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“I’m so booooored” Blythe grumbled to her best friend Youngmee, flopping over to the other side of her bed with a thump. Youngmee cocked her head inquisitively through Blythe’s laptop, placed in front of Blythe on the bed, on a video call.
“You have the wonders of modern technology in your hand. Why not contribute to the knowledge base of human kind?” asked Youngmee.
Blythe paused, contemplating the idea. “You mean, put this big head of mine to good use?”
Youngmee nodded. “I’m an active Wikipedian. Sorry, that’s jargon for Wikipedia editor. Even throughout the duration of this call, I’ve been fixing a spelling error on the [[Videotelephony]] page. There was a blatant violation of [[MOS:ARTCON]], so I was [[WP:BOLD]] and corrected it.”
Blythe was left with a blank countenance. “What the huh are you talking about, Mee?”
“Here, it’s easy. Open up your web browser, go to Wikipedia, find an article you care about – but don’t have a [[WP:COI]] with! – and just edit away. It’s best to make an account first, and you should familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. At least read about the Pillars of Wikipedia before making any major edits. It’s easy!”
Blythe raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Easy, huh?”
Youngmee smiled. There was a distinct beep coming from her computer, a mouse click, and a moment later Youngmee’s eye shot wide open. “Sorry, Blythe, someone just vandalised a page on my watch list. Got to go. Bye!” The call ended as quickly as she spoke.
Blythe shrugged, mumbling to herself, “Wikipedia huh? That could be fun.”
She followed Youngmee’s instructions. Mostly. She made the account [[User:BlytheB]], blatantly ignoring the real name guideline. Following the trend, she made a simple user page:
Hi, I’m Blythe Baxter. I’m still young, but when I grow up, I want to be a fashion designer like [[Mona Autumn]]. I edit from the United States, although I’m part Canadian, and I speak… well, I speak whatever language you get the dub in! Sometimes English, sometimes Spanish…
She then looked around for articles in need of improvement, following Youngmee’s advice at least a little bit. Quickly she found the article “Old Bananas” which contained a tense mismatch right there in the lead. Grinning to herself, she clicked Edit, corrected it with the visual editor, forget to add an edit summary, and clicked “Publish”! She soon noticed the message in her notifications drop-down congratulating her on her first contribution to Wikipedia.
She received an alert a few minutes later that there was a new message on her talk page. “Talk page?” she wondered. Opening it, she discovered a welcome template left by a user with the cryptic name “Gsys”, once again reminding her of the basic Wikipedia policies, reading material which Blythe was more than happy to postpone.
Feeling more comfortable with the interface already, Blythe looked for articles in need of more substantial contributions. She quickly found the article on “Largest Ever Pet Shop”, which contained a banner at the top noting that the article was full of promotional material and violations of [[WP:NPOV]].
She scanned through the article text, confirming what the banner stated. There was a section, for instanced, titled “Critical Reception”, which did not even make sense for an establishment, rather than a film or book. “Critical Reception” contained:
Largest Ever Pet Shop is, like, the largest ever – and, like, best ever pet shop – in [[Downtown City]]. And probably, like, the world too. Like, everybody agrees that it’s, like, ‘’’way’’’ better than the Littlest Ever Pet Shop. Or whatever. Like, critics like totally say that you should, like, totally come to the Largest Ever Pet Shop and, like, give us – I mean them – all your, like, money.
Blythe frowned to herself, and with resolve decided to fix the encyclopaedic catastrophe, amending the section to read:
Largest Ever Pet Shop is a large pet shop in [[Downtown City]], although pets hate it. Its “day camp” program is widely agreed to be inferior to that of its competitor [[Littlest Pet Shop]], and although its selection is larger for certain classes of pet products, it is much more expensive. Therefore, pets and pet owners alike should come to Littlest Pet Shop!
She was proud of herself for fixing the issue, but a moment later, she got a beep in her inbox, telling her that her edit has been reverted. The section once again was full of pro-Largest propaganda and the phrase “like whatever”. Infuriated, she refreshed the page again to see yet another edit to the section from the user “CutestGirlsEver”, adding the sentence to the end,
Also, you should definitely avoid Littlest Pet Shop since, like, Blythe Baxter works there, and Blythe is, like, ewwwww.
Blythe narrowed her eyes in disbelief. “That’s slander!” she yelled to herself. Blushing, she corrected herself in a much humbled voice. “I mean, libel.” She proceeded to click the “revert” button herself on the page, and then added the phrase instead,
Critics have noted that the Largest Ever Pet Shop engage in illegal marketing practices.
This remark, once again, was reverted by the same user, who then added back in:
Littlest Pet Shop is, like, the Worst Ever Pet Shop!
Blythe reverted, once again, and decided to revert the original revert so it would read like her much more unbiased version of the page. Of course, a moment later, the same user reverted that revert, and a few minutes of this cycle later, Blythe received a message in her inbox stating that she has been blocked for edit warring.
She frowned, and switched over to another window where she called Youngmee.
“Hi Blythe, what’s up?” Youngmee chirped.
“Hi Youngmee. What does it mean to get blocked for edit warring?” Blythe asked naively.
“It means that if a pair of editors continually makes unconstructive edits, reverting each other’s changes, generally they will both get blocked, depending on the severity of the case. Not that that would ever happen to you; you’re way too mature for that, and you’ve read all about it in the policy guide, right?” Youngmee winked.
Blythe rolled her eyes nervously. “Riiiight.”
Youngmee looked at her seriously. “You did read the links I sent you? On your talk page? I’m Gsys; it’s a silly nickname I made up, standing for Green Shirt Youngmee Song. The page for Old Bananas is on my watch list, so when you edited, I checked your user page, et voila.”
Blythe bit her lip. “Um, no. I was going to do that, um, later? And then I kind of got into an edit war with the Biskit twins?”
Youngmee teared up a little bit. “Well then. You’re my best friend, Blythe, and I won’t stay mad at you… but the Wikipedia community is my second best. I’ll… I’ll see you at school tomorrow, Blythe.” She ended the call and closed the application.
Blythe stared back up at the ceiling as blank-faced and bored as she started.
“That was fun while it lasted.”