Ask HN: How many of you contribute to Wikipedia?

W00t w00t. >2K edits over nearly 10 years. I contribute in spurts around topics I know things about that don't have articles yet.

Been an editor for quite a while---mostly to correct things. Could be typos, factual errors, errors of omission, normal editor kind of stuff for those categories I know well enough to do the job. I've rarely been involved in a disagreement and as I remember it all of those were resolved peaceably :) Funny that you should ask this as I just did an edit on the 4th Infantry page a few hours ago. You kind of have to be a little bit OCD for this kind of stuff, but as I am, no problem!

I've been kicking around there for a few years. Mostly writing about military history. :) my advice is to avoid the dramas and pick a nice quiet topic area to contribute in.

I can only do minor edits in niche pages, other pages are already quite full or simply above my head. My account is also new, maybe 1 year.

I contribute to Wikipedia.

User page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dllu

I've started a few articles on niche topics and created many pictures/animations.

I've tried on a three occasions to contribute to wikipedia - Two occasions where I've found articles with incorrect data based off of poor sources, and once to correct a minor grammatical issue, with all of the articles in question being small and non-political in nature. Every time I was promptly reverted. In the former's case I always provided sources for my updated info, which were completely ignored the first occasion, and on the second occasion the article was later edited to include both pieces of info, despite clear scientific consensus for the new. In the latter's case I was simply reverted without explanation.

I really didn't feel like fighting the reverts, and I suppose I probably won't edit any more pages. It really seems like a contributor-hostile environment.

I do fairly regularly, since about 2003. I used to be very involved in meta-Wikipedia stuff in the early days (policy, mailing lists, meetups, dispute-arbitration, etc.), but sort of drifted away from that once it got more professionalized, and had a Foundation set up and such.

Now I mostly write short (~2-10 paragraphs) articles on subjects that don't have articles. I usually start from a good source, like an encyclopedia of scientists, or a book on 18th-century Scandinavian art, and look at what it covers that Wikipedia doesn't yet. Then I pick one of those things, look on Google Books/Scholar for additional sources (it's ideal to have at least 2 sources for an article), and write a short summary of what I've found on the subject.

A different kind of editing, which I do mostly as a kind of "don't have to think too much" unwinding that I find enjoyable somehow, is various stuff from a long list of filing/curation/sorting tasks that always need to be done. For example, take something from the category listing the thousands of articles that could/should have lat/long coordinates added but don't yet [1], and see if I can find its coordinates (on OpenStreetMap, on official websites, etc.).

Another useful low-key thing to do is to pick some articles that you know something about or have an interest in, but which are less popular (not hugely popular articles like [[Barack Obama]] that already have many editors), and add them to your Watchlist. If you then check the Watchlist periodically for edits to those articles, you can be part of the distributed tiny communities curating the more obscure parts of Wikipedia. This can be sometimes just be noticing when someone makes a questionable edit (whether spam or otherwise). But it can also be positive attention, e.g. if another editor asks a question on the Talk page proposing a change to an article or questioning part of it or asking if something they added is ok, you'll see that on your Watchlist and might have something to weigh in with, which makes the parts of the encyclopedia you're paying attention to feel like less of a ghost town (it can be frustrating when you comment on a less-popular article and literally nobody answers for months... the opposite of the problem you get in really contentious parts of the encyclopedia).

A final really easy thing to do, and probably Wikipedia's most famous cultural export, is to add {{citation needed}} if you run across a sentence making a claim that seems like it really should be backed up, but doesn't seem to be cited anywhere in the vicinity. Even better to find a source and add <ref>Source</ref>, but tagging as citation-needed is still helpful. This is not only for claims that you think are dubious or wrong, since even likely correct claims should have a reference where readers can verify.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_missing_geoco...

I don't make a hobby out of editing, but when I'm reading an article in a field I know a little about and I come across an egregious error, I usually edit it, or leave an edit request if the page is protected.

I do the same thing for articles outside my areas of knowledge if the error is particularly galling and unambiguously incorrect.

Because I use wikipedia quite a lot, I'd say I leave an edit about twice a month.

Having said that, much, much more often I encounter a minor error that I don't have the time to investigate. In this kind of case I think "boy, I bet the source doesn't actually back that up", but it doesn't seem important enough to break my workflow to look into.

I contributed fairly regularly during the early days of the site, but these days I contribute rarely -- mostly to make minor factual corrections or add sources. I haven't run into much of the site's famed editorial bureaucracy but what little I have doesn't encourage me to contribute more.

