My first Wikipedia edits

Activity Two of 'Topic 2.2 - Wikis' was to edit Wikipedia. Since I know something about the product safety system in Australia, I checked what was said about it on the ACCC page. Creating an account for and editing Wikipedia was easier than I expected. The old section on product safety read:

Product recall

The ACCC also cares of nation wide product recall and the following organisations are commissioned to assisting surveillance and monitoring of products quality in relevant areas [5].

• Food products - Food Standards Australia New Zealand
• Motor vehicles Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government (Australia)
• Therapeutic goods - Therapeutic Goods Administration
• Agricultural and veterinary products - Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority
• Electrical goods - Australian Electrical Equipment Safety Regulators
• Gas and appliance - Gas Technical Regulators Committee Australia New Zealand

Beside having a grammatical error, this section wasn't very clear. I fixed the grammatical error and tried to give the reader a better understanding of how product safety worked in Australia. My revised section initially read:

Product safety and recalls

The ACCC maintains a recalls website listing all Australian product recalls and the following organisations are commissioned to assist with surveillance and monitoring of product safety in relevant areas [5].

• Food products - Food Standards Australia New Zealand
• Motor vehicles Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government (Australia)
• Therapeutic goods - Therapeutic Goods Administration
• Agricultural and veterinary products - Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority
• Electrical goods - Australian Electrical Equipment Safety Regulators
• Gas and appliance - Gas Technical Regulators Committee Australia New Zealand

The ACCC, in conjunction with state and territory offices of fair trading, is responsible for developing and enforcing mandatory consumer product safety standards except where the product falls into the jurisdiction of one of the specialist regulators mentioned above.

I also added two lines to the external links section:

Product Safety Australia website (maintained by ACCC)

Recalls website (maintained by ACCC)

Let's see if my changes remain. Wikipedia said there were 'less than 30 watchers'.

My greatest fear

My greatest fear in studying WEB101 is referencing: how to do it, where to find sources, what counts as an appropriate source. I'm familiar with a lot of the content of this course, so, more than anything, what I hope to achieve is to grok academic writing.

Blogging and me

I kept a blog from 2002 to 2009. It was a personal blog - a place to share thoughts and experiences, but mostly it was a record of significant events in my life. I was not a very consistent blogger. Sometime months would go by without a post. When micro-blogging came along, it suited my need to records significant events or random thoughts much better. So, I abandoned blogging for Twitter. However, one lasting effect of blogging was meeting the woman who is now my wife. We met and got to know each other in the "blogosphere".

Thankfully, this blog has a specific purpose - to record my learnings and observations while studying WEB101 from Curtin University through OUA.