Hi all, I edit(translate) articles on Wikipedia and spend a lot of time doing so. Should I include this as volunteer work when I apply to colleges? What types of volunteer works, community services do colleges prefer?
Colleges like anything you do for charity: feeding homeless, volunteering at humane society, church volunteering, idk helping an old neighbor woman clean her house or walk her dogs for free regularly.
I really don’t think (I could be wrong) that your work on Wikipedia counts.
Don’t call it volunteer work. It’s an extracurricular activity of the same type as writing poetry, which happens to be valuable. Mention it, but don’t mis-label it.
Hardly, IMO. Creative writing, art, and music aren’t the same type of thing as editing a website. Maybe if you created and coded websites you could argue that, but…just spending time on a website helping people? Would you put down “I frequent Yahoo Answers” as an extracurricular? “I go on College Confidential”?
Editing Wikipedia is much more notable. Berkeley now has a Wikipedian-in-residence. I’m not sure how you show the extent of your involvement but it is well worth mentioning. Wikipedia has a drive to increase the presence of women editors to represent women’s interests and history, so this is important stuff effecting many users. As is having articles in other languages so knowledge is accessible. Another poster here is also an editor and has received a Google grant to attend the annual conference, which was also nice for her resume and she is the person who received many scholarships.
Yes, Wikipedia editors are volunteers. In order to use it on an application, you should have a substantial, documented history with them.