Writing for Wikipedia

           

            Working with Wikipedia was an interesting experience.  I have never worked with a wiki environment before, so this was my first time.  I chose to do a full Wikipedia page on Sex and Nutrition.  I wanted to do a topic that I have an interest in, and since I plan on doing sex therapy and nutrition for my PHD I thought why not do more research on the topics. 

            When we first started this project I was really excited and looking forward to it.  I was a little hesitant about doing a Wikipedia page because of how much work and because of my other work I had to do but it turned out to be not as bad.  I found it a real learning experience for writing in a totally different way. 

            I am use to writing non-fiction, fiction and personal types of pieces, so writing something that was all factual was a little harder for me.  I had to take myself out of the writing and only focus on the facts of the topics.  Even knowing all of this it was still hard for me because all I wanted to do was put personal experience in to it or other stories from people; I didn’t just want to do facts. 

            I have used Wikipedia in the past, for information I needed but I never realized how much work needed to go into writing an actual wiki page.  I always thought it was as simple as getting an account and just writing and making sure you cite your sources of information.  I always thought it was that easy, never did I think that it would be this hard to publish one small page for a class project. 

            When starting this project I did all the research, I got all the sources and pictures I needed, so I was set to write.  I started to write and that’s where I was getting stuck.  Usually, I sit down and I get focused and write but in all honesty I sat staring at my computer screen for about 20 minutes before even writing something.  I honestly had no idea how to start. I had all the facts; Because of my interest in these two topics, I have been doing a lot of research. I do have prior knowledge on sex and nutrition; I was just stuck on how to start.

            Now, I have written research papers before but it was different because it was allowed to be first person.  I finally started after sitting at my computer for 20 minutes, and once I did start, I found it a little easier to put the information together as time went on.  It ended up taking me a few days to actually write and have all the information fit together as a whole and flow. 

            The researching part was an interesting part of this project also.  I had to research two different topics and than the two topics together.  I decided to research sex first.  When researching sex I found most studies and information was coming out from doctors not in America.  I knew that most of my research was going to be from studies and doctors from mostly the UK. Prior to this class I have done a lot of research but I didn’t realize that most of my information was from websites and information from doctors in the UK. 

            Sex had a lot of information but I feel that most of the information after a while was just the same thing in different words.  I ended up using information I learned from a psychology class I took on human sexuality and sexual behavior so I could have a different insight and feel to the information I was giving.  Most of the research of sex is done for AIDS/HIV and other sexual transmitted diseases not the actual act of sex. There is not a lot of research about the actual act of sex and how it makes you feel or the different nerve endings in the body that can be stimulated and how it can help your body. 

            Nutrition by itself, as a topic, was easy to research but researching how nutrition affects your sex life was a harder topic to find information on.  I thought that trying to find facts about the two together would be a lot easier than finding them separately.  I found that people only recently within the past few years figured out that these two topics actually effects each other.  I believe there was always an idea about them being hand in hand but it wasn’t until a few years ago that doctors started to research and explore it thoroughly.  There was one article I found that was very helpful.  It was from an article at http://www.olaloa.com/sex-and-nutrition.html.  This article I found very helpful because it wasn’t just nutrition or sex, it explained how each food did a certain thing for someone’s sex drive and how it helps produce or block certain hormones to help.  It was the first article I have ever read that started out with saying, “Health and sex go together.”  It shows how they go hand in hand and how it helps your health in different ways but also how it will help your sex life. 

            This project should me a lot about writing just a factual piece of work, that must be cited and have pictures.  Being able to write this way is something that I will need in the future so I enjoyed the experience.  It was a different kind of project and now I have a lot of respect for the people who are able to post on Wikipedia because writing those articles are hard.