The first time I did it I simply removed a completely unnecessary reference to a criminal as being black.
The one I just added was to Paul Feig, the creator of Freaks and Geeks. I knew him in the 80’s when I was doing standup. He was doing standup too, and he was amazing. Easily one of my favorites of all time. I was so disappointed when he gave it up, and disappointed that so little video exists.
(I also knew Doug Benson, much better than I knew Paul. Doug and I hung out quite a bit for awhile and he had the coolest thing in the world in his living room: the original (he said, I don’t know - but it certainly looked it) neon sign “Bates Motel”. His act was extremely funny and very different than it is now- he was doing a kind of dark, morbid version of Steven Wright, with the non-sequitor observations in a deadpan delivery. I liked that a lot better .)
Yes, but only for obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes.
I get the impression (which may be incorrect) that you may have to spend a lot of efforts defending yourself and arguing with people who may not be all that knowledgeable in the subject matter if you make more substantial changes.
I wrote an article for a webcomic way back when, before Wikipedia went all Serious Business and removed it for not being “notable” enough.
I’m a full-time Troper (i.e. TV Tropes, that lovely little time-waster) now. Still a much more relaxed place, even if it does generate its own wank problems from time to time.
Only a couple of times, but I think one was significant.
I changed the wording in the main article on the Challenger disaster. It had previously said the shuttle “exploded”. I changed the wording to explain that it disintegrated aerodynamically. More detail on that has been added by others in the article.
Just once, but it was important to me. It concerned a mathematical concept that I created and the article, while not wrong, was woefully lacking. I included the original and expanded on it.
I’ve made over 2200 edits, which counts everything from correcting misspellings to the creation of new articles. And I’d like to note that your edit to the article on Paul Feig counts as original research, which is verboten within Wikipedia.
That could pretty much describe me, down to the wiki I’m more likely to participate in.
But I did get pretty good at getting Wikipedians to listen to me. Cite everything, including the policy that allows you to say what you want to say. Unless it’s a newb, in which case you actually explain the policy, and why it is a good thing to follow in this case.
I wrote two short articles for Swedish Wikipedia sites concerning mythological motifs; for no other reason than the heck of it. I figured perhaps I would turn this into sort of a hobby, but never got back to it, unfortunately.
I’ve only done it twice. The first was to remove the word “banana” from the text of the 17th Amendment and the second time I edited an article that had a paragraph that was only the word “penis” repeated over and over again.
I try to make sure my knowledge is put to good use.
I’ve made a number of grammatical and typo corrections. I’ve also done a very small number of factual corrections of clarifications but I can’t recall any at the moment.
Only once. Some juvenile wit had changed the title of a Dashiell Hammett story collection to “The Big Knockers.” I changed it back to the correct title, “The Big Knockover.”
They now have bots that can identify vandalism such as the replacement of the text with words like “penis”, and revert such changes automatically. The bots are amazingly accurate and are wrong only rarely.
Back when I was drinking the academic Kool-aid, I wrote several articles about people in my field. Two of them are still there, one without any challenges.
I’ve also edited grammar and spelling a few times.
Well, I’ll bet your edit is removed soon. You didn’t “sign on” as a user, some “editor” will remove your contribution for some reason or other, perhaps as Dewey Finn sez “original research”.
Just about any time I edit wiki for any reason- even a glaring typo or vandalism- but am not signed on as a user (I can’t sign one from work, but I can from home), my edit is undone.