•3. Wikipedia and Me
My first recollection of Wikipedia dates back to April 2004, when it was hardly a mainstream phenomenon; our local university forum had a message posted celebrating Ukrainian Wikipedia‘s 1000th article. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’ve ever heard of it, yet, I distinctly remember having quite a clear idea of what it was back then.
Whether it was true or not, by the end of 2004 I started contributing heavily to Wikipedia, first Ukrainian for a few articles, then English. I didn’t care to maintain any kind of personal “brand” or whatnot; I was creating accounts in bulk, for every field I was contributing to, every whim and novelty I had.
The thrill wasn’t in contributing to what soon would be the world’s largest source of knowledge; the thrill wasn’t in being appreciated by “peers” or whoever; it wasn’t in making a difference.
The thrills was in the unique among online societies (I haven’t found any others like this to this day) level of rigor and bureaucracy. The articles and actual content are only a tip of the iceberg — the rest in the layers and layers of rules, organizations, committees, votes, councils, laws and policies that make Wikipedia run. I swam like a shark in it. My grip in Wikipedia law was stronger than most real-world lawyers’ in the real-world law.
In late 2005, nearing Ukrainian parliamentary elections, I used that grip for the monetary gain — I approached most of the smaller-scale parties offering them the services of Wikipedia reputation management; surprisingly, a few agreed, kickstarting what later turned out to be my semi-career in Internet marketing.
I was cleaning up articles, using sockpuppets, outwitting and outbureaucrating my opponents; in the end, I was so disgusted with all that I stopped contributing to Wikipedia at all.
Obviously, I use it daily as a reference source; from time to time, I do a stray edit here and there to prove a point or on a whim; yet, after that, I never got back to living and breathing Wikipedia.