WikiToLearn:the rebellion I was looking for.

Hi everybody,

I’m Sofia, a 22 years old physics student of Milano-Bicocca university. With this article I want to open my heart to you and narrate my deepest feeling about the project I’m taking part in.

Since I was a child I’ve felt not only the desire but also the strong need of changing the world in which I’m living. I saw and I see an overwhelming tendency to commercialize everything, a spreading philosophical point of view which look at things according to their practical usefulness, often forgetting the existence in some things of an unselfish beauty whose pursuit can make us better people and fulfil our hungry souls.

Knowledge is just this. A thing of unselfish beauty in the world. Something that elevates us. An object of love.

There’s nothing bad about looking at the practical usefulness of knowledge and research if you always keep in mind that their essence is not their usefulness but their beauty and their ability of feeding us, make us grow, get us to love.

That’s why I’m taking part into WikiToLearn project, whose guideline is “Knowledge only grows if shared”. It’s my way of rebelling against the commercialization of knowledge. My role in this project is mainly as an editor: I write and correct pages and help new users to get familiar with wiki language. Writing lots of pages can be demanding but the satisfaction is inexpressible: you make something that people from all over the world can take advantage of,can edit and improve. You see your work get better and better thanks to the help of other students until a complete book is available. And in the end you’re happy like a child in front of his LEGO building made with the help of his friends.

Taking part into WikiToLearn project is also teaching me how to work in group and I think it’s making me a better student than I was, since trying to be clear in the presentation of a topic implies reading the same topic on different books and develop your own explanation version.

What about the upcoming sprint? I’m really excited about it! It’ll give me the opportunity to meet the participants I’ve never met and to make a full-immersion in the work on the project, with the possibility of discussing face- to -face with the others ( and not only through telegram channels) and thus allowing us to organize better.