Editing Wikipedia for the First Time: What I Learned

I had always been strictly a Wikipedia reader before this exercise. I had never gone into Wikipedia to make any changes to articles and always thought that Wikipedia articles were complete and written by experts. Well, this task completely flipped this idea around for me. I have come to realise just how open Wikipedia is to change and just how important it is to cite sources when editing articles. In editing my test article, I chose to write about Sasabe, Arizona, because it is a small community just across from the border. The page needed additional information to help readers understand its history. After examining this page, I decided I would be able to add value to it by implementing two changes:

To update the population number based on the 2020 Census estimate for zip code 85633.

Adding a new section to Mission history based solely on confirmed information from a KGUN9 news article about Rancho de La Osa.

The update regarding the census data was relatively easy. In the original article, there was only data from 2010 regarding the population. I changed it to reflect the new estimated population of 51 from the latest data and added the correct citation. Simply changing this one element brings it up to date. The second addition required far greater attention to detail. I wrote a new subsection about Jesuit missionaries and Father Eusebio Kino’s role in the area. Still, I had to ensure every sentence I wrote came from the KGUN9 news article, as that was the sole source of the information. 

Below is the link to the article as modified by me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasabe,_Arizona 

I have also added some screenshots of changes I made to my document and how it looks in the edit history:

One of the interesting aspects of this process has been observing how changes occur. Wikipedia records every change to its pages instantly, and anyone can view them and even revert them if they like. Even small pages like Sasabe’s have "alive" features, such as talk pages and change history, for viewing how articles have developed. Nothing remarkable happened on my talk page, as I would expect for small pages. All of this has completely altered my perception of Wikipedia. I thought of Wikipedia as just a static encyclopedia written by unnamed experts. Now I realise it's a community effort, with familiar people like me dedicating their time to posting accurate information. The mere act of editing a single page opened my eyes to the level of diligence required.