The Kiwis behind Wikipedia
They write and edit articles online, some up to 10 hours a day and their articles are read by thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands every day. They are Wikipedians – people who volunteer their time to create and edit Wikipedia pages.
They write about anything and everything – the history of iconic buildings in New Zealand, Olympic rowing teams from the 1980s, and notable Kiwi women.
But they all have one thing in common – they want to share their knowledge with the world.
Heather Knox, from Christchurch, is one of them. She became part of the global phenomenon in 2015 after noticing an imbalance on the website that hosts millions of articles. ‘‘The mission of the organisation is to provide access to the sum of all human knowledge [but] it is very, very male dominated ... some people would say that Wikipedia is actually the sum of all male knowledge,’’ she laughed. The lack of profiles on notable Kiwi women and women around the world lit a spark.
‘‘Our article on Dame Whina Cooper is tiny in comparison to an article about an American porn star and that just seems insane.’’ So she started writing.
She created profiles focusing on suffrage monuments in Auckland and Puketapapa Women’s Suffrage Memorial, and even wrote an article detailing women’s suffrage memorials around the world. To date, Knox has written about 560 articles for the website and she is not alone.
Putting a figure on the number of Wikipedians in New Zealand is difficult but there is a small contingency in contact with each other. They meet through online forums, social media groups, and have monthly meetings in Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and Nelson.
Axel Wilke, from Christchurch, has been part of the Wikipedian community for about 13 years and has written an estimated 1800 articles. His efforts led him to apply for an administrator role.
‘‘Much stricter rules and guidelines apply to me personally because I am one of a handful of administrators in New Zealand and ... you have to be very careful that you don’t overstep the mark because people come down on you like a tonne of bricks.’’
Various guidelines were in place to ensure information remained accurate and educational. Pages could not be created for just anyone, you had to be a notable figure, and the regulations were much stricter for profiles of people who were still alive. ‘‘There are a million rules around it.
‘‘Rule number one: You cannot write about yourself,’’ he laughed.
‘‘Because you are considered to have a conflict of interest.’’
The open editing aspect of the site did make room for illegitimate edits to slip through, however. ‘‘The reason that it became big very quickly is because anybody could edit it. So ... that then obviously runs the risk that some of the edits are not legit or ... errors get introduced deliberately,’’ Wilke said.
He enjoyed sharing information on his favourite topics – New Zealand history and rowing – while Knox was drawn in by the goal of helping everyone around the world access as much information for free as possible.
The growing group of Wikipedians in New Zealand were from all walks of life, Knox said.
Most of them ‘‘active in knowledge’’ and interested in sharing.
‘‘The people I have met or dealt with online, they just seem to come from a whole range of backgrounds. There are quite a number of people who are academics, sharing what they know from their professional lives, but also non-academic people ... [there are] quite a few retired people.’’
For Christchurch content creator Michal Klajban being a part of this growing horde of editors and creators is an honour.
‘‘To be a Wikipedian means being part of a project that is far bigger than me. It is an honour, privilege and, last but not least, a lot of fun.’’ Klajban focuses on creating imagery for Wikimedia Commons, so he refers to himself as a Wikimedian.
‘‘Wikipedia is the most famous project of the Wikimedia Foundation but there are also other projects focusing, for example, on open data, open media or educational content.’’ He said Wikimedians were not bound by language barriers, so the diversity in ages, backgrounds and cultures was vast.
Over the past 12 years he had uploaded about 19,000 photos that featured on more than 6000 articles. He said there were times when he would spend 10 hours a day writing articles for the website, and other times where he would not edit for months.
When Wilke was asked how long he spent on the website, he could not give an exact answer but said his wife would say it was ‘‘far too much time’’.
Despite all their efforts, the job will never be finished. There are constantly pages to create and profiles to update – as of January 24 there were over 6 million English articles on the website which began in 2001.
Stuff is hosting a Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Christchurch on Saturday February 29, 2020.