Editing a Child Obesity Wikipedia Page
I noticed throughout my exploration of various child obesity related Wikipedia sites that none of them had very recent statistics about the percentage of obese children in the US. The most common recent statistics seemed to have been from 2008 or 2010. I first attempted to edit the “Child obesity” page and add in a 2014 statistic. However, it was “semi-protected” and in order to edit it I had to become a member, make 10 edits, and wait 4 days until I could make changes. So I decided to move on to a different site.
I understand the purpose for semi-protecting more popular pages, however I also think it deters people from making good and relevant edits on the page. Maybe if the “Child obesity” page wasn’t semi-protected, someone would have added a more recent statistic by now.
I ended up editing the “Obesity in the United States” page. This page had a section dedicated to obesity in children and the most recent statistic was from 2008. I added that in 2014, about one-third of children in the US are obese or overweight. This section seemed to be mainly devoted to the history behind child obesity and how it is becoming an increasing problem. However, it didn’t mention why it was such a big issue until the very end. To make people want to keep reading the section, I included that the reason it is such a large problem is because kids are developing health problems that previously weren’t seen until adulthood. I also added my citation to the page.
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After:
Editing Wikipedia wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. The source code they use is easy to learn if you just follow along with how other people have used it and adapt that to your own edit. It has been a few hours since I made my edit, and so far it has stuck!
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