which means what? >> which means that i run a program that brings subject matter experts to wikipedia. >> how did wikipedia start out? what's its etymology and genesis? >> well, wikipedia is a combination of wiki and encyclopedia. wiki is the kind of software it uses which is that easy to edit, easy to collaborate sort of bare text and images software. wiki is not the same as wikipedia, but they kind of merged the two together. it began in 2001 as a kind of side project, it was a drafting space for that more traditional encyclopedia, but it kind of took off and very quickly amassed hundreds of thousands of articles. >> so who writes and edits for wikipedia, and how do you double-check hat the information is 100% accurate? >> well, as far as who writes

wikipedia, anybody could write wikipedia. you could write wikipedia. i write wikipedia. anybody who wants to share in the compilation and sharing of human knowledge. how do you check it? one of the fundamental rules of wikipedia is that everything is verifiable, and so anything that you read on wikipedia should have been written in an another reliable source first. and then it was cited in wikipedia and summarized. so if you look at a wikipedia article and you look all the way at the bottom, all those little footnotes, those are all sources, so you should in theory be able to verify anything you read on wikipedia by following those sources. >> and if you're the subject of one of those wikipedia biographies or articles and the information is blatantly false or wrong, how can you correct it? >> so it's tricky. a lot of people would be tempted to go and edit their biography

themselves, which is a little -- it's a hairy business because wikipedia has a conflict of interest policy. so the idea you can't have a neutral encyclopedia if people are writing about themselves, but the best thing to do is you can make a note of it on the talk page. every page has a talk page where people talk about that article. and so if there's something problematic that's written about you, then you can go to that talk page and leave a message, but there are also, you know, contacts that are dedicated to removing say defamatory information. and so there are dedicated venues that can help you do that if it's something that's like an emergency. >> and 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? >> i would imagine -- i would be surprised if any of the viewers right now did not go to

wikipedia on a pretty regular basis. there's something like 1.5 billion unique devices that visit wikipedia every single month. it's just where people go to find information about pretty much any topic. and that's why our organization is dedicated to trying to make sure it's as good as possible. i think there's a growing recognition that wikipedia is a source that people use. it's where the public learns. i think in academia for a long time it was the scourge of professors where students would be citing wikipedia and relying on it too much and professors just kind of took a perspective of just get wikipedia out of the classroom, and now they're coming around and resing it's not going anywhere. students are using wikipedia. it's where people are going for information, and so it should be good. >> so explain that transformation. because as you point out many college professors would forbid wikipedia as a source or

research topic. why is that changing? can you elaborate? >> we still wouldn't recommend citing wikipedia directly. we recommend using wikipedia as an amazing resource to find a summary of what's out there and then to follow it to the reliable sources you can then site. so we typically, you know, when we talk to students in particular we talked about when you go to wikipedia, look for those footnotes at the bottom. go to those footnotes to verify things and then site those footnotes. don't site wikipedia. >> let's take a deep dive. you said anyone can provide information to wikipedia, but basically who are the content creators? who are those editing the material? give us a sense of who the people are that provide this information that we can find online? >> so wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and it's really easy to go on and click the edit button,

and just change something in an article. but it's hard to do well. it's hard to really jump into an article and make significant changes because there are a lot of policies and guidelines involved. but as far as who writes it -- so just because everybody can write wikipedia, not everybody does. and we find that for a project that is trying to accumulate the sum of all human knowledge, there are a lot of demographics that are not reflected in the population of the editors of wikipedia. so, for example, we find that the average wickpedikipedian is overwhelmingly male, and come from english speaking countries, primarily the united states, u.k., western europe. and so it's difficult to say it's encompassing all of human

knowledge, and that's another area we're trying to address is that they are -- these volunteers come from very particular places. they write about what they're interested in. and because they're volunteers as well, they tend to write about things that a lot of people know about it, that a lot of people are interested in. things like 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 are neglected. and so there are significant content gaps on wikipedia and that's something we're trying to address as well. >> i notice when somebody passes away almost immediately the date of death is posted on wikipedia. who's doing that? >> again, that's just anybody. there's some people who i think are are looking for that particular kind of edit in order to kind of jump in their first and make that change. there -- wikipedia is inkre

increasingly really good at covering current events. because there are a lot of eyeballs looking at it, a lot of people processing the information as it comes in. being a tertiary source, it doesn't fall into all the same issues that the news media comes into, sort of wikipedia should not be relying on primary sources, it should wait until things are reported and then assess the weight of different sources. so, you know, if somebody's death is being reported on in a whole bunch of sources, then it's probably reliable. but if only one source is reporting on it so far then maybe it shouldn't be in there. so to answer your question it could be anybody including you, if you see that sort of thing. if you have some reliable sources then you can go into wikipedia and change it. >> a hypothetical because on social media people can say what

they want on instagram or twitter. but if you have an axe to grind against john dough and say he's a serial killer or child rapist, things that are blatantly false and yet that's posted, how emphas is that person able to correct that? >> so wikipedia tries to be really hypervigilant about biographies of living people. so this dates back to an incident that happened years and years ago where a famous journalist his biography of wikipedia linked him to the assassination of jfk, which he had nothing to do with obviously. but it remained in the article for a period of some months until somebody pointed it out to this journalist and we wrote a scathing op-ed about wikipedia. and that led to a special policy of biographies on living people so that by default we should err on the side of keeping that material out.

