Wikipedia

I created my Wikipedia account (I believe) sometime in 2005. I made a number of edits to Wikipedia around 2005-2006, but then reduced my involvement with it for the next few years. I started getting more involved in late 2011, and I created and edited a number of pages in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. My initial involvement with Wikipedia occurred while I was an undergraduate studying mathematics and computer science at Chennai Mathematical Institute. On my undergraduate experience page, I credit my college roommate Shreevatsa with introducing me to the idea of Wikipedia editing and many other aspects of hacker culture.

My user profile on Wikipedia is here and my full list of contributions can be accessed here.

Between April and July 2014, I worked on the Wikipedia Views website, that allows for easy tabular comparison of view counts of multiple pages across multiple months. You can use the website to access the view counts for pages I created using this link (for a month-wise breakdown, use this link; to see only totals rather than page-wise breakdowns, see: month, year). In 2016 and 2017, I have made a number of improvements to Wikipedia Views, incorporating data from additional sources.

These numbers somewhat overestimate my contribution, because the pages I created were also edited by others. On the other hand, I’ve also made significant edits to other pages that I’m not including here (and whose view stats you can view here by year or here by month).

Starting March 2017, I have significantly reduced my Wikipedia editing activity, and have shifted my editing activity to the Timelines wiki maintained by my friend Issa Rice, and whom I am paying for maintaining it. The reason for the move was a controversy at Wikipedia surrounding sponsored Wikipedia editing, that Issa and I intend to summarize at some point in the future.

I believe that under some restricted circumstances, editing Wikipedia can generate huge social value. You might wish to read this essay by my friend Brian Tomasik on the issue. Brian echoes some of my thoughts, and some of the examples of pages created that he cites (specifically, the Wikipedia pages on earning to give and room for more funding) were created by me.

See also:

Basic information