Writing for Wikpedia

Zoe Fairbairns contributes to the largest encyclopedia in the world

Wikipedia is the online free encyclopedia that anyone can write for. But why would a serious writer want to?

There’s no money in it, and no glory either. Wikipedia entries are anonymous. Which you might prefer when you realise that once you’ve committed your knowledge to a Wikipedia page, even if you are a world expert in your field, there’s nothing to stop any passing stranger from adding their two-pennyworth to what you wrote. Or helping themselves to it. “If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed for profit by others,” Wikipedia warns would-be contributors, “do not submit it.”

But maybe you’re willing to live with that risk. Maybe not all knowledge has to be owned, paid for, or claimed by experts. Maybe that passing stranger has something to contribute that will be useful and interesting not only to the reader but to you the author.

 Another advantage of writing for Wikipedia is that you can be sure of being published. Provided you choose a topic that hasn’t already been covered, you don’t have to wait for an editor to accept your work and publish it. In the egalitarian world of Wikipedia, you are the editor, so you publish it.

You are, however, expected to follow certain rules, and there is a danger that you might grow old and die trying to figure out what these are. When I decided to write a Wikipedia article about Marie Louise Habets (about whom I had researched and written for radio and magazines, but about whom there was very little information online), I Googled “writing for Wikipedia” and found some 4,000 references, many of them containing enough tips, hints, advice, technical information, FAQs, messages of encouragement, warnings, nannyish wrist-slappings, and links to other pages to make me long for the good old days when an encyclopaedia was something you bought at the door.

Wikipedia: Your First Article reminds you to check and cite all your sources, and avoid breaking laws of libel and copyright. Other no-no’s include writing about yourself - “If you are worthy of inclusion in the encyclopaedia, let someone else add an article for you” - and using Wikipedia to propagandise, promote products or play jokes on your friends. Attempts to do this, you are warned, will be deleted. You are urged to adopt a “neutral point of view”, whatever that may be, and to observe The Five Pillars of Wiki, which in language that is part-mystical, part management-speak, sum up what makes a good Wikipedian.

In the course of exploring the 133,000 references, you will probably come across the rule which says “ignore all rules”, and reminders that anyone, including you, is at liberty to amend Wikipedia instructions, and may already have done so. That’s before you get to the technical stuff, about layout, mark-up and using the Wikipedia sandbox to try things out before you post them.

Having spent several weeks floundering about in all this, I actually wrote the article and posted it. I waited in some trepidation for the “merciless” editing that would surely follow. Actually it was quite mild. A group which rates Wikipedia articles containing lesbian/gay material, had rated mine “entry level”, which sounded a bit grudging, albeit true – this was my first Wikipedia contribution. It could have been worse, it could have been a “stub”. Someone revised my layout, and someone else removed a link to a photograph whose copyright status was uncertain. I got an email from someone called Herby who seems to be some kind of Wikipedia official, if that is not a contradiction in terms. Herby thanks me for my contribution and welcomes me as a Wikipedian, so I guess I must be one.

I still have some doubts about the whole concept: is one person’s knowledge really as good as another’s? Can a “neutral viewpoint” exist? Should articles on some subjects be exempt from editing, as is now the case (for example) for Christianity, Islam, Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela, none of whose entries has an edit page? Wikipedia, like the internet that gave it birth, represents a radical challenge to concepts of authority and authorship – what author wouldn’t have doubts?

But I’ll go on writing for Wikipedia if the right topic presents itself, and I’ll continue to use Wikipedia as a source of information, checking elsewhere before I rely on it. In the meantime I’m glad to have given Marie Louise Habets her own page. And if your response is “Marie Louise who?” - well, you can look her up on Wikipedia.

This article first appeared in the Guild's magazine, UK Writer (Winter 2008)