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Hello Wikipedians,
I just wanted to thank you all so much for participating in this experiment. It was absolutely fascinating. I was riveted to my computer, pressing refresh every 45 seconds to see the next iteration. And the next and the next. For the last few days, my wife has been what you might call a Wikipedia Widow.
I feel like I should submit all my articles to the community to get them Wikipedia-ized. I can't wait to print this in Esquire magazine.
Thanks again.
AJ Jacobs
This is one journalist's attempt to see how Wikipedia editors can improve an article he wrote as a demonstration of how the wiki process works. The article will be printed in an upcoming story about Wikipedia as a before and after to illustrate the power of collaborative editing.
Jimmy Wales agreed with the idea in an interview, so here goes the journalist's explanation of what he is looking for:
"The idea I had -- which Jimmy loved -- is that I'd write a rough draft of the article and then Jimmy would put it on a site for the Wikipedia community to rewrite and edit. [The magazine] would print the before and after versions of the article.
I interviewed Jimmy, and he read the article and was supposed to put it online, but he ran out of time and had to go to Brazil. [snip]
I just need the article put up on a site and the Wikipedia community told about its existence."
1) I put in a bunch of intentional mistakes (along with a couple of unintentional ones, I'm sure) so that the before/after would be a little more interesting.
2) The community should feel free to make as many changes as they want. The more, the better in my opinion. Changes in wording, in tone, in ideas, in structure -- whatever they want.
So... here's your chance to make this article a real one. All improvements welcome. Since this is to be reused in a magazine, all edits made to this article are released into the public domain.
Magazine is Esquire since this has been said on the Talk page ;-). The page is to be frozen sometime this week so that it can be printed.