Ask a Wikipedian

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hi all! I’ve been bopping around these delicious forums for the past few days, and I absolutely love the “Ask a…” threads that I’ve found. The threads about the US prison system were particularly helpful as I happen to be writing a concept piece about that very topic!

Anywho, I thought it was only fair that I share some knowledge about some thing that I have had unique experiences with. Wikipedia is the first thing that popped into my head.

I’ve been actively editing for about 4 years now. Basic information about the stuff I’ve done there can be found at my userpage, but if there’s anything about my experiences or the Wikipedia culture that you’d like to know more about, ask away!

2

  1. Have you had any power struggles with other Wikipedians over any entries/content? How are disagreements or control issues settled?

  2. Have you ever met or talked to Jimmy Wales? What is your opinion of him?

3

What’s your stance on the “should Wikipedia be a citeable reference” controversy?
Do you think edits should be preapproved or is the current system better?

4

Is the whole IPA pronunciation thing real, or the biggest hoax ever perpetuated on man?

5

Do you know what he’s talking about? Of course the IPA is real, and of course it is used for pronunciation. That’s the point.

6

I’m guessing it was a joke on how horribly unintuitive (and sometimes baffling) the IPA symbols are.

7

Have you had any power struggles with other Wikipedians over any entries/content? How are disagreements or control issues settled?
I’ve certainly had disagreements over content issues, but nothing that I would call a power struggle. There are a number of ‘official’ dispute resolution methods, the most daunting of which is the Arbitration Committee, but I try to avoid that bureaucratic nonsense altogether. I try my best to have the other person understand my point and vice versa. If that doesn’t work, I try to come up with a reasonable compromise. If that doesn’t work, I just keep being civil but firm until someone walks away. Sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s not.

Have you ever met or talked to Jimmy Wales? What is your opinion of him?
I have never met Jimbo in person, though I have been to the Wikimedia office in San Francisco for a special event. If my flight back home had been a few hours later, I would have had the chance to meet him, but alas, it was not meant to be.

I have, however, had a number of email conversations with the man. He’s stubborn as hell! I struck up an argument about a particular policy that I thought was completely pointless (search WP:Pedophilia), and he made it very clear from the get-go that he wasn’t even going to consider changing his stance. I’m not going to quote him directly out of respect for his privacy, but he said something to the effect of “I have no problem talking about this, but the policy isn’t going change, and that’s that.”

I think that as a foundation leader, he does a great job. He consistently brings in donations and grants, and he personally travels all over the world to expand our outreach efforts. I think that as a Wikipedian, he’s clueless. In the entire history of Wikipedia’s existence, he has only made 1300 edits to actual articles. This isn’t a problem when he sticks to what he knows best (running the foundation), but it is a problem when he tries to stick his nose into content/editing issues, as he has done several times in the past.

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What’s your stance on the “should Wikipedia be a citeable reference” controversy?
Take a look at the article that you’re thinking about citing. Is it well-written, comprehensive, neutral, and most importantly factually verifiable with third-party sources? If the answer is no, then my answer is no: you should not cite the article as a reference. If the answer to these questions is yes, then my answer is that you don’t have to: you can check the facts in the footnotes at the bottom of the page.

I suppose that, in essence, my answer boils down to this: you should never need to cite Wikipedia as a reference.

Do you think edits should be preapproved or is the current system better?
This is one of the largest sources of debate within the Wikipedia community right now. However, I honestly don’t have a strong opinion on it simply because it doesn’t affect the work that I do either way. The articles that would be most affected by the implementation of a preapproval system are those that receive a lot of traffic, particularly religious articles and Biographies of Living Persons (BLP). I tend to work on articles that are of interest to a specialized audience. It is very rare that I have to revert vandalism or correct misinformation in the articles that I’ve written, so any change to the anonymous editing system would have almost no affect on what I do.

That being said, there are vast numbers of Wikipedians who do feel strongly about this on both sides of the fence. At this point, it doesn’t seem clear that there’s any real consensus on the matter, nor will there be for quite some time.

9

Where does Wikipedia rank statistically? (question purposely vague)

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**Is the whole IPA pronunciation thing real, or the biggest hoax ever perpetuated on man? **
Heh, IPA is pretty crazy. I can’t say that I would be able to look at the IPA for a word I had never seen and be able to figure out the pronunciation unassisted. What I do find helpful about IPA is clarifying details about words that I already have a basic idea of how to pronounce. Consider the word “Rwanda”. Without the IPA, there are at least three plausible pronunciations: “ruh WAHN duh”, “roo AHN duh”, and “urr WAHN duh”. I honestly had no clue which was correct until I saw the IPA: /ruːˈɑːndə/. While I don’t know what each symbol means off the top of my head, it’s fairly clear that the second pronunciation is the correct one. Epic win!

11

I’m fairly clueless about how Wikipedia works. You edit and write articles? What determines what you write and what you edit? Do you do this for fun or are you being paid?

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Not to steal Cryptic’s thunder, but the only publicly available metric shows Wikipedia as the 8th most trafficked on the Internet:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org

13

^Thanks JB.

As far as IPA, I’m gonna have a couple after work!

14

Where does Wikipedia rank statistically? (question purposely vague)
Justin Bailey may have answered your question with the #8 statistic, but here’s another that you may find interesting: In 2009, Wikipedia commanded 97% of the online encyclopedia market share. The proportions have obviously changed since then, but that still gives a good idea of how completely and totally Wikipedia dominates the interwebs.

I’m fairly clueless about how Wikipedia works. You edit and write articles? Do you do this for fun or are you being paid?
I was fairly clueless about how Wikipedia works before I started editing, so you’re definitely not alone! There are lots of different ways that people can contribute: content writing, peer review, copyediting, bot creation and maintenance, WikiProject organization, vandalism fighting, dispute resolution, images and media, new user mentorship, new page patrol, Articles for Deletion discussions, and so on and so forth. Some people choose highly specialized roles for themselves (checking hyphens and dashes, writing about mushrooms, etc.), while others like to keep it fresh by engaging a whole bunch of different activities.

The most important thing to know is that all of those tasks are completed entirely by volunteers. We are not paid by the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), we can choose to do any kind task that we want as long as we’re not assholes, we can retire or take breaks whenever we feel like it, and we are not required to divulge any information about our real identities – name, occupation, credentials, whatever. There is a small staff that works for WMF, and most of them have Wikipedia accounts, but none of their job responsibilities involve content editing – it’s mostly stuff like server maintenance, public outreach, fundraising, etc.

What determines what you write and what you edit?
Sometimes what I write about is determined by what sources I have available. I happen to have a massive encyclopedia of theater biographies, so from time to time I’ll crank out articles about obscure actors just for fun. Sometimes I work on improving Wikipedia’s coverage of an area that I’m already fairly knowledgable about, such as gamma-ray bursts. Sometimes I work on articles that I know absolutely nothing about, like the CSI effect, simply because it’s a fascinating and exciting process to learn and teach others all at the same time. Sometimes I get asked to review or collaborate on someone else’s work because they want an objective view from someone who isn’t familiar with the sources at all.

I hope this clears things up a bit for you. If not, feel free to ask more specific questions.