One of the most convenient sources for information today – information on just about anything – is the online encyclopedia at www.wikipedia.org.
Wikipedia is crowdsourced. In theory, just about anyone can set up an article on just about anything. So you might have an article on Glenn Curtiss, say, or polio… and another, possibly even longer, on “Petticoat Junction.”
Most anyone would agree that Glenn Curtiss and polio are more significant topics, but on the other hand some people DO want information on the six actors who played the three Bradley girls, so why shouldn’t they be able to find it? With an on-line source, it doesn’t encumber the more significant articles.
Crowdsourcing provides a chance for knowledgeable folks to communicate that knowledge. Unfortunately it also gives a chance for the uninformed, the mischievous, or even the dishonest. One of my sons had friends who, just for amusement, edited the polar bear entry to say that the bears locate their prey through echo-location. Not true, of course, but the “fact” stood for several days before someone caught it and deleted it, reminding us that valuable though Wikipedia is, you need to take it with a grain of salt.
There are editors who challenge entries or call for revisions, and many articles have caveats included. And in a sense anyone can be an editor, which finally gets us to our point.
Years ago I set myself up with an “account” so as to make entries on Wikipedia. I don’t remember just why, but I think I was making some small corrections to articles on pioneer aviators.
Since becoming director of the Steuben County Historical Society, though, I have taken it upon myself to do what I can in cleaning up Steuben County entries. Some of this has been just a matter of correcting typos, an unglamorous but worthwhile activity.
Sometimes, though, the changes are more substantive, as was the case with a set of related entries on Prattsburgh, Marcus Whitman, and Narcissa Prentiss Whitman.
First of all, the entry said that Prattsburgh was in the Genesee Valley. I suspect I can track the line of confusion that led to this curiosity. Our whole region was once known as “the Genesee Country.” This is a much bigger area than the Genesee Valley, but the mix-up would be easy to make. Anyhow, I deleted that.
Narcissa’s entry erred in the opposite direction and even more startlingly, saying that she had attended Franklin Academy “in the Hudson Valley.” I did some checking to make sure that she had in fact gone to “our” Franklin Academy, in Prattsburgh, and made the change accordingly.
Neither entry mentioned the open-to-the-public Narcissa Prentiss House. I thought that was worth mentioning, so I did so. To the list of honors for Marcus Whitman I added mention of a bronze plaque in Wheeler (where he practiced medicine), and his listing in the Steuben County Hall of Fame.
One correction I made was in the article on W. Sterling Cole, former member of Congress and director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. His piece located Pleasant Valley Cemetery in Erwin – either Painted Post or Coopers Plains, I forget which. I verified that he was in fact buried at Pleasant Valley, then corrected the location to Urbana.
In several cases I did updates, or added facts that seemed worthwhile. I mentioned that Randy Kuhl is in the Hammondsport Central School wall of Fame for lifetime achievement. I noted that Davenport Library is no longer a library – the building is the Steuben County History Center, while the new Dormann Library’s next door. I reported that the museum at the DL&W depot in Painted Post is operated by Corning-Painted Post Historical Society. I added Corning Christian Academy to the list of schools in that city.
One job I put off for years, hoping someone else would fix it, because I didn’t know how. Town Line Church and Cemetery in Rathbone somehow got listed as Town LINKE Church, both in its own entry and on the list of National Register sites in Steuben County. This meant that if you searched (correctly) for Town Line Church you’d never find it.
So one day I bit the bullet and made the change, then sat back to see what would happen. What happened (thank heaven) was that an editor got involved. Changing the text was no problem, but changing the title required a higher authority. In our exchanges I pointed out the error in Wikipedia’s National Register list, and he kindly took care of that too.
So, maybe none of these changes are vital, but if you can’t even find the entry, that matters. Likewise the corrections mean that errors will not be perpetuated, and judicious additions can flesh out the descriptions. It’s no the most important thing I do with my days (and I don’t do it often), but it improves the world’s sore of knowledge and information on our area. Unless someone puts in echolocation. But that’s a challenge for another day.