This article, which had more than 900,000 views on Friday, has since undergone 1,071 edits by 223 editors who voluntarily updated the page of the Internet’s largest, free, crowdsourced encyclopedia. Moore, who works as a strategist for a digital creative agency, has made nearly 500,000 edits to Wikipedia articles over the past 15 years. He is also ranked among the 50 most active English Wikipedia users of all time, based on the number of edits. (Wikipedia editors are not paid.)
“It’s a hobby,” Moore told CNN Business. “Sometimes I spend a lot of time diving in and fleshing out an article, but other times I write a sentence or two to get the ball rolling and watch other editors improve my work. the seed and see it evolve over time.”
In the midst of breaking news, when people search for information, some platforms may present more questions than answers. Although Wikipedia is not staffed by professional journalists, it is considered an authoritative source by much of the public, for better or for worse. His entries are also used for fact-checking purposes by some of the biggest social platforms, adding to the stakes and scope of the work of Moore and others.
“Editing Wikipedia can absolutely cost me emotionally, especially when working on difficult topics such as the COVID-19 pandemic, mass shootings, terrorist attacks and other disasters,” he said. “I’ve learned to minimize this by stepping away when necessary and revisiting tasks later.”
Moore is part of a subculture of Wikipedia users who spend hours each day contributing to the platform, helping fulfill the organization’s mission to “create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest quality possible to every person on the planet in their own language”. He describes his work as a volunteer editor as “rewarding”.
“I love the instant gratification of making the internet better,” he said. “I want to point people towards something that will give them much more reliable information at a time when it’s very difficult for people to understand which sources they can trust.”
Some of these expert users attend conferences and meetings of Wikipedia editors around the world. “We’re kind of like ants,” Moore said. “You kind of find out how you fit in and how you can help.”
Cut the noise
Lane Rasberry, who works at the University of Virginia’s School of Data Science and was a volunteer Wikipedia editor for 10 years, said there’s also an appeal and culture around people involved in current situations. highly publicized on Wikipedia.
“It’s considered cool if you’re the first person to create an article, especially if you do it well with high-quality contributions,” Rasberry said. “Just like when a celebrity dies, we rush to go to Wikipedia and change their [date of] death. People like to be the first…and also to have an impact” by quickly disseminating reliable and accurate information.
To help patrol incoming edits and predict faults or errors, Wikipedia – like Twitter – uses artificial intelligence bots that can forward suspicious content to human reviewers who monitor the content. However, volunteer Wikipedia community editors decide what to remove or edit. The platform also uses administrators, called “trusted users”, who can apply or are appointed for the role, to help monitor content.
Another problem is vandalism, or people making deliberately erroneous edits to Wikipedia pages. But Moore said he’s not worried about his own pages being vandalized because he thinks Wikipedia’s guidelines and policies work in his favor.
“I have many other editors I work with who will support me, so when we come across vandalism or trolls or misinformation or misinformation, the editors are very quick to undo inappropriate edits or remove inappropriate content or missourced content,” Moore said.
While “edit wars” can happen on pages, Rasberry said it tends to happen more often on social issues rather than news. “People have always assumed that edit wars [play out on] Wikipedia and it doesn’t happen as much as outsiders expect,” he said. “Wikipedia has technological and social structures in place, which most people find enjoyable and appropriate, and which allow many people to edit at the same time.
“Admins are very quick to block those who don’t follow the rules, so if you come to Wikipedia with bad intentions, you’re wasting your time because we’ll stop you from contributing to the site,” Moore said.
There are also challenges for users to have full access to news on Wikipedia. Rasberry said that due to news or magazine subscription fees, some Wikipedia editors may not be able to access these sources and cite them in their updates. “Access to media and interpretive media is a major bottleneck,” Rasberry said, arguing that “news agencies [should] see Wikipedia more as a collaborator than a rival source of information.”
Wikipedia volunteers have created many tips on reliable sources of information. A Wikipedia page dedicated to the subject notes that articles should be “based on reliable and published sources, ensuring that all significant majority and minority opinions that have appeared in these sources are covered”.
“If no reliable source can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it,” the page says.
Although Moore is known among his friends, colleagues and members of the Wikipedia editor community as a Wikipedia influencer, the weight of this title is far less than the fame one can acquire on YouTube, Instagram and Tik Tok.
“I don’t spend all my time contributing to Facebook and Twitter and those other platforms because I’m deeply committed to Wikipedia’s mission,” he said. “If it was a paid advertising site or had another mission, I wouldn’t waste my time.”
