For our small exploration into the world of Wikipedia editing, I took a crack at revising the entry on Theatre Journal, which is one of the top journals in theatre studies. Prior to the revisions I submitted yesterday afternoon (4 March 2015) at 19:36, the page had had no activity since 9 July 2014, but even the edits made last year were only minor; the content of the entry had not been substantially altered since March 2012. When I came upon the entry, it looked like this:

As Michael had suggested to me during our Wikipedia workshop, I began my edits by looking at entries on other academic journals. I quickly realized that at the very least I could add some information about the history of Theatre Journal, find some much-needed citations for the entry, and make minor corrections to the entry’s content (e.g. updating the name of the current editor). I thought that my edits took a huge step in improving the content (and usefulness) of the Wikipedia page.

And thus ends the editing process, right?!

Minutes before class last night, I decided to check on the entry and see if anyone had swooped in to revert my edits, and I was surprised to see that Randykitty published additional revisions to the Theatre Journal page less than an hour after my own revisions went up. Before I decided to get personally offended, I checked out the revision history page.

I synthesized the edits one at a time. “Cleanup” … okay. That’s generally a good thing. “Remove contents list” … I don’t like the idea of removing any of the material I added, but perhaps I added something to the entry that should not have been included. I am new to this and others out there know much more about it than I do. “Add abstracting info” … absolutely no idea what that means, so I’ll have to check it out on the page itself.

As you can tell from the revised page, Randykitty’s revisions did a lot to cleanup the entry and make it look more like a standard Wikipedia page–and by that I mean that there’s now magically a Contents box listing the page’s different headings.

I had added information about the journal’s history, but I hadn’t made a section heading. Thanks, Randykitty. The abstracting and indexing information is also something that I would never have done. Another positive improvement. My list of recent special issues was removed, but as Randykitty informed me, pages should not be used as directories. After some reflection (and my initial anger at having my own [perhaps not so] invisible labor become even more invisible), I understand Randykitty’s rationale behind removing my list as it was. Indeed, I had merely cataloged the last six special issues of the journal. However, there still might be cause to mention some of the journal’s past special issues in order to demonstrate the types of subjects that the journal considers noteworthy. Perhaps this is something that I should discuss on the talk page. It’s also interesting to note that my brief list of notable previous editors did not get removed. My list, which consists of Sue-Ellen Case, Susan Bennett, and Jean Graham-Jones, is factual, although the inclusion of prominent female scholars (and the omission of male editors) clearly demonstrates a political positioning on my part to fight back against systemic bias.

The only other noticeable deletion was a sentence taken from the front matter of the journal itself about the publication’s subject matter and approach. I had revised a simpler version of the statement in my own edits, so I had some attachment to its inclusion, and I haven’t yet decided if the removal of the statement helps or hinders the page’s content. My shift from “performing arts” to “theatre arts” (another conversation worthy of the talk page) was retained in a different sentence, which I like, but the deleted statement also included information about the journal’s scope, and I think that such information could be informative for Wikipedia users.

It’s interesting to consider that some of Randykitty’s revisions could have been made before my own. Certainly the abstracting and indexing information could have been generated previously, as could the LCCN and OCLC numbers (whatever the heck those are). Yet, Randykitty, whose user page indicates that s/he spends most of his/her time editing articles on academic journals, waited until after I had made some significant changes. At the moment, though, and having just finished reading Joseph Reagle’s book chapter “Nazis and Norms,” I’m deciding to perpetuate the notions of goodwill and collaboration. This is part of the process, right? If I want to continue to edit and talk about the Theatre Journal Wikipedia page, it looks like there’s someone else here with whom I can engage.