Teenagers, as we all know, have embraced the Internet with open arms, together with all aspects of technology. While we look on such things as smart phones, faceBook, Itunes and such things with a healthy dose of skepticism, kids dive into them headfirst.
Wikipedia, so often maligned by academics who are frustrated by the potential for finding unsubstantiated information there, or information not endorsed by authorities, is in actual fact very useful for practical purposes. The whole point of Wikipedia is that it does not wait on authorities to endorse anything. Anyone can contribute information; it is simply flagged as unsubstantiated if there are no links to pages with established reliable information, or references to printed sources. If you want to use tentative information, you can. Kids love Wikipedia, simply because it is easy to use, and is relatively complete. They can Google stuff, too, but with Google you get directed to the most popular websites, not necessarily the most informative ones.
wikiHow appears to have evolved into a home for teenagers who feel the urge to give advice. The sheer volume of advice on matters exclusively of interest to teens is stunning. You get instructions, for example, about how to design a pony in Ponyville. (Ponyville, if you didn't know, is the center of the My Little Pony universe.)
Some of the advice is startling in the sheer nerve the author must have had to offer the advice in the first place; for instance an article about how to get back on your feet after serving a prison term. When you think about it, though, where would an ex-con go, to get disinterested advice? Out of the generosity of his heart, one of them has put together a surprisingly down-to-earth set of suggestions, and in fair good sequence, too.
I signed on as a volunteer, and every time I visit the site, there is a message for me begging me to patrol recent edits to posts. (There is obviously an apprenticeship period, where senior volunteers look over your shoulder. So far I have received Thumbs Up for good editing. Evidently younger editors are not careful readers, and sometimes miss problems in contributions entirely, or misunderstand the intention of a contribution. They're hardly to blame, because often the original intention is utterly opaque, which is the kindest thing I can say about some of the articles.
The articles range from being totally inane, to being utterly useful and inspired in their simplicity and effectiveness. The simplicity must come from the original article; the editorial process, because of the nature of the software, is more conducive to band-aids and superficial correction than wholesale restructuring. The routine editing that a volunteer is urged and invited to do is never likely to correct more than spelling, grammar (rarely) and punctuation.
There is also a big problem with voice. When a sexagenarian like me (my browser's spell-checker flagged 'hexagenarian', which it probably associates with witchcraft) is editing an article by a thirteen-year-old, just trying out her compositional wings, especially one who writes just as she speaks, in African-American dialect, it is likely to end up reading very differently than it started out. In fact, it could easily turn off other young readers because it sounds as if it originated with an adult.
Luckily they have a forum, and I've raised some issues there.
If any of my readers have the time for it, I urge you to sign up with wikiHow, and help things along. My advice is to take it slow; getting too involved too fast is likely to burn you out. It is far easier to keep your smile on if you don't get frustrated by tackling too many tasks on the site right away (even if they want you to).
Other places you ought to think of supporting with your participation are
- Amazon.com reviews. If you've bought stuff on Amazon, consider reviewing them, despite the fact that your review helps the website. Amazon hardly needs our help, but the customers do.
- The Distributed Reading Project of the Gutenberg Project. This is in the same tradition as wikiHow, and has a similar apprenticeship process, even more stringently carried out. But they have a more difficult task, and unless they have capable volunteers, they'll continue to process useless pabulum, rather than the priceless public domain books that are just a little harder to get into e-book or simplified pdf format.
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