Hello there! For my blog assignment and project this week I learned about editing Wikipedia with my user account. Like many others (likely including yourself) I love learning and falling into Wikipedia “rabbit holes” of knowledge. It is so easy to lose track of time while leaning new and readily available information, and I was curious to learn what it was like to be on the creation side of Wikipedia.
I have never been on the side of adding new information to a page, and it was an interesting and unique learning process!
When I began the assignment, I had to brainstorm a little bit what as to what would be a fun topic to edit. I recently found a link to the original Dr. Suess screenplay of the 1953 film The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. It was one of my favorite films as a child and is not widely known about, (Dr. Suess himself wanted to forget it was ever made) and when exploring the Wikipedia page about the film I saw an opportunity to add an interesting fact about the film that I first learned a few years back on IMDB.
The fact that I added is the following text: “The lyrics to the “Elevator Dungeon” song featured in the film had the third verse omitted, [6]which featured references to torture and execution methods, including spiked beds and gas chambers.” The lyrics of the third verse that were omitted are “Third floor dungeon, household appliances, spike beds, electric chairs, gas chambers, roasting pots, and scalping devices”. The lyrics were thought to be too dark for the historical time period, so they were cut.
I first tried using the original IMBD fact as my source to cite the musical film fact, but that was rejected a few hours later. I luckily had a backup source that I used to cite my edit instead.
The second source contained the song and composer information for the song from the film. If you are interested in hearing the song, it can be found on YouTube from user “The xNYr”.
After this assignment, I have gained a deeper respect for those who make the website thrive and run, and allow others to learn new information. I definitely would love to explore more editing through Wikipedia and get better at this skill.
When I originally posted my plan to the “talk” page for the film, I was cautioned that posting the lyrics verbatim could pose potential copyright issues for my edit on the site. Wanting to play on the safe side, I described the omitted lyrics with the source being the link to what those removed lyrics were.
I definitely found the editing side of Wikipedia to be interesting. It takes many minds to help the community thrive and exist for those who want to learn more about an ocean of available topics, and I was happy to be one of those minds in the community contributing information into the world!
Edit: As I was about to submit my blog post, I checked the page again and saw that my source was rejected again. While I’m glad there were no copyright issues, I hopefully can obtain a better source for the information. I’m hoping I can track down the physical media, which may have a better source for me to use.
