User:EoRdE6/Graduation Project/Interview

Happy to say I have now have enough responses to satisfy my research paper. If you still wish to respond, feel free to do so as long as you send or post your reply before 2pm EST Tuesday (tomorrow)

Brief paragraph form "interview style" answers would be appreciated. You may just answer on this page for simplicity (but if for any reason you are uncomfortable doing this feel free to shoot me an email). Thanks!!

Example (talk · contribs)

1. Briefly describe yourself. When did you start contributing to Wikipedia? About how many edits have you made? When did you become an administrator?

2. How does Wikipedia ensure that all information added is accurate?

3. Given the number and speed of edits isn't verifying all information difficult?

4. Some people edit Wikipedia as a joke and aim to disrupt the information. Describe how Wikipedia handles this.

5. Why are you interesting in editing Wikipedia? What is there to gain for editors?

6. How much time would you say you spend weekly editing/moderating Wikipedia?

7. How does Wikipedia maintain its policy of being open to edit while maintaining accuracy?

8. Would you say the open to edit policy is still maintained today?

9. Why do you think Wikipedia succeeded where other online encyclopedias failed?

10. How do you personally verify information in articles?

11. If you were to estimate, how much of Wikipedia (%) would you say contains inaccurate information? What about accurate information but lacking sources?

White Arabian Filly (talk · contribs)

1. Briefly describe yourself. When did you start contributing to Wikipedia? About how many edits have you made? When did you become an administrator?

I started contributing in August of last year. I lost the password to my first account and formed this one last November, and have made over 10,100 edits since then. I have two editing permissions, Autopatrolled and rollback. I tend to focus most on content creation, and have created over 80 articles and expanded several more that I didn't create. I also do some vandalism fighting.

2. How does Wikipedia ensure that all information added is accurate?

Every single statement is supposed to be supported by reliable references, and if something isn't sourced, it's liable to be removed. Many editors also have real-life interest and knowledge of the subjects they edit most, and can verify or remove contributions accordingly. Everybody will accidentally add something false every once in a while, and that's normal human error. The people who try to add false statements knowingly tend to get blocked or banned.

3. Given the number and speed of edits isn't verifying all information difficult?

It can be, but verification goes pretty fast when you have an idea of what sources to check. In some cases, it's best to take it to the talk pages and discuss dubious information with a group of editors.

4. Some people edit Wikipedia as a joke and aim to disrupt the information. Describe how Wikipedia handles this.

It's pretty easy to pick out these types of edits. The edit summary will typically say something like "lol" "made it awesome" or otherwise be a dead giveaway. Such edits get reverted as soon as they are seen, and the authors warned. If they keep it up, they are blocked pretty quick--sometimes within an hour.

5. Why are you interesting in editing Wikipedia? What is there to gain for editors?

I think knowledge is the biggest thing you gain. I write a lot about people and animals who are dead, and it's often extremely interesting to find out about their lives. I've written about a horse that flunked as a racehorse and went on to found a breed, another horse that got buried 3 times, and a guy who won a major horse show when he was 81, on a horse he thought he'd lost. I really don't know what others get out of it.

6. How much time would you say you spend weekly editing/moderating Wikipedia?

I probably edit around an hour a day, so about 7 hours a week. It varies seasonally, and some weeks it might be as much as 10 or as little as 4.

7. How does Wikipedia maintain its policy of being open to edit while maintaining accuracy?

Sourcing everything is the only way.

8. Would you say the open to edit policy is still maintained today?

Yes, even IPs can edit the vast majority of our articles, except for a few that get torn apart by vandalism. In most cases a new editor can just start editing as soon as they form an account.

9. Why do you think Wikipedia succeeded where other online encyclopedias failed?

Probably because it allows people to contribute as little or as much as they like, and focus on their favorite topics. Also, a lot of other encyclopedias are behind paywall, and people often don't want to pay to read something on the Internet. Plus, if you're running such a site and having to pay people to write articles, that would get expensive. For some it probably got to the point that they were spending more than the site brought in. Here we edit for free, so Wikipedia doesn't fall into that sandtrap.

10. How do you personally verify information in articles?

If an unsourced statement is in an article on a subject I'm familiar with, I probably have a good idea of its accuracy. A quick search of Google Books can often verify most statements. For the articles I write, I rely on Google Newspaper Archives pretty heavily. There are also a couple of smaller sites I find reliable and helpful for some of the stuff I write, like about older horse trainers who have been dead for many years.

11. If you were to estimate, how much of Wikipedia (%) would you say contains inaccurate information? What about accurate information but lacking sources?

I would estimate that around 25%, maybe as much as 30% is inaccurate. Some of the content was accurate when it was written and is now out of date. That's not a problem if an article is about some person who's been dead 500 years, but I imagine it's a big issue on the technology articles. White Arabian Filly ^Neigh 21:11, 17 October 2016 (UTC)