Thing #16

I feel a certain amount of ownership about Thing #16 and #17 because I worked on the editing of both things with another member of the OCL Web Challenge committee. It was a great learning experience to edit and update the great material from the original version of the wiki things from Helene Blowers's 23 things at PCLMC. We replaced the original podcast with the great Youtube video from Common Craft. I learned how to embed that video for Thing #16. I was amazingly proud of myself for figuring that out on my own.

I started the Wikipedia article about OCL with the history article from an 1992 community profile, updated from the 2002 community profile. After convincing Wikipedia that I wasn't plagerizing and OCL gave permission to copy the history section from the OCL website, I started to work on the rest. It was surprising to me how quickly strangers stepped in to fix things, to "wikify" correctly as I learned to follow Wikipedia style. Strangers also added the great pictures of the interior of TR branch. There was a little vandalism but that was quickly fixed.

I have to admit, I was taken aback by one person's comment in a blog that the article was badly written but I choose to believe they meant the old stuff I didn't write! Thank you to the person who thought the article was well written. Now if I can only get some paragraphs written by the Diversity Committee, and a paragraph about Teen Services done by the Teen librarians. I've been asking!

I can't use Wikipedia anymore without checking the history and discussion tabs. They provide important clues about the quality of the article. If the article isn't getting attention from editors or if the discussion is very heated, you need to consider the article even more carefully than usual.

Anybody want to help with the Wikipedia article I'm writing about John Bailey Lloyd? It is still in my sandbox so unless someless beats me to it, you won't find it yet on Wikipedia. I think he deserves an article, don't you?