I co-edited a book: Wikipedia @ 20

Wikipedia@20 Panel at WikiConference North America 2019 Victor Grigas / CC BY-SA

In October 2018 I responded to a Call for Proposals for a collection of essays about Wikipedia at 20. I was encouraged to submit an abstract by some colleagues during WikiConference North America 2018.

A short while went by and I found out my essay was selected. There was plenty of editorial feedback to keep me busy! I worked and completely threw the piece out many times before submitting the full essay.

Then I found out the book might not happen. A change in editorship meant the project was at risk. Some contributors who are also friends reached out expressing their upset that the project may not happen. This work is just too critical and needs to be published!

Editing a book is a major undertaking. Not really knowing much about editing a book, but also not one to shy away from a challenge, I reached out to Joseph Reagle to see how I could help. I offered that I could serve as co-editor. Graciously he patiently guided me through the process and exercised patience with my late-night and limited work hours.

Over the past year, I learned so much about editing a publication for a major academic press. I have gotten to know so many contributors and their work so well. I feel humbled to have read their essays and provided them with feedback. Really such great academics, advocates, artists, educators, innovators, journalists, librarians, researchers, and technologists.

I still get giddy reading the essays. They are all so different but work well together because they demonstrate in such concrete terms how Wikipedia has changed knowledge sharing and the world.

The WikiConference North America 2019 organizing committee asked the Wikipedia @ 20 editors and contributors to participate in a panel for the opening keynote.

During the process, we used PubPub, MIT Press’ open collaboration platform, to edit and share essays for community feedback. Unfortunately, we had space constraints and had to choose limited essays to publish in the printed volume. The full collection of essays is available on the Wikipedia@20 PubPub. If you’re anything like me, you’ll love the printed copy available in the MIT Press Fall 2020 catalog.

Thank you to the contributors for continually engaging with this project. An unending amount of appreciation and hugs to the social sensitivity experts we engaged with during the publication process. A huge thanks to the MIT Press staff working to make sure this publication happened and is successful – this includes funding as this publication is a CC BY-NC 4.0 licensed publication. And finally the biggest thanks to Joseph Reagle for his deep well of patience, guidance through the publication process, and amazing organizational skills.