Interviews with Wikipedia Editors

The first in a series of conversations initiated by Quenton Miller, where we look into the different voices and technologies that write and rewrite Wikipedia as we speak.

An Interview with Achal Prabhala

Achal Prabhala’s bio is like a massive collage of careers. Since 2006 he’s been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation’s advisory board, he writes for publications like Bidoun and Caravan, is part of programmes to make learning materials and medicines accessible, and is sometimes a Wikipedia editor, a busy schedule he finds time for by not getting involved in social media. In 2011 he worked on a documentary titled People Are Knowledge exploring the ways nonprinted information can make its way onto Wikipedia.

Achal and I spoke over a frequently disappearing Skype connection. When I wasn’t doing much of the talking I’ve moved some of the words from his answers over to the questions, stealing a few of Achal’s lines. Hopefully this is all within the spirit of Wikipedia.

—Quenton Miller

I. SELFISH GENEROSITY

THE BELIEVER: What makes a Wikipedia article good?

ACHAL PRABHALA: I think that what makes a Wikipedia article good is contention, and how the page handles that contention, and how it grades the different kinds of contention. When enough people get together there is a natural and fair way they give weight to different perspectives. The more people we have participating in Wikipedia, the better it gets. I could put it out as a lofty philosophical principle, but this is really just the most evident effect.

BLVR: Which gets to the structure of Wikipedia. It’s based on citations, and to cite something it needs to be published in a book, and you need access to that book.

AP: This is a problem: if something isn’t written down, does it exist?  There are a thousand temple dance forms in every single village and town and city in Kerala. The umbrella term for these dances, or performances, is Theyyam. So you have these dances that forty million people see on a weekly basis, but to document that knowledge on Wikipedia you would have to wait for somebody to come in, do fieldwork, write a book, and then use that book as a reference on Wikipedia.

BLVR: I see.

AP: I don’t mean it’s a conspiracy. If you’re an archetypal Wikipedia editor, you live in a country with an excellent knowledge infrastructure, you come from a region that invented printing, and you build a Wikipedia around this.

BLVR: As well as a first world versus developing world thing, I can also see lots of implications for participation in the bigger Wikipedias in the west.

AP: The entire Wikipedia community is facing a crisis of editor retention. That’s...