Wikipedia User Makes 1 Million Edits

> Wikipedia is wonderful, but it's sad to see people sacrificing so much of themselves for it.

It is moving to see people sacrificing so much of themselves for others. I have nothing but absolute respect and awe for people like you and him. Yes, these are positive externalities and most people will not get any personal benefit from it, unlike say writing open-source software which can potentially get the authors work, fame, and more. But don't think of this as a useless clean-up job but rather unselfish charity in the form of passive tutoring.

It is true that the world isn't going to end without you editing Wikipedia but if everyone in your position did the same, things would certainly get a lot less informative. No one can force you to contribute your free time to any project but if you do have the desire, drive, and time to do so, I wholeheartedly thank you for it.

For better or worse the exact same thing is true for comments on blogs, social news sites, and elsewhere. The people writing the articles on their personal sites get all the credit, whereas the people analyzing and fact checking what others are saying are often providing just as much if not more value.

Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of comments are completely crap, but so are the vast majority of blog posts. And because the average blog post gets way more attention than the average comment, trying to keep things from becoming completely insane is a completely thankless job. And unfortunately highly necessary, or else bloggers and journalists would basically have free range to completely make shit up and be wrong about basic facts, both purposely and accidentally, and generally spread all sorts of propaganda and misinformation.

And what's more, leaving good comments is really an art form, one that's quite different from writing longer stuff but really on par with it in many ways. And yet there really aren't more than a handful of blog commenters who have achieved any measurable amount of reputation or success because of their comments.

Commenters are generally seen at best as critics, people who complain instead of do. But really the role they play in the ecosystem is not just important but in fact essential.

There's a survivorship bias problem at Wikipedia, though. Most prominent volunteers swear that their motivation is just to make the encyclopedia better. They aren't sad that their contributions are submerged among many others; many claim that this is the beauty of Wikipedia.

But, like you, those who find they want some other motivations probably don't hang around (and probably leave well before their 100,000th edit).

So we don't quite know if Wikipedia would be any better if one could build a personal reputation, or if editors got some reward, tangible or intangible, from their contributions. I suspect it would be a big improvement, but people are understandably reluctant to mess with the current model.

I really appreciate your contribution to the WikiPedia and all the others who does it. You guyes deserve some more than self satisfaction. I would like to suggest some badges(like of 4squre) or some donation sharing method for the top contributors.

I believe wikipedia is not just a tech, rather it is about content.

Prepare to see another spike on your personal site. I recently spent over two hours on there, and I must say, you have a lot of interesting articles on a magnitude of topics, e.g., DNB and Spaced Repetition. I'm surprised you haven't wrote anything about Ghost in the Shell and Technology Singularity yet, since you seem to enjoy science fiction and technology as much as I do.

Satisfaction and the feeling that you helped other people are profound motivators for human action, either with or without recognition.

My HN karma just topped 1000 today. It's a meaningless number, and my comments may or may not have helped other people learn new things, but I feel good about it anyway. How much better would someone feel when their Wikipedia edit count reaches one million, even if it's just a number? Besides, this guy probably helped a lot of people learn new things, a lot more than most of us can even dream of. He probably even helped me on more than one occasion, since I do political philosophy, too. Simply knowing that he did so, for him, might be worth more than any gold-plated trophy. To Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize was just a $192K grant to help poor people even more. She even refused the ceremonial banquet.

Of course, devoting tens of thousands of hours with no pay and no recognition isn't for everyone. But I don't think it's sad that some people do it. Every one of us wants to feel satisfaction. Not all of us find satisfaction in the same kinds of things. It would be sad if this guy did it because he wanted to get famous and nobody noticed. But if he just did it for the sake of participating in one of humanity's most remarkable achievements, we should all be happy, not sad. The only thing that's sad about the situation is that this guy is unemployed. But I would be sad about that even if he never edited a single Wikipedia article.

In fact, according to some philosophies, lack of visible recognition might even enhance your satisfaction, since compensation cancels out some of the karma you've accrued. Not saying this is the right way to think about life, and this guy might not even think this way. (What do "Christian radicals" believe?) But some people actually do believe in this kind of thing, and at some level I deeply respect them.

You do benefit yourself, because you learn more about the topic, and can work with people who also understand it (English would be useless if only you could speak it).

Of course, by 1m edits, that benefit might no longer be worth it.

I really feel this is a problem we all face, how much can we give before it starts to hurt us personally. This world is not forgiving, even for the good guys. Time is precious, so do not waste it. If giving makes you feel like your life has meaning then by all means give, but don't sacrifice the quality of your personal life or that of your family.

> The problem is that the benefits are going entirely to all your readers. It's practically a case-study in positive externalities [...] when you make 10,000 edits to Wikipedia, you are guaranteed to get nothing.

How could that be changed? One problem is that if people gained something worthwhile, some would game the system.

I've made 100x fewer edits and think your site is super excellent.

Wikipedia will probably outlive most personal sites, and will be the subject of much more analysis. I would be somewhat surprised if on net, over next decade personal benefit captured greater for effort put into Wikipedia and similar edits than equivalent effort put into personal site. One step in this direction would be better tools to illustrate one's contributions. I've only seen people list articles they've contributed heavily to.

But much of the web will be subject to similar analysis, just less concentrated, and ability to capture private benefit from personal site also problematic, just less so. Putting effort into one's own site has more similarities to editing Wikipedia than differences. I realize that's a fairly vacuous statement. :-)

That makes a little more sense. If he started in 2005 it would require an edit roughly every 3 minutes over the course of 6 years working 24/7 to reach a million.

Looking through the guy's recent contributions, as far as I could see for the past 24 hours or so was just hundreds of AWB edits on article talk pages; things like adding a widget saying an article is part of a particular wikiproject to a few dozen talk pages at once.

I don't think we should be comparing wikipedia contributors on the number of edits they've made...