… is the subject of this short interview segment I did at WikiConference North America 2025. The interview was with the team creating Rabbbit Hole, a documentary on Wikipedia currently in the final stages of production. But it’s also an introduction of how creating knowledge on open platforms can be part of a your research trajectory.
Twenty-six other Wikipedians who were interviewed at WCNA are featured here.
I really enjoyed being a part of this panel, hosted and organized by Wiki Education.
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
9 am Pacific / 12 pm Eastern
Twenty-five years ago, Wikipedia launched with the ambitious idea that knowledge could be created collaboratively and shared freely with the world. Just a quarter century later, the online encyclopedia has become a foundational part of the global information landscape, drawing billions of page views each month and impacting how people learn and make real-world decisions. But what have we learned about its role in our knowledge ecosystem — and what comes next?
Panelists will explore Wikipedia’s growth, evolution, and relationship to traditional knowledge institutions like universities, libraries, archives, and museums. Together they’ll consider questions of authority and legitimacy: How has Wikipedia challenged and complemented historic models of knowledge production? What responsibilities come with its incredible reach and power to shape public opinion? And how might the next 25 years reshape who creates knowledge, how it is validated, and who it serves?
Panelists:
This edition of the Wiki Education Speaker Series will be moderated by LiAnna Davis, Wiki Education’s Chief Programs Officer and Deputy Director.
The event will include a public Q&A. We encourage you to bring your questions and join us in celebrating 25 years of Wikipedia — and looking ahead to what’s next!
These images accompanied my talk at the Worlds of Wikimedia conference at the University of Sydney, Australia, on June 13, 2019.
Can we retell history and write an encyclopedia
as if all people are equally valuable?
Yes.
On January 13, I invited to Wikimedia NYC’s celebration of the 18th birthday of Wikipedia to address this question, which I answer strongly in the affirmative. I talk about how long-running changes in the academy have created a font of high quality, well-sourced knowledge about marginalized people: women, indigenous people, Afro-descendant communities, sexual minorities, disabled people, working-class and poor people, and on and on. The challenge now—at least for Wikipedia—is to share this knowledge with the widest possible public in free form. But to do so, we will have draw new maps of geography, history, and our own collective writing process that put those who have been left out back on the map.
Here’s the talk in video form thanks to the Internet Society of New York:
I gave a longer version of this talk at Worlds of Wikimedia in Sydney in June 2019. Here are the slides from that talk.
Carwil without Borders 