I mostly correct typos or small inaccuracies, but I've occasionally expanded articles on niche topics that I know very well (such as my high school).

I donate money when they ask (about $5 each time) and I correct typos about 2-3 times per year (as I see them).

I fix typos or obvious errors when I see them (mostly grammatical rather than factual). Beyond that, the politics is a bit of a turn-off and most of the articles on subjects I know a thing or two about are well-maintained. I guess my knowledge isn't very unique... :(

I've contributed to some articles on string search algorithms. Most of my work has gone into the Boyer-Moore article, which has seen only minor edits since I rewrote it two years ago. There are many pages on algorithms that need some love, and it's a great way to gain an in-depth understanding of the algorithm in question. I haven't edited anything in a while though, mostly due to lack of compulsion.

For math and computer science topics there doesn't seem to be any of the edit warring or toxicity you hear so much about in other areas. Given HN's audience I would recommend starting out by adopting the page of your favorite algorithm.

The extent of my contributions are purely financial. I'm still waiting for the day that they will announce Bitcoin as a donation method. I email them every year to ask if they will accept it.

In terms of edits and content, I'm with the others, I'm reluctant to get involved due to all of the moderation and politics involved. I find many of them can be very arrogant especially when you point out that they are wrong.

i once tried to improve an explanation of some physical process and was criticised for adding "original research". i have no idea how explaining something in terms of basic physics is "research", but that ended my wikipedia career.

For me Wikipedia is the second most valuable resource on the web after Google. I donate $30 every year without hesitation.

I've done a little bit of light editing, mostly fixing or adding links and correcting the occasional typo. Probably averages to once or twice per year.

17,558 edits since 2003.

I generally don't contribute, because the rules are incredibly complicated and I don't really care for them.

Recently I stumbled onto an article with a [citation needed] after watching a video that (I suppose) would have been the perfect citation for it (I mean a mustached retired high school teacher, speaking about the old times, that's the best source you can get!).

Hell broke loose, the doc for video citation is intractable, so I wanted to put the link on the talk page for someone with knowledge to do it, but youtube is banned in text. So my wikipedia career in on hold until my motivation crosses a certain threshold. It's not beginner friendly, and i don't really care about their editing procedure (it's mostly based on the scientific one which is bogus too).

If someone cares, it's on White Lead talk page.

I edited quite a lot in the early days, gave up after an administrator decided to wiki-lawyer me to death on the C++ page (he/she seemed to think that C++ should be defined as "things that g++ accepts"). Realised it was a battle I would never win.

Now I occasionally edit very minor articles if I look at them, but never anything that gets more than an edit a month, as such changes will be swallowed up and spit out fairly quickly, in my experience.

Yes, but I've substantially reduced my editing over the last 3 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gwern / http://www.gwern.net/Wikipedia%20resume / http://www.gwern.net/tags/Wikipedia

I only ever correct errors or add extra detail. I've never created an article or written anything substantial, mostly because the risk of having substantial work removed because I didn't "do it right" is extremely unappealing to me (and I could spend the time on my own business or content).

I think you have to be extremely intrinsically motivated or community minded (both good things, of course!) to contribute significantly there because the only reward seems to be happy about a job well done.

Well, let's see...

I submitted an article about one of the most important writers of my country, and it was deleted because it is apparently irrelevant. Years later someone submitted a stub, and it remains like that until today.

I fixed a dead link on the Kalman Filters page, and the change was promptly reverted because apparently linking to youtube is not allowed. So now only I have the correct link. Oh, well.

I contributed to the discussion regarding the statistics for rape in the US (the "1 in 6" figure doesn't hold), but the discussion went nowhere, as expected.

The only thing I've actually managed to fix was a reference to "Les Miserables" taking place during the French Revolution (it doesn't) and the occasional typo, but nothing really important.

i used to contribute. But now I don't. Too many times my edits were changed back.

People want their stupid links on the site and they're plastered everywhere. In the future, the first thing you'll read about Leonardo da Vinci is that he came in 8th place in your Time Magazine Gold Special Genius Award with a link to the Time Magazine website. Of course in the fine print you'll find out that the award was decided by readers' votes.

You'll see this trend when you look at British people on wikipedia like Tim Berners Lee who was ranked number 1 in greatest living geniuses in 2007 by of course a british paper. A few years ago, this was mentioned in the first paragraph of the wikipedia article.

The future of wikipedia is the largest pile of spam on the internet.

I correct errors and flag missing sources when I see them but nothing more than that. The bigger issues I've seen would require a lot more time to fix. Given all the terrible experiences I've heard with admins I'm not willing to spend that time just to have it reverted.