it's usually corrected pretty quickly. but when it's not, again you can go to the talk palk, you can fix is on your own by editing the page or there are special venues all across wikipedia that are dedicated to resolving problematic material about living persons in particular. >> and what is your revenue source, because those who go to the wikipedia website will often see a banner asking for money. >> so i work for the wiki education foundation which is grant separate from wikipedia. so those banners go to the organization that operates the servers and programs that kind of run wikipedia. we're a separate one. we interface with academia, and we believe that academia and wikipedia belong together, and so our whole organization is based on bringing wikipedia into classrooms and drawing on the

knowledge that's available in universities to improve those content gaps that i talked about, those issues that are -- those topics that aren't as good as they should be on wikipedia. >> i grew up reading the encyclopedia britannica. i goes those days are long gone. >> it's huge and kind of ubiquitous. it's very much changed what it means to be an encyclopedia. >> and what is the future of the program? >> the future of the program i run, the scholars and scientists program is continue to try to partner with academic associations and universities, archives, libraries to find people who can bring their subject matter expertise to wikipedia. the encyclopedia anyone can edit that's edited by volunteers has done an amazingly good amount of work, but there are some topics

that benefit from having a broad understanding of the literature on a particular topic. for example, what i'm talking about at the aha conference this weekend is about a partnership with the national archives where they were running an exhibit and still are running on the s centennial of the 19th amendment, of women getting the right to vote in the united states. and we worked to recruit a much of academics and librarians to improve wikipedia's coverage of those topics. so when people go to an exhibit and then learn about womens suffrage, they're then going to go to wikipedia to find more information on key figures. so we worked with these people over six courses and improved a whole lot of articles. created a whole lot of biographies on suffragists that did not appear on wikipedia

before. and quality i think unbiased, but i think it's very much improved. so oats what i'm talking about. and i hope to do a lot more of that kind of partnership, that kind of focused engagement. we know that subject matter experts are really understanding -- like i said there's been some kind of change in the way 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. they're passionate people who have dedicated their lives to particular subjects, and it only makes sense they share it on wikipedia match they find while it's easy to get started, it's really hard to do well, and that's why we have this kind of structured professional development program that walks people through how to do wikipedia, how to share that knowledge on wikipedia, how to adapt to that different form of wrying in a way that makes sense, that, you know, we take time and meet with them virtually and through chat and provide feedback.

and that's our intervention in this regard to try to make it so that much subject matter experts feel comfortable tributing. >> and before i let you go what is your own background and why did you decide to take on this project? >> so i've been a wikipedia volunteer since about 2007 and i started as a volunteer editor as well as a researcher of wikipedia. and then while a phd student i started teaching classes and brought wikipedia into my classes. and that's what led me to this organization, the wiki education foundation because this is exactly what they were doing. and i found it to be a really powerful way to engage students where instead of writing a term paper that kind of gets thrown away at the end of the semester, they write a piwikipedia articl which they then can show all of

their friends. so i was very passionate about that, led me to the foundation. and meanwhile every time we go and try to recruit for the student program academics would keep asking us, well, this is great you have this structure to help students, right? what about something for us? and it's from that idea there's a demand from subject matter experts for some kind of support system. that's why we started shifting and why i was passionate about highlighting that program, and that was about two years ago. and it's just been growing ever since. >> ryan mcgrady, the manager of the scholars and scientists program. he's joining us from new york. thank you for being with us. >> pleasure to be here. weeknights this week we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on cpan 3. tonight we focus on d.c. museums which include the smithsonian institution, open free to the public nearly every day of the

year. recently the smithsonian announced its museums and zoo would be closing this past saturday due to the coronavirus outbreak. to talk about george washington's vision for the presidency. then museum curator and the marine corps historian took questions about the battle of wio jeema at the national museum of the marine corps. and harding took question about the long campaign to win women the right to vote. american history tv tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span 3. c-span, your unfiltered view of government created by cable in 1979 and brought to you today by your television provider. next on "the presidency"

presidential rhetoric scholar robert rowland compares the speaking styles and effectiveness of ronald reagan and brock and details what they had in common. the dole institute of politics hosts this event. >> welcome to the dole institute of politics. i'm a member of the dole institute student advisory board. the official student group of the institute. the student advisory board is bipartisan group whose members can access many great opportunities through their involvement with the institute including volunteering at programs and networking with our special guests. if you are a student and would like to join please contact us by e-mailing dolesab@ku.edu. after the program we will have some time for the audience to ask questions. if you have a question please raise your hand and a student