my first Wikipedia contribution ever
Well, editing Wikipedia wasn’t nearly as simple as they like to make it sound. It was easy enough to hit “edit this page,” but actually finding something to contribute wasn’t nearly as simple. There aren’t many things that I know or have access to that the internet hasn’t already marked up in a far more elegant way than I could. I dug around for a while (alright, so I actually got lost reading articles full of knowledge that I’ll probably never need), agonizing over where I could actually add something or make something better. You see, I’m a lurker. I’m the person who reads the forums, blogs, and whatever else but doesn’t necessarily always have something to add – I hate restating things that have already been said, and only contribute if I feel my input is at least somewhat significant or interesting.
After a while, trying to think of something obscure I knew about and might be able to edit, I landed on the topic of roguelikes. Specifically my favorite roguelike, ADoM (that’s Ancient Domains of Mystery for the uninitiated). I was surprised to see that the roguelike article itself had been up for deletion. Though very niche, it’s a really well-established genre of games that dates back quite a while, but the article was up for deletion largely because of the lack of sources and references. I ventured to ADoM’s page and noted that it, too, suffered from lack of citing (and some gaps in knowledge of the game), so I got to work.
I added sources to some statements in the article that could be considered subjective (someone referenced the game creator’s opinions without providing direct links). It took some time to locate the sources, but I dug through the author’s articles on his site until I found specific references and added them. I also did some general cleanup on the article and added a “Story” section, which is important to this particular roguelike. My lack of knowledge about Wikipedia syntax and confusion over citing sources increased the time it took to make the edits, and I had to leave some things in a less-than-perfect state, but by this morning some of the problems I encountered had been cleaned up – with my material still there, just looking much nicer.
I also added a screenshot of the ADoM overworld, which I feel is significant to the game since only a few roguelikes feature a static overworld. Hopefully it will stay there, but it seems there is a good deal of red tape regarding what images can be used, so I guess we’ll see.
