Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-08-29/Community view


 * Not everybody gets to participate in the Olympic games. Not every inexperienced Wikipedia editor is interviewed by The Guardian for an article with a title like "There are 11,656 athletes at the Olympics. Guy Fraser wanted them all on Wikipedia." – S

Everything I said in The Guardian article was true from my perspective. They might have exaggerated some things – but the quoted stuff was true and from my heart. I do absolutely adore the Wikipedia project and spreading accessible information to everyone is such a fantastic thing to be part of. I'm glad, as well, that there's people smarter than me taking care of the serious stuff so I can waste my time in sports because that has always been my passion right from when I could first talk.

Researching the athletes was a genuine pleasure. It started by accident when I innocently looked up the just-announced IOC Refugee team to find out their experiences and saw a couple of names were in red. I haven't counted how many we've done or still need to do; the figures in the article were new to me.

It's been fun! The experience enhanced my viewing of the games. Both in honouring the fantastic athletes who are the pinnacle of human physical achievement, providing a marker of a moment in time: right here right now, these were the people who did this; and also personally knowing some of the back stories of those competing in more detail than I would normally has been superb in providing extra context and interest. I can thoroughly recommend editing the articles for the Paralympics and Paris 2024.

I'm still really new to it all in many ways – someone sent me a barnstar this week and I had to google what it was. I would be delighted to give three out though, now that I think I know what they are. I guess it would only be fair to give them to the names I feel like I saw the most cleaning up my work, for which I offer thanks and apologies. This isn't scientific at all but the first three that came to mind were, , and. Something I didn't say in The Guardian article is that I do not have all my sight so there are aspects of the process that I will always inherently struggle with until I can find work-arounds. Whilst I believe it's far more frustrating for me than it is for others, no one can underestimate the job that was on the hands of those who checked my work!

I enjoy most parts of Wikipedia and I welcome the quirks. I find it amusing to see someone change references to the "Tokyo Olympics" and change them to the "2020 summer games" only to spot someone else a few hours later change it to "Tokyo games". That is just very funny to me, and human.

There were very few negatives. I'm fairly long in the tooth, I think I have decent perspective, and collating information from the Internet isn't the most important thing I do in the day. But if those things weren't in place I would most probably have been put off and discouraged by a very small minority of users/admins who lean towards being rude, impatient and dismissive of new users. I would encourage the view that everyone can bring value and we should imagine speaking to someone online the same way as if we were speaking to them in real life, as if we had just knocked at their door. It is fine to have strong feelings about your passions but it is also okay to take a break until you can represent your best self again.

People have sent lovely emails and messages wanting to help and I've just found out about the Paralympic project so will direct people towards that. There's been contact from some UK radio stations which I'm not confident about doing, but if I get persuaded I'll do my best to promote Wikipedia and all the fine users and editors that make it. Thanks to everyone.