Stephen Harrison and Omer Benjakob chat about the internet's knowledge ecosystem: Wikipedia, open culture, citogenesis, misinformation, disinformation, and beyond. Harrison is an attorney and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications. He writes Source Notes, a regular column for Slate, and has published profiles on leading figures in the Wikimedia community. He earned degrees in business and law from the University of Texas at Austin and Washington University in St. Louis. Benjakob is a senior editor at Haaretz, who writes about and researchers Wikipedia. He serves as the newspaper’s Wikipedia correspondent and is pursuing an MA in the history and philosophy of science at Tel Aviv University. His work has appeared in academic journals and popular media in English and Hebrew.
Is it possible to ethically edit Wikipedia when a client is PAYING you? Stephen Harrison & Omer Benjakob aim to find out. They chat with two prominent paid Wikipedia editors: Bill Beutler is Chief Executive Officer of Beutler Ink, a digital strategy firm. Johanna Janhonen is a paid editor based in Finland who has her own company, Hidden Treasure. Besides talking about paid editing, Stephen and Omer discuss the new Wikipedia @ 20 book coming out October 2020.
Stephen Harrison & Omer Benjakob chat with Mike Godwin, the creator of "Godwin's Law." Godwin was the former General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation and was the first staff attorney hired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He is candid about what early internet founders got right...and what they failed to predict.
Stephen Harrison & Omer Benjakob discuss Neutral Point of View (NPOV) on Wikipedia, especially in the context of how usergroups like WikiProject Black Lives matter are aiming to improve coverage of racial justice on the encyclopedia. Harrison refers to his latest article for Slate, "How Wikipedia Became a Battleground for Racial Justice." Together they discuss different notions of neutrality, including the concept of knowledge equity.
Stephen Harrison & Omer Benjakob discuss how Wikipedia is using its policies to cover the novel coronavirus. How does the internet's encyclopedia stay accurate when news and knowledge about COVID-19 change by the hour? Plus: Future historians will rely on Wikipedia's COVID-19 coverage. The deletions, the editor fights...all of it will be important to researchers studying this period.
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