Continuing from last week’s article on my 1 million photos on Flickr, I thought I would post about another online project I worked on that gave me a sense of accomplishment.
In March of 2004, I made my first edit ever on Wikipedia, and it was at the Lethbridge article. All I did was update the population amount. Over the following few months, I contributed a few more times, as well as to a handful of other articles.
Over April and May of 2005, several editors completely rewrote the content. When the 2005 municipal census was released at the end of May, I went to the Lethbridge article again to edit the population.
I noticed the article had changed substantially, and I saw the potential of it. I spent the next two years working on the article: adding new content, finding sources for claims already in the content, editing for grammar and clarity, and so on.
In February 2007, after following several internal Wikipedia conventions for good articles, I submitted it for peer review. The results of the review was that it was not good article material, but the reviewer left several suggestions for improvement. I implemented those, and it was resubmitted and subsequently approved three days later for Good Article status.
GA status is the second highest status an article can get on Wikipedia, and it made me very proud, but it wouldn’t last long. Only 6 months later, after making several more changes, I felt it was nearly ready for peer review under the assumption it would eventually be submitted for Featured Article status.
I received a lot of feedback from the peer review process, and implemented it. Three months later, I submitted it for Featured Article status, and on 28 November 2007, it was featured on the front page of Wikipedia.
That made me happy.
