#205: Wikipedia
"Where'd ya read that then, Wikipedia?!?@!" used to be the refrain of bell-ends everywhere who couldn't be bothered to engage with an argument. But like most insults, it carried a grain of truth because the internet's crowdsourced encyclopaedia was, well, ropey.Not any more. In fact, in a world eating itself alive with fake news and misinformation, Wikipedia is one of the few shining lights of humans doing Admirable Things online in the name of public interest. Not least on climate change, where the wealth and - more importantly - accessibility of information is exemplary.
But who are the unseen elves keeping climate pages accurate and Inhofery-free, why do they give up their free time to do it, and are they in fact some of the most influential climate-y people on the planet?
Alex Stinson, a Senior Program Strategist with the Wikimedia Foundation and a Wikipedia editor with focus on climate change joins us to pull back the curtain and share some really big numbers. Numbers like 319 (different language wikipedias), 50+ million (wikipedia articles) and 1.7 billion (monthly page views). Cue Ol going for a lie down.Follow Alex on twitter @sadads, get involved in the editing community here, and read this great Mashable piece about the guardians of climate wikipedia.Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell. Ecoguff read out by Arabella.
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