Interview with Annie Rauwerda, influencer, founder of Depths of Wikipedia instagram channel and future non-fiction book writer. Or neuroscientist, who knows! This interview led by Pavel Bednařík and Karel Čapka (Wikimedia Czech Republic) took place at Wikimania 2024 in Katowice on Friday August 9th, 2024.
Pavel: Have you been invited to WIkimania in Katowice, or is it your own personal interest?
Annie: I wanted to come, so I applied for a scholarship and received it. Organizers covered my hotel. But it is my personal interest, therefore I bought my flight ticket. It is my second Wikimania in person, before I was just online. I did not come to Stockholm in 2019, as I was not that serious with Wikipedia back then, I just did some typos.
Pavel: Do you consider yourself as a member of the Wikipedia community?
Annie: Yes, I do feel like I am a part of the community. Before I was editing Wikipedia 1 hour a day, and since then I felt squarely being a member of the community. I do not want to feel like I am taking advantage of Wikipedians or the work they do. The more I edit, the more I appreciate it. And it’s fine and addictive to edit. It is very addictive. I go through different phases, sometimes I edit a lot, sometimes I spend a week without it. Sometimes I look something up and I find an article and feel like, Oh, I need to change everything.
Pavel: Do you create your own articles? Any specific field?
Sometimes yeah. I care a lot about the articles, which get a lot of page views but only a few editors. Usually topics out of pop culture. I am using xtools to discover these pages views, I tried to work on those. Youtubers, influencers, movies, the ones which are often a target of vandalism.
Pavel: You started your profile Depths of Wikipedia as part of a zine.
A: One of my friends wanted to start a zine, where she would create a page, where each of our friends would get a page, where he/she would describe what he was doing during the pandemic. And this was in March, we thought It would be just for a couple of weeks. I explored many articles on Wikipedia and I thought I need to put these somewhere to do something about it.
Pavel: How have you found the name?
Annie: First it was called Deep Wikipedia, in an hour it was changed to Depths of Wikipedia.
Pavel: In a TED talk you explained that you deeply admire Wikipedians, that this page is your tribute to them and their work. That it is not only crazy trivia.
Annie: Sometimes it’s more on my mind than others. There are so many ways to contribute to Wikipedia, every week I discover a new corner, where people are doing a ton of work. More and more I find respect and appreciation for the volunteer work Wikimedians are doing.
Pavel: You have a form to collect inspiration. Is it the only source of your posts?
Annie: Mostly I use my own discoveries, the submissions are quite often very weird or they repeat what had been published before. I usually read all of them, but I do not read it right away, checking it every week or 2 weeks. I often get overwhelmed by the submissions (laughter).
Karel: How do you organize your posts? Do you have any publishing plan? What is your routine? Is it your full time job?
Annie: I am not a super organized person. I do post on anniversaries. I have a calendar of anniversaries. Social media is not my full time job, I am doing Depths of Wikipedia stuff usually 2 hours a day. I am actually writing a book on specific corners of Wikipedia, I am trying to publish more on human editors. I am trying to do positive PR for Wikipedia this way. I assume I have more followers than the official Wikimedia Foundation account, right? (laughter)
Pavel: I noticed your work had been already recognised by the authorities of Wikimedia Foundation. Have you met?
Annie: Yes. I remember my first e-mail from WMF, it was Zack McCune, Head of Communications. He wrote that he wanted to have a coffee, I was very excited about it, because I thought it was not a big deal what I was doing. It happened 1,5 years after starting the account Depths of Wikipedia, because at the very beginning I had only several hundreds of followers. Most of the followers were my friends. Later, when I had 1 thousand, I thought – ok, I do not have 1 thousand friends. In August or September it hit 10 000 followers and I thought it was huge now. I never thought it could hit a million.
Karel: Could you explain to us your business model, if it is not a secret, of course? You could easily get a sponsorship for modeling, skin care or similar products…
A: It is not a secret. I did not think initially it would make money at all. Now I do make money. I try to be respectful, because Wikipedia tenet is based on fact everything is free and accessible. I really try not to do intrusive ads or gatekeep anything. The only thing I do is to make comedy live shows on Wikipedia and I charge to get in. I have done 2 sponsor posts, both of them were for upcoming films. And I had a really bad feeling about it, cause Wikipedia has no ads. I was ambiguous about it and I decided not to do it. I am still open to any offers, but it has to be not against the principles of Wikipedia.
Pavel: You mentioned your stand-ups. What is the intensity of your shows? Do you enjoy performing in front of people?
Yes and no. It is really fun. I was nervous at the beginning, but now I am not nervous any more. I was always doing the presentation, I prepared a lot. But it changed during the years. In total, I have done about 50 of them. In 2023 I did a lot of shows. In 2024 I am doing mostly editathons.
Could you tell us more about New York editathons?
Wikimedia New York partnered recently with Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame, who has a lot of money. He is helping with doing editathons for the very beginners. We have only done one so far, but we continue with others. I am doing the opening speech and some fun facts and trivia about Wikipedia.
Pavel: What is your book going to be about?
It’s a bunch of different short chapters. Some of them are based on funny discussions on talk pages Wikipedia, there are so many of them! (Yes, we know!) Others are based on articles being changed in time, some are about interesting articles and their editors. When people read it, they can get a better sense on how Wikipedia works. But it’s not like a full history of Wikipedia or anything like that. My No. 1 goal is to entertain people, the No. 2 goal is to teach people how Wikipedia works.
Pavel: It is understandable, as we are living in a time of infotainment.
Often behind the user name there is a unique person. You can explore it usually only during live events, hardly sitting back behind the computer.
Pavel: If you take a look in the future – what would happen to Wikipedia in 5 years? And what would happen to Depths of Wikipedia?
Obviously there would be a lot more AI generated content online, which would make Wikipedia even more valuable, cause its human generated content. But I can also imagine that Wikipedia would go away in some way. I would be a bit sad about that. But AI is so dependent on what Wikipedia generates, so I am not afraid too much. Regarding Depths of Wikipedia? Well, I would have to find a real job one day! (laughter) I would also like to go back to school one day. I always wanted to be a high school science teacher and during college I started to do Depths of Wikipedia and could not continue. I studied neuroscience and a couple of biology classes. I am still not sure where I am going to stay, currently I am staying in New York. Which could easily change.
What about hiring some people to join you? You have so many followers, it could work out…
I would have to pay them! I am lucky if I manage to pay myself. Probably not.
Further reading and watching:
- TEDX presentation of Annie Rauwerda (YouTube video)
- Depths of Wikipedia’s Annie Rauwerda Is Obsessed With Accessible Information (article)
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