Honey is as Delicious as Wikipedia is Informative

I've always believed honey has medicinal properties. I've sipped honey when I suffered a sore throat, I have rubbed honey into burns, and of course, I have dripped honey over my English muffins. My love for this serum inspired me to read up all about honey, on Wikipedia of course. I poked through Wikipedia's entry on honey, and I saw nothing about its medicinal traits, so I decided to add it in, so that others could share in this useful knowledge.

Under the Hitsory, Culture and Folklore section, I added that "Some cultures believe honey has many practical health uses. It was used as an ointment for rashes and burns, and used to help soothe sore throats when no other medicinal practices were available." I personally agree with this statement, and I wish other to try it as well, unless their allergies don't allow them to!

Update: Even a week and a half after updating the page, my entry has not been edited. I am surprised by this because although I feel this is useful information, I have no legitimate citations to back up my cause. However, my entry is quite minimal, and under a wiki page that probably isn't visited so often, so I can see how it has gone unnoticed.

Update #2: Even after a month and a half (and my confession via this blog) my wikipedia entry still hasn't been edited or deleted! Cool!

WP: NPOV

As we've learned in class, Wikipedia participants are generally quite adamant on sticking to the rules of the game. Wikipedia as a collective prides itself on sticking to certain principles, one of which is always taking the neutral point of view; another is using the "wiki process of consensus" used as the decision-making process for all posted content. With this understanding, I took to a controversial Wiki page to check out the discussion to see exactly how this works in action.

I came upon The Holocaust because it is generally an emotionally-charged topic, and some hold differing opinions about the subject. As I scrolled through the discussion page, one discussion in particular caught my eye. Abie the Fish Peddler suggested the page be moved to "Shoah", a Hebrew term denoting the Holocaust. Because most of the discussion was about the meaning of these terms, lets give some background. The term "holocaust" was originally derived from a Greek word meaning "a sacrificial offering to the gods". It eventually grew to denote massive sacrifices and massacres. During WWII, the term was used as it is understood today, to describe the atrocities of Nazi soldiers. The term "Shoah" is biblical in nature, meaning "calamity". It became the standard Hebrew term for the word holocaust since the early 1940s. This term is preferred by many Jews because of the theological reference to a Greek pagan custom.

The argument was based around the opinion that Shoah has a specific relationship to the Holocaust, and the term holocaust is broader in scope. The discussion was quite lengthy, partly because the user had good arguments for wanting to redirect the page. However, after much analysis, the consensus decided to keep the page as the Holocaust, merely because the term is better known in English speaking countries (Shoah is only used in some Jewish groups). I felt this was a fair assessment and I was honestly impressed with the amount of discussion it took to reach a conclusion.


(Parry, read the comment!! He found my blog!)