User:Charles Matthews/Interview

Wednesday 25th November 2009, BBC News Channel: 1951-1955 hrs

J: It’s the fifth most popular website in the world, with around 325 million visits a month, but Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia founded eight years ago, could be facing an uncertain future, after a study revealed that thousands of volunteer editors across the world, who are relied upon to constantly update the site, have deserted it.

M: Well, we are joined now by Charles Matthews, one of the top ten most prolific contributors to Wikipedia, with over 200,000 entries, who is also co-author of the book “How Wikipedia Works”. Thank you so much for coming in. How surprised are you that so many of these editors have actually been leaving?

C: Ah, well, people have been looking at a number which is the number of accounts on Wikipedia, and that’s not a very relevant number, because of the accounts created most are never used at all, so what you have to understand is that those numbers don’t translate very easily into the what we’d call the “community”, the hardcore people. Basically, a thousand accounts opened equals one fanatic, so it doesn’t translate so well.

M: But with thousands leaving, does it suggest perhaps – I mean the thought has been put forward – that it may be beginning to die out?

C: No, it’s not thousands leaving, because the hardcore people I’m talking about – that’s about five thousand on the English Wikipedia – that number is not going down significantly across 2009. The statistics on that were only relatively recently available to us, so it’s speculation too, but we do know how many people work on the site seriously every month, and that’s not showing a big drop-off.

J: And someone like you has contributed more than 200,000 entries. That’s incredible. How much time do you spend on it?

C: Er, 50 hours a week.

J: Oh, and this is all voluntary, of course.

C: It is volunteer work.

J: And why are you such a fanatic?

C: Why am I such a fanatic? Interesting question. I got into it in 2003, and I’m a househusband, it was what I was doing then.

J: And what sort of subjects do you write on? Presumably a whole range, if you’ve done 200,000 …

C: Before being a househusband I was a lecturer in mathematics, so I started on mathematics, which I knew. But I moved on to literature – poetry mostly – and I now mostly edit on history. Because, like a lot of people who are kind of committed to the site, I go where the work is, and see what needs to be done and do that, rather than start off with a preconception.

M: And have the rules tightened up at all? There is a suggestion, again going back to what we were talking about at the start, that perhaps that is one of the reasons that there is some sort of drop-off. Now, with the focus so much on accuracy, the rules have been tightened up.

C: Wikipedia is a dynamic site – I think people know this, they notice this – it’s always changing, always shifting its ground a bit, it’s always responding to as it were the weaknesses. As I say, people move around. It’s much more codified than it used to be, but the challenges are still there in the accuracy, and in basically updating the site. I would say that, come back in a year’s time, Wikipedia’ll be about 10% more articles, but I’d reckon about 20% better in terms of depth and quality of coverage.

J: And is it reliant on people like you to actually rectify mistakes? Presumably it is just anybody out there who reads and sees something that’s wrong.

C: [laughs] It’s a voluntary organization, people self-assign their tasks, so, yes, we’re all reliant on people doing what needs to be done.

J: Lots of glaring errors? Because there have been some famous ones.

C: Well, yes, there are still the foul-ups, still the flashpoints there ever were, but the whole thing is backed with more money, more management, better software. Basically, we think it’s all going pretty well!

J: It is, it’s an amazing resource, we use it all the time. [laughs] Charles Matthews, thank you.