Quoted in The Athletic

During the most recent "Free Culture Friday" slash World Cup watch party, I spoke to a journalist from the The Athletic and ended up being quoted (and photographed!) in the resulting story, "Welcome to the high-stakes universe of World Cup Wikipedia editing" (gift link):

Those editors include sports fans like Kunal Mehta, 31, who began editing Wikipedia in 2006, when he was in middle school.

“It was addicting,” he said during the combination World Cup/Wikipedia editing watch party.

Mehta got his start by updating scores and creating athlete pages for the NHL’s San Jose Sharks, his home team. Now he works as a software engineer for the Freedom of the Press Foundation and edits in his spare time, often about sports. He sees Wikipedia as the “second draft” of history.

“Through all of human history, people have always tried to collect all knowledge together, that has just always been a task, like the Library of Alexandria,” Mehta said. “Wikipedia has shown that you can just do it. You just provide a blank slate for people to do it, and people will come together and work at it.”