I know lots of Dopers also write or edit articles on Wikipedia (Some of them listed here).
My question is why do you do it? Is it something noble such as Contributing to Public Knowledge, or more mundane such as boredom or curiosity?
Any and all opinions welcome, whether you’re a major contributor, or simply corrected a misspelled word once just to see how it worked.
I haven’t written for Wikipedia but I used to write similar articles on another site. I did it mainly because it was fun. I love to write, and getting an audience is even better, and sharing my knowledge on whatever I wrote was just… satisfying. I was also a sub-editor on the same site, and that I did mainly because I really liked the community, and felt it was a good way to make a contribution to it.
I think that the motivations for contributing to Wikipedia and participating in several of the forums on this board largely overlap. Why did I help someone figure out their computer problem the other day or answering that obscure question today? I kind of like helping people, I love knowledge, and I love to put knowledge to use. I don’t know why, some similar things don’t appeal to me at all.
I do it because it’s fun and I’m bored.
I do it because the stuff I write is specialised enough that it probably still hasn’t been written yet, but not so specialised that nobody will read it (Australian railways).
Mostly I do little edits to fix grammar and tortured wording. But when I add information, it’s just because I know stuff that isn’t in there. It’s roughly the same reason I post here. I like to communicate and share information with people. I suppose being awake late at night is also a factor. 
I have never written anything, but I think it is great that people take the time to share their knowledge.
I have always been impressed by the Gutenberg Project (I think that is the name) that requires people to actually re-type entire novels to be uploaded so that anyone in the world has free access to some great literature.
Altruism is a wonderful thing.
With great power, comes great responsibility
Mostly, I like being a smarty-pants. (Check out Candy bar and the list of military and non-military codewords).
I was invited to do so. Some guy started up a page on the part of Auckland where I live, and because I recently put a history together, I agreed to do a brief summary. Last time I looked, it’s still there.
I might go nuts one day and add more. It’s a cool thing.
I’ve mostly thrown in some tidbits about my favorite bands, most of which aren’t exceedingly popular.
Very true. We’re Dopers and we’re committed to fighting ignorance and all that, so why not contribute to something like Wikipedia?
Or were you just quoting from the Spider-Man entry? 
Why is it even cited? How does one know that the Wiki author knows his tush from a hole in the ground?
Because unlike a standard reference, any ignorance will be called out by the next person coming along who does know the difference. Unless you take the elitist attitude that knowlege is a special commodity held by only a small minority of the population, then you have to accept that most people do generally know what they’re talking about. Any mistakes made by one individual will be corrected by the individuals that follow. As long as the information keeps flowing and most of it is good, the sum total of knowlege will continue to grow.
Most stuff in Project Gutenberg is scanned and OCRed. (No typing necessary.) But they do have a large group of volunteer proofreaders who correct the inevitable OCR errors.
I stand corrected. Thanks.
Was it always this way though? I could swear I once read that they used to have volunteers at colleges take turns typing chapters of large volumes. Perhaps pre-OCR days?
Whatever - still a fine thing to have on the internet, allowing free access to great literature, no matter how it is accomplished.
Because it’s Wikid fun.
Sailboat
Right. I hear that there are people who spend vast amounts of time watching the “Recent changes” page and going back to fix or revise any wrong or grammatically problematic entries.
I don’t do much there, but occasionally if I’m bored, I’ll click the “Random article” link over and over until I see something I want to read about or something I want to write about. Thus, my knowledge, and (to a much lesser extent) that of the people who read what I write is increased.
I write some in the Danish and Faeroese wikipedias.
To do my bit to keep small languages alive. Otherwise, if people are led to or forced to turn to English sources whenever seeking information, those other languages will be reduced to something used merely in the free time. The first step on the road to language death.
Apparently some Danish elementary pupils use Wikipedia when seeking information for paper works, and I hope to present a more political all-round picture of certain subjects.
I like the basic idea of taking power out of the hands of a small minority (of what eksperts would normally write such articles) and putting it into the hands of the masses. Power to the people!
Yes, Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/) originated with texts being typed. But it’s moved much more to OCR’ed texts which are then proofed & formatted.
Part of this is the influence of Distributed Proofreading (http://www.pgdp.net/c/default.php). This site allows volunteers located all over the world to help by proofreading just 1 page of an OCR’ed text at a time. It’s suggested that people to do “a page a day”. This ease of use and small time committment has resulted in thousands of volunteers, who proof dozens of pages every minute.
Well over half the total books on Project Gutenberg have come thru Distributed Proofreading. In recent years, it’s been more like 80-90% from Distributed Proofreading.
People interested in helping should check out http://www.pgdp.net/c/default.php.