People who make Wikipedia work

LazerLordz SG

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has 490,000 articles -- in English alone. All together, including its French, German, Italian, Chinese, Spanish and many other versions, it has well over 1.3 million entries.

But without its 16,000 contributors, Wikipedia would be about as useful as a moldy 1978 edition of Encyclopedia Americana. With them, Wikipedia has become the world's largest effort of its kind, and one that is compared to Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of quality and breadth.

Derek Ramsey created rambot, a Java program that has made more edits in Wikipedia than any other person or bot.Charles Matthews, the 11th-most-active Wikipedian, has a doctorate in mathematics and is the author of several books about the game Go.Seth Ilys is the ninth-most-prolific Wikipedian. He loves to add maps of small American towns to their corresponding articles, many of which were created by rambot.

Among those 16,000 contributors, there are some whose involvement goes far beyond the call of duty. These are the hard-core Wikipedians who spend long hours writing articles, or tweaking existing ones.

Here are some of these power Wikipedians, and a look at what drives them to give so much to a community of strangers. They are ranked according to Wikipedia's list of the 1,000 Wikipedians who have made the most edits.

Derek Ramsey, aka Ram-Man -- No. 1 most active

Ramsey created the most active Wikipedian of them all, "rambot," a Java program that creates and maintains articles on American counties and cities.

He admits his wife is on to something when she calls him a repository of "lots of random bits of information." This is a man with a garage full of hobbies: photography, woodworking, cooking, gardening, chess, aquariums and computers. "It seems that I'm never content to stick with the same interests," he said. "But I always strive to find new ones."

Recently, Ramsey has been on a self-imposed Wiki vacation, but he often spends four to six hours a day penning or fixing Wikipedia articles. Why? "I feel strongly in the ideals that Wikipedia stands for, and that drives me to use my programming skills to be as productive as possible."

Daniel Mayer, aka Maveric149 -- No. 3

Mayer has authored or edited almost 40,000 Wikipedia articles, and he spends at least three hours daily doing so. "Most of us become jaded as we grow into adults and accept the fact that real limits exist on what we can, or even want, to know or be able to do," he said. "I am developmentally challenged in that regard."

Most of Mayer's Wikipedia work involves geology. When he's not pounding out articles or edits, he's also the CFO of the Wikimedia Foundation and a Wikipedia arbitrator. Clearly, he wants to make sure the project has a lasting impact. "Wikipedia is ... democratizing knowledge on a massive scale," he said. "This is something I am proud to be a part of and something I think is worth a great deal of my time and effort."

Bryan Derksen -- No. 4

Though he might not use the words himself, Derksen is the Wikipedia version of a cleaner fish. "I don't like untidiness on Wikipedia," he said. "I do a lot of little housekeeping things. Tidying up and formatting of articles."

He also writes a fair number of articles, mostly about astronomy and other sciences. But fixing other people's work, he estimates, consumes up to 70 percent of his Wikipedia time. That's because he doesn't always feel creative. "Tidying up is almost a mindless activity."

Derksen admits he's obsessive-compulsive about Wikipedia, and a little protective of his work. He said that when recent server problems kicked everyone off the system, it was relaxing. "You don't have to worry that other people are out there wrecking your stuff without you noticing," he joked.

Seth Ilys -- No. 9

Ilys has been a geography nut since he was a kid. At age 5 or 6, he said, he made his own little atlases. Like Derek Ramsey, Ilys devotes most of his Wikipedia efforts to bolstering the project's U.S. geography articles, particularly by adding maps. "I've always loved poring over maps and then seeing the places the maps represent," he said. "Or vice versa. It's an odd little fascination."

When Ilys began spending time on Wikipedia, he found endless numbers of articles about even the smallest American towns. But he thought they were missing maps. So he decided, in true Wikipedia fashion, to fill the gap.

First was a map for his hometown. Then all the towns in his county, and then the entire state of North Carolina. That left 49 states for him to work on. "Rambot articles cover the whole country," he said, "and I'm not one to leave a task undone."

Charles Matthews -- No. 11

Ask math Ph.D. Matthews why he's so active on Wikipedia, and he's ready with a sound bite: "Wikipedia is a boot camp for polymaths," he said. "You may think you're a broad kind of person, but go to the newly created pages and you can stand under a waterfall of knowledge needing to be pulled into shape."

He calls his obsession with Wikipedia "madness," and monitors more than 3,000 articles.

Matthews' Wikipedia articles are largely math-related, including several on a particular favorite subject, the game Go, about which he's written books. But Wikipedia gives him a never-ending palette of new things to learn and eyeballs for his own knowledge.

"(I'll) tell you how you know you're a Wikipedian," he said. "You read any nonfiction book from the index end first. (And you think), 'I wonder if our coverage of this is complete.'"

Stacey Greenstein, aka UtherSRG -- No. 32

According to Wikipedia's lists of most active editors, Greenstein made 1,809 edits during the past month. But she thinks that the timing is off and that those numbers refer to the work she did in December. "I suppose knowing that the 1,800 number was wrong says more about me than the fact that I edited 1,800 during some 30-day period."

Greenstein's passion in the real world is the same as it is on Wikipedia: fixing things. She is as likely to put misplaced books back in order in a bookstore as she is to correct a Wikipedia article. "I can't understand why people would take a book off the shelf to see if they like it, and then put it back in the wrong place," she said.

Greenstein has covered a wide variety of topics. Her favorites are primates and cephalopods, and recently, New York City subways. She considers it her mandate to be as good a Wikipedia citizen as she can, especially as the project has grown up. "I care a great deal about ... Wikipedia," she said. "The concept of 'freedom to do as we please' has finally begun its maturation to 'responsible to do what we need.'"

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