The Power Users Behind Wikipedia

Making the Wiki Go Round

Achilles Lake interviews Sydney Poore aka FloNight, a Wikipedia super-contributor May 24th, 2007

Achilles Lake. What is your main motivation behind your Wiki work?

Sydney Poore: Making encyclopedic quality information freely available to the world. It is the basic idea that brings and keeps many editors.

Q: There is quite a debate in the educational community about the validity of Wiki as a source. Do you see Wiki as a valid source? If so, how valid? Is the validity subject based?

A: I agree that it should not be used as a single primary source of information for anything important. Rather it is a good starting place to find basic information about most topics. (I feel this is true for all reference works, but Wikipedia is upfront about it). Since each article must have reliable sources, readers have a chance to evaluate the quality of the reference and do more in depth research. Some areas are likely more accepted as reliable because they are less controversial. Like basic science, math,
and such. Political related articles are extremely controversial and are often unstable with many different versions existing over a week (or sometimes even a day.) Again they still can be a good source for references.

Q: Do you know other contributors? Do you work with them?

A: I've meet other users in real life. But most of the users I work with are from distant places and I have not met them in person.

Q: As an obstetric nurse you bring much of your work in to your edits, contributions, etc. But are there regular periodicals that also add to your information? Which?

A: I use many U.S. government sources because the material is freely licensed for reuse. This is very important. I also use traditional medical journals and other health care journals.

Q: How active are you with the arbitration committee? What's the most unusual anecdote you can share with me from that position?

A: I vote on most cases and write some “Proposed Decisions.” I also contribute to the public discussions on the AC talk pages and join the private discussions on our email list and our IRC channel. I was surprised by the large number of email requests that we get from problem users that want to contribute to Wikipedia but are not able to do so because of their extreme point of view or rigid personality type that makes collaborative work almost impossible. Many of them want a second chance after they are banned by the community. Sadly it does not usually work.

Q: I'm inspired by your work with the Louisville WikiProject. Were you involved from the get go? Are you satisfied with the progress? Is there anyone involved with the project from the city offices?

A: I'm involved with the projects about my home state but have not been very active as of late. Many other editors have done most of the work. They deserve the credit for getting the projects up and running and maintaining them. I hope after my son's wedding (this Saturday) that I will have more time to work on them. As far as I know, no one is directly involved from any of the state or local government. I can check and see, though.