Freakypedia

My first experience with Wikipedia is quite uncertain. Indeed, I wanted to write an article about Rhea, the new member of the hip hop band N.E.R.D created by famous rap singer and producer Pharrell Williams.

So I started by gathering peaces of information about the singer, which wasn't easy as her career just started. Then I created an account on Wikipedia in a wink of an eye, and wrote about Rhea. Once I finished my post, I pressed publish and that's when it got tricky !

My article, is actually not an article yet, it appears on Wikipedia as a discussion. I believe it means that the Wikipedia Team first needs to check if my post gives correct information, if I didn't break any rules by publishing it, and so on...

The problem is, my article is linked to Wikipedia's ornithology project ! I know it sounds weird, because my article is about a R'n'B singer, but I actually discovered that Rhea was also the name of a special kind of ostrich ! I couldn't find the family name of the singer, but I guess the fact that an article already exists under the word Rhea is a problem.

If only this was my only one...I just realized that I had done something very stupid : posting an article in english on the french Wikipédia ! Congratulations, you just cross the line to completely useless ! So needless to say my article is going to disappear any minute...And I just can't manage to post it on the english site ! Ok, let's just say that my first experience with Wikipedia was chaotic.

But beyond the fact that my article about Rhea was a failure, I learned a lot about this incredible tool that is Wikipedia. I had no idea that this online encyclopedia was so controled, I guess I thought that posting an article was just as easy as creating your account. It's frustrating because I spent time finding stuff to say about this singer. But in way, I'm quite impressed by the way Wikipedia imposes its own rules to its users. I think it is necessary, because if anyone could write anything on it, well it couldn't be trusted as a performing tool and a reference in terms of modern knowledge. Even if Wikipedia shouldn't be your only source of information when you want to learn about something, I think it is a good start to know the basics. And if it keeps on being controled like this, it might become even more performing and reliable.