Wiki-Versation Report

Wikipedia followed: Race (Classification of Human Beings) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28classification_of_human_beings%29

Revision History Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Race_%28classification_of_human_beings%29&action=history

I decided to edit the page "Race (The Classification of Human Beings) because I know a lot about this topic, and I know that it is definitely controversial. When I went to make my first edit, I was not really sure what to do because the article was so long and full of scientific, wordy information. Then it hit to do something controversial. I spaced the first paragraph down a little bit, and put “Race is a social construction. It does not really exist,” at the very beginning of the article. It got deleted within minutes. Then I posted it a second time minutes after. Again, it got deleted within minutes. A fellow user then messaged me warning me to discuss such controversial posts firsts on the talk page before posting them on the article itself. He said I was committing vandalism. We then got into a debate about vandalism; he never responded to my last comment to him, so I figured I won the argument. For my third edit, I tried a less controversial approach to see if my post could survive. I then posted “However, some people with hints of African ancestry had light enough skin and other features to pass as ‘white’. This did not happen for many people though,” in one of the sections. It is actually still there in the article as I type this blog. I commented on the talk page saying the article was too long, and that many sections could stand alone as their own articles; a fellow user agreed with me on the talk page, however, nobody else responded to my suggestion or made changes to the article. For my fourth change, I posted “The one drop rule has resulted in colorism today in the Black community.” but this edit was deleted by the end of the night. Yesterday I posted a fifth change stating, “Many African-Americans today still possess small traces of European ancestry because of this mixing of races.” in one of the sections; it is still there with my third change that has survived.

Overall I must say I had fun with this experience of interacting with others online on such a site. Wikipedia is democratizing in the fact that it is user-generated. A corporation does not post the information on Wikipedia; these are real, ordinary people taking the time to construct numerous articles accounting information. However, when I was making my changes, I was almost offended that one person across the country who did not even know me was trying to stifle what I had to say. It was controversial in their opinion, but to me it was not; I even explained to the user that the concept I posted is even taught in University of California schools. I felt the site lost a sense of democracy for myself when my posts kept getting deleted at first. Overall though, I feel proud that two of my five edits survived in the article. Now millions of people have the ability to see what I have written.