Andrew Lih is the author of The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia (ISBN1401303714), which was published March 17, 2009. He also co-hosts the active Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group and occasional Wikipedia Weekly podcast.
He has been an editor since July 2003, and was made an admin/sysop October 3, 2003, when he passed the RfA process with a grand total of six yes votes.
Conflict of interest disclosures
I currently serve in the general role of Wikimedian-in-residence for two GLAM institutions:
As of 2020, I work with the Smithsonian Institution as Wikimedian-at-large in a compensated role, helping the museums, research institutions, affiliates and educational units with contributing their content under their open access initiative and Strategic Plan 2022.
As of 2019, I work with the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a Wikimedia Strategist in a compensated role, working with their collections managers and developers with content contributions and Wikidata work related to their Open Access initiative.
My goal is to make mutually beneficial contributions of multimedia and metadata more accessible to the public via collaboration with the Wikimedia community. Sometimes that is through facilitating content donations, code contributions, or teaching and service. As a veteran Wikipedian since 2003 and an administrator on English Wikipedia and Wikidata, I strive to abide by the Wikimedia movement's accepted policies and Terms of Use on conflicts of interest.
The original WP:COI policy had a prime directive that I abide by: "When advancing outside interests is more important to an editor than advancing the aims of Wikipedia, that editor stands in a conflict of interest." It is in this spirit where partnerships can thrive with coincident and reinforcing goals of advancing the content of Wikipedia, Wikidata and Commons through the knowledge and resources of GLAM institutions. This distinction is important, since that not all "paid" editing is seen as inherently contradictory to the Wikimedia community's goals, in the same way that not pure "volunteer" editing is not always virtuous. In the past I have helped establish guidelines and best practices for public relations and corporate communications professionals to maintain a hands-off policy for Wikipedia content, which can be seen at WP:PRCOM, which was a crucial point in Wikimedia movement's history.
I have assisted the Varkey Foundation in promoting their Global Teacher Prize and helping to release their content under a free license. I have contributed photos from their event to Wikimedia Commons and helped create a stand-alone Global Teacher Prize page (split from the main Varkey Foundation article) and removing overly-promotional language in 2018.
I have worked with the Pulitzer Prizes to take high quality portrait photos of winners (journalists, authors, artists) and upload them to Wikimedia Commons in 2018. They can be found here at commons:Category:2018_Pulitzer_Prizes.
I have worked with the Cleveland Museum of Art on file uploads and creation of Wikidata items related to their release of open access materials in January 2019.
Meetups
I've been to meetups with Wikipedians all over the world, including:
London, June 5, 2004 (first organized face-to-face meeting for English language community, with Jimmy Wales)
I was one of the first to use Wikipedia in the university setting for instruction (Summer 2003), and CNN did a story about it. A full list of projects can be found at the Wikipedia:School and university projects page. That early work can be found here:
I'm not a fan of touting featured articles, either as a pre-requisite for administrator status or as a measure of community worth, but here are some I've been involved with, as far as I can tell.
“The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.” ― Umberto Eco, Serendipities: Language and Lunacy
"Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject." - George Horne
Media
"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." ~Ben Hecht
"Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge." ~Erwin Knoll
"The reporter is the daily prisoner of clocked facts. On all working days, he is expected to do his best in one swift swipe at each story." Jim Bishop
"A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself." ~Arthur Miller
"Journalists cover words and delude themselves into thinking they have committed journalism." ~Hedrick Smith
"With all the mass media concentrated in a few hands, the ancient faith in the competition of ideas in the free market seems like a hollow echo of a much simpler day." ~Kingman Brewster, Jr.
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." ~Malcolm X
"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness." ~Eric Sevareid, "The Press and the People," television program, 1959
"Forget 'balance.' Go find the truth." -Robert Niles
Others
"Fate is just what you call it when you don't know the name of the person screwing you over." Lois, from Malcolm in the Middle
"For a successful technology reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman on the Space Shuttle disaster.
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non westerners never do."
-Samuel P Huntington
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
-Winston Churchill
"When you are the good guys, you've got to act like the good guys." -Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator from South Carolina, on the reported abuses at Abu Ghraib prison
"Among all the things I'm going to tell you today about being a journalist, all you have to remember is two words: governments lie." - US journalist I.F. Stone, to journalism students
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." -Jimmy Wales, July 2004
Would Martin Luther King like Wikipedia?
Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.... You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Think Wikipedia is too combative?
Maybe not as much as you think. See some statistics for how many actual NPOV disputes there are in Wikipedia. User:Fuzheado/NPOV disputes (20 Sep 2003)
Why is Wikipedia editorship about 90% male?
Wikipedia isn't a welcoming or pleasant place for many female editors. Things like this and this illustrate why.
Shared watchlists
The idea of "shared watchlists" often comes up. You can do this type of thing by convention using normal pages, and the "Related changes" option. Example created as an experiment under my user page, but now a generally used page:
Here's a running log of what I've experienced so far in setting 80 students loose on Wikipedia:
Namespaces. Some students were confused by the different namespaces, so one group created their entry as "Wikipedia:Victoria_Peak" and wound up editing that for a while before moving to "Victoria_Peak"
Plagiarism. One student mistakenly thought that breaking one Wikipedia entry into two was 'plagiarism' because she was copying the information onto another page. I had to convince her that because it was internal to Wikipedia, it was like rearranging furniture inside your home, not stealing someone else's sofa. So to speak.
Copying. Many had to adjust to what they were used to doing - copying. Some students lifted entire sections from tourism or government Web sites. Showing the power of collaborative editing, Wikipedians struck them out, or removed copyrighted photos. Good for Wikipedians. Students were warned before the project and were warned sternly once again -- no material can be copied into Wikipedia without permission. The practice still persists, however.
Moving around. Changing names of entries confused some, but they got it eventually. The Apple Daily was the original entry, and was changed to Apple Daily. Discussion ensued on the boards, until people realized what happened, and it was resolved.
Writing style. Folks were unaccustomed to using disinterested, third person, NPOV style. Having been first-person writers most of their lives, most used "I" and "we," as well as the imperative, "Let us talk about the car industry..." Because the content was about something they knew and loved - Hong Kong - many took up the role of cheerleader, and could not resist using phrases such as "the most beautiful" or "the excellent efficiency." I welcome theories to help explain this tendency. Some have said Chinese language speakers tend to the more flowery and expressive terminology.
Enthusiasm. Students got enthusiastic after a critical mass of information was put into their entries. They started building on each others' work and picked up momentum on their progress. Some got quite carried away with photos, like on the MTR article.
Know when to finish
畫蛇添足 (pinyin: hua4 she2 tian1 zu2)
Literally: Adding legs when painting a snake.
Moral: Don't ruin your work by unnecessary additions
List of Chinese proverbs
Templates
((fairuse)) - ((stub)) - ((tl|Disambig)) - ((vfd)) - ((spoiler)) - ((NPOV)) - ((Disputed)) - ((protected)) - ((delete)) - ((copyvio2)) - Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has now been removed. Please use [[Wikipedia:Sandbox]] for any other tests you want to do, since testing material in articles will normally be removed quickly. Please see the [[Wikipedia:Welcome, newcomers|welcome page]] if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks.
For images
[[image:Octopus card.jpg|thumb|250px|An Octopus Card, used in Hong Kong]]
