I have long been familiar with the online encyclopedia platform, “Wikipedia”, as it has existed for nearly all of my life. I have immense respect for the many people who work hard in contributing to ensuring the site provides accurate information — from those who create new pages, bolster the credibility of these pages’ claims by providing reputable citations, as well as meticulously tweaking and editing pages to ensure the information provided on these articles is reliable and current.
Admittedly, I was not familiar with the editing process and entire editing “ecosystem” as a whole on Wikipedia. I was aware there appears to be a hierarchy when it comes to contributors on the site, and in order to become a well respected editor on the site, one needs to ensure his/her edits provide substantive, accurate information to the subject with reputable citations provided. An example of this “safeguarding” I discovered when looking into editing my very first Wikipedia article was being greeted by a “lock” icon in the top right-hand corner of the article, implying the article is semi-protected to prevent vandalism. While I respect this as a measure to ensure accurate information is preserved on these articles, I was a little disillusioned by it, as it appears the qualifying standards to semi-protected and non-protected articles appear to be quite arbitrary. Because I was a new user to the platform, the qualifications for editing semi-protected articles are the account needs to be at least four days old and have at least ten edits.
While I was discouraged at first, as many of the articles I found that I wanted to contribute to were semi-protected, I realized I could still assist in editing these pages via utilizing the “talk” page on the chosen article. While this may not be ideal, I figured it would still allow me to establish my reputation on the site, and as long as my contributions and feedback given on the talk page are accurate and backed up with reliable sources, I don’t see why it would not get added to the site by another contributor with more authorization for these types of pages. This is the essence of Wikipedia and what I have grown to respect about the platform (the collaborative effort amongst its user base to provide the largest, online, free encyclopedia).
I set out to make my first edit on Wikipedia through this method. I found a section on the Red Bull Wikipedia page highlighting the different variations the company has released throughout the years. Particularly I noticed the article did not have updated information regarding “Red Bull Zero”, as in early 2025, the company rebranded/reformulated this product to include monk fruit, among other alternative sweeteners. This may be a minor edit, but regardless, still relevant to this product’s history, as the last edit mentioning this was the initial release of the product back in 2018.
As of this moment, I have not received any notice or feedback regarding suggestion edit, however, I am optimistic my edit will make it onto the page and will update this post upon the outcome. I ensured to include a hyperlink to a relevant and reputable source discussing this reformulation, as well as provided context for me being a new user to the site, which I think is crucial as it establishes a sense of humility in the community. In my experience, when engaging in anything “new” or venturing into “unfamiliar” territory, it is important to approach the situation with a humble, yet confident, approach, ensuring your ego is put aside. This is exactly the approach I employed when making my suggestion, as there is most likely contributors on this page who are much more experienced than myself. Even if my suggestion gets denied, I am hopeful that I am provided meaningful feedback which will allow me to understand the platform better to make more substantive edits in the future.
Overall, I found the editing process to be relatively straightforward and simple. Despite the hiccup I ran into discovering some pages being safeguarded with editing privileges, I think I found a solid work around that allowed me to still contribute to these pages and join the Wikipedia contributor community.