about the relationship between the oil industry, christianity and politics sunday at 4:30 p.m. eastern here on american history tv. >> ryan mcgrady talks about how wikipedia has changed since it was founded in 2001. as the scholars in science program manager, he works with academics to improve site content. his interview was recorded at the annual american historical association meeting in new york city. host: joining us from our studios in new york, ryan mcgrady. he is the manager for wiki education, which means what? a program that brings subject matter experts to wikipedia. host: what is its etymology in genesis?

a concept ofdia is if wikipedia. it's that easy to edit, easy to collaborate text and images software. is not the same of wikipedia but they merge the two together. in 2001 as a project of a more traditional encyclopedia. and got a took off life of its own. very quickly amassed hundreds and thousands of articles poor -- articles. who writes and edits for wikipedia and how do you check to make sure it is 100% accurate? guest: anybody can write wikipedia. you couldkipedia or write wikipedia. anybody who decides they want to share and the compilation and sharing of human knowledge. how can you check it?

one of the fundamental rules of wikipedia is that everything is verifiable. anything that you read in wikipedia should have been written in another reliable source first. then it was cited in wikipedia. if you look at a wikipedia article and then you look at the bottom, all of those little footnotes, those are all sources. ablehould, in theory, be to verify anything you read on wikipedia by following those sources. the information is blatantly false or wrong, how can you correct it? guest: it is tricky. a lot of people are tempted to go and edit their biographies themselves, which is harry business because wikipedia has a conflict of interest policy. the idea is you cannot have a neutral encyclopedia if people are writing about themselves. the best thing to do is make a

note of it on the top page. a lot of people don't realize that every article on wikipedia has a talk page were people talk about that particular article. if there is something that is problematic written about you, you can go to that top page and leave a message. there are also contacts that are dedicated to remove defamatory information. there are dedicated venues that can help you do that if it's something like an emergency. host: do you have a sense of how often people go to wikipedia for background information? how many people travel to your site on a regular daily basis? ifst: i would be surprised any of the viewers right now did not go to wikipedia on a pretty regular basis. there is something like 1.5 billion unique devices that visit wikipedia every month. it is where people go to find information about pretty much any topic.

that is why our organization is dedicated to trying to make sure it is as good as possible. there is a growing recognition that wikipedia is a source people use. i think an active team for a students would rely on wikipedia and professors took a -- of get wikipedia out of the classroom and now they are coming around. you are realizing it's not going anywhere. students are using wikipedia. it's where people go for information. host: explain that transformation. as you point out, many college professors would for bid wikipedia as a primary source for a research topic. why and how is that changing? can you elaborate? guest: we still would not recommend citing wikipedia directly. just like google would not recommend citing any encyclopedia. asrecommend using wikipedia

an amazing resource to find a summary of what's out there, than to find it to the reliable sources that you can then site. we typically, when we talk to students, we talk about when you go to wikipedia, look for the footnotes at the bottom, go to those footnotes and verify things, and then site those footnotes, not wikipedia. host: you said anyone can provide information on wikipedia, but who are the content creators ? who are those editing the material. ? ? give us a sense. guest: wikipedia is an encyclopedia anyone can edit. it's really easy to go on and click the edit button. it's hidden at the top and to just change something in an article. it's hard to do well. it's hard to jump into an article and make significant changes because there are a lot of policies and guidelines involved. it,as far as who writes

just because everybody can write wikipedia, not everybody does. for a project that is trying to accumulate the sum of all human knowledge, there are a lot of democratics that is -- demographics that is not reflected in the editors of wikipedia. for example, we find that the n isage wikipedia an overwhelmingly male. they come from english-speaking countries, primarily the united states, u.k., australia, western europe. to say that it is encompassing all of human knowledge. that is another area we are trying to address. these volunteers come from particular places and they write about what they are interested in. because they are volunteers they tend to write about things that

a lot of people are interested in. things i sports and video games and certain topics that come from pop culture. meanwhile, topics about other parts of the world that are of interest to other people who don't participate, or neglected. there are significant content caps on wikipedia and that is something we are trying to address as well. host: i notice when someone passes away, almost immediately did eight of death is immediately on wikipedia. who does that? guest: those are some people looking for that particular kind of edit to jump in their first and make that change. wikipedia is increasingly really good at covering current events. of eyeballslot looking and a lot of people processing information as it comes in. it does not fall into all of the same issues that the news media

