What I'm working on



email: jorlowitz@gmail.com twitter: @JakeOrlowitz - @WikiLibrary - @WikiAdventure - @WikiProjectMed

This is my personal account. Although I work for the Wikimedia Foundation, contributions under this account are exclusively in my individual, volunteer capacity. To contact me in my role running The Wikipedia Library at WMF, please leave your message at User talk:Ocaasi (WMF).

Play to learn: The Wikipedia Adventure * Do research: The Wikipedia Library * Read the guide: Wikipedia: Plain and simple
Editing for a company: Plain and simple COI guide * Want to get help: Chat with a live Wikipedian * Need a break: Listen to Wikipedia


  • "And when people did help they were given a flattering name. They weren’t called “Wikipedia’s little helpers,” they were called “editors.” It was like a giant community leaf-raking project in which everyone was called a groundskeeper. Some brought very fancy professional metal rakes, or even back-mounted leaf-blowing systems, and some were just kids thrashing away with the sides of their feet or stuffing handfuls in the pockets of their sweatshirts, but all the leaves they brought to the pile were appreciated. And the pile grew and everyone jumped up and down in it having a wonderful time. And it grew some more, and it became the biggest leaf pile anyone had ever seen anywhere, a world wonder."

—New York Review of Books, [1]

  • "I call this Revolution 2.0. Revolution 2.0 is, is - I say that our revolution is like Wikipedia, OK? Everyone is contributing content. You don't know the names of the people contributing the content ... This is exactly what happened... Everyone was contributing small pieces, bits and pieces. We drew this whole picture. We drew this whole picture of a revolution. And that picture - no one is the hero in that picture."

— Activist Wael Ghonim

  • "What are we going to do tonight, Brain? Same thing we do every night, Pinky, try and take over the world."

— Pinky and the Brain

Tools edit

Understanding Wikipedia edit

Understanding Wikipedia
"Wikipedia only works in practice. In theory, it could never work."
Understanding the vandal-fighting web

Wikipedia works because of how many people participate in creating and checking its pages. All changes go through a virtual filter--a gauntlet--of intelligent computer and human review. Thousands of people are constantly scouring new changes, and millions of readers keep an eye out for anything that seems off.

Because of this process, research studies have shown that Wikipedia is just as accurate as traditional encyclopedias, but its errors get fixed faster. We are living proof of the coders' motto that "With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". In other words, many hands make anything possible!

1. Edit filter (automatic pattern rejection)

2. CBNG (machine-learning artificial neural network bot)

3. Huggle, Igloo, Lupin's filtered list (human assisted regex/badwords)

4. STiki (cbng residual feed, missed vandalism, subtle vandalism--human assisted metadata and pattern based review)

5. Article watchlists, selective page and topic monitoring by users

6. Pending changes, live version delay, reviewed by autoconfirmed users

7. Semi-protection, prevents non-autoconfirmed users from editing

8. Full protection, prevents non-admins from editing

9. Official readers, journalists and subjects of articles who report mistakes in the news (not good!)

10. Random readers, millions of individuals who fix errors when they come upon them