editing wikipedia & other things i’ve never done before

I have never gone skydiving.

I have never broken a bone.

I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶e̶d̶i̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶W̶i̶k̶i̶p̶e̶d̶i̶a̶ ̶e̶n̶t̶r̶y̶.̶

I have done that! With the new semester came new opportunities to tick items off my bucket list—even items I did not think would be there before I started this MA program. Editing a Wikipedia entry was one of them. Something unexpected, yes. Enjoyable nonetheless.

Documenting the process as it was happening on Twitter was part of the fun; as well as doing it with all my classmates in one room together, with real-time input from the English UCC Twitter account. I also chose a topic I really enjoy talking about: the Byronic Hero, which I explored during my undergrad for my Bachelor’s dissertation.

While I initially was looking forward to editing Edward Cullen’s (yes, the vampire) page, so as to give it a bit more depth when it comes to his characterisation and the archetypal theory that helped the author build his character, the page was semi-protected. Meaning I could not touch it without permission. Whatever.

This was the next best thing!

That is how I found the page. Pure. Untouched before I put my hands on it and reshaped it (for the better, I hope).

As I was live-tweeting on my profile, I expanded the ‘origins of the Byronic Hero’ section a bit, noting how fiction and reality blended for some readers, and backed it up with the necessary citations.

My next move, instead of throwing more information onto the page, was deleting some (one) sentences. I felt mischievous doing it—like I should not have. At the end of the day, that was something someone else before me had put there, and they probably felt the same way as I was when they did it.

I still think the entry was better without that sentence.

It simply seemed like it was floating in the middle of nowhere, with no real direction, and that it did not add anything special or of importance to the overall concept of what the Byronic hero is. Moreover, we get a ‘later influence’ section a mere scroll down, so it was simply unnecessary. Sorry, unknown person that put it there. I had to.

AND THEN!

I decided it would be a good idea to add more mainstream/film/pop culture characters to the “influences” section, as I feel the archetype is a big part of the media we consume and people do not always make that connection. It was a part I thoroughly enjoyed researching for my undergrad thesis, and something I thought casual readers would like to encounter if they were to randomly stumble upon the Byronic Hero page.

As I informed my Twitter followers and whoever was tracking the hashtag that morning, I had to leave for work, but that was about everything I was looking forward to edit in that entry. It is now a bit more meaty, and I hope I enriched it with useful information and a theoretical background.

Maybe next time I will get the credentials I need and go back and finally edit Edward Cullen’s page, who knows.