comes into. wikipedia should not rely on primary sources, it should wait until things are reported and assess the weight of different sources. if somebody's death is being reported on in a whole bunch of sources, then it's probably reliable. what if only one source is reporting on it, they it should not be in there. to answer your question, it could be anybody, including you, any of your viewers, if you see that sort of thing or have some reliable sources, then you could go into wikipedia and change it. host: people say what they want ifinstagram and twitter, but you have an ax to grind against john doe and you say he is a serial killer or he is a child rapists, things that are blatantly false and that is posted, how is that person able to correct that? wikipedia tries to be

really hypervigilant about biographies of living people. it goes back to an incident that happened years ago, a famous journalists, his biography linkedin to the assassination of to dohich he had nothing it. but it remained in the article for months until somebody pointed out to the journalists and he wrote a scathing op-ed about wikipedia. that led to a special policy on biographies of living people. by default, we should be airing on the side of keeping the material out. it does make it in, it's usually corrected by the people who are watching recent edits, the regular active wikipedia editors. it's usually corrected pretty quickly. but when it's not, you can go to the top page and fix it on your own by editing the page, or venues allpecial

across wikipedia that are dedicated to resolving problematic material about living persons in particular. host: what is your revenue source? those who go to the website often see an ad asking for money. guest: i work for the wiki education foundation, which is a nonprofit separate. those go to the media foundation that is an organization operates the servers and the programs that kind of run wikipedia. we have a separate one where we interface with academia. we believe academia and wikipedia belonged together. isour whole organization based on bringing wikipedia into classrooms and then dried on the knowledge that is available in universities to improve those content gaps that i talk about. the topics that are not as good as they should be on wikipedia. up reading the encyclopaedia britannica, i guess those days are long gone.

guest: they are still around. i know they stop their print version but it's hard to compete with wikipedia. huge, free resource, it's it changes what it means to be an encyclopedia. host: what is the future of the program? of the programre that i run, the scholars and scientist program, is to continue to partner with academic associations and universities, archives, who cans to find people bring the subject matter expertise to wikipedia. encyclopedia that is edited by volunteers has done an amazing amount of good work, that there are some topics that aally benefit from having broad understanding of the literature on a particular topic. i am talkingwhat about at the aha conference is a conversation -- partnership with the national archive or they are

running an exhibit on the centennial of the 19th amendment of women getting the right to vote in the united states. us and we worked together to recruit a bunch of academics, archivist and librarians to improve wikipedia's topics. when people want to learn more about women's suffrage, they will then go to wikipedia and try to find more information on the 19th amendment and key figures. we worked with these people over six course is an improved a whole lot of articles. created a lot of biographies that did notes exist before. and really took on the 19th amendment article. i am bias, but i figured it has very much improved. that is what i am talking about. i hope to do more of that partnership and that kind of -- focused engagement.

we know experts are understanding. there has been a change in the way the academics view wikipedia and they tend to be viewing it as something they know they should be involved with in some way. to share their knowledge, their passion of people or dedicated their lives to a particular subject and it only makes sense that they shared on wikipedia. while at the easy to get started, it's hard to do well. that is why we have this structured professional development program that walks to do through how wikipedia, how to share that knowledge on wikipedia, how to a. to a different form of writing in a way that makes sense. we take time, we meet with them for truly and through chat. and that is our intervention in sos regard to try to make it that more subject matter experts feel comfortable contributing. host: what is your own background and why did you decide to take on this project? guest: i have been a wikipedia

volunteer since 2007. started as a bollinger editor and researcher of wikipedia. then while a phd student i started teaching classes and throughout wikipedia in my classes. that is what led me to this educationon, the wiki foundation. i founded a really powerful way to engage students rather than writing a term paper that gets thrown away. they write a wikipedia article that they can then show their friends because everybody uses wikipedia. learn digital literacy, information literacy, writing skills. i was passionate about that and it led me to the foundation. every time we go in try to recruit for the student program academics will keep asking us, this is great that you have the structure to help students

write, what about something for us. it's from that idea that there is a demand from subject matter experts from some sort of support system. that is why we started shifting and that's why i was passionate about piloting that program. that was two years ago and has been growing ever since. host: ryan mcgrady and it has been growing ever since. ryan mcgrady has joined us from new york. thank you for being with us. guest: pleasure to be here. you're watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend, on c-span three. >> next on railamerica, real alliance. a service film documenting the april 1962 official state visit of the empress of iran and the s hah of iran to the u.s. they speak to