that are just kind of 'meh.' Right now, a lot of obscure pages are just really poorly written or have outdated sources, and there's a lot of maintenance that is required to have an encyclopedia so big. There are topics within so many subfields that I feel like people with so many diverse interests could find a really nice niche if they wanted to."
"There’s a lot of rules, though," Rauwerda added. "I try so hard to follow the rules, but even now sometimes I'll blatantly violate something by accident. If you're not sure about an edit you can go to the 'Talk' page of the article, which is the 'behind the scenes' where editors talk about what the page should be like, and then ask."
But if that sounds too much of a hassle, you can thank Wikipedia for everything it has done by donating to it. Every dollar helps!
