Wikipedia Pioneer
Editing Wikipedia since July 2003. Administrator (sysop) since October 2003 — one of the earliest on the project.
In 2003, I became the first university professor in the world to teach with Wikipedia in a classroom assignment at the University of Hong Kong. CNN aired the first-ever English-language television story about Wikipedia featuring my students. Shortly after, I authored one of the earliest academic papers on the project: Wikipedia as Participatory Journalism: Reliable Sources?
GLAM Collaborations
Pioneering work bridging Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums with Wikimedia projects:
- MIT Open Learning — Linking OpenCourseWare content to Wikimedia projects (2026–present)
- Smithsonian Institution — Wikimedian-at-large across museums, research centers, and affiliates (2020–present)
- Metropolitan Museum of Art — Leading linked open data and Wikidata contributions for 470,000+ artworks (2019–present)
- U.S. National Archives — Training and content initiatives
- Cleveland Museum of Art — Open access file uploads and Wikidata creation
- Library of Congress — Classroom editing projects
Featured in The New York Times: "Warming Up to the Culture of Wikipedia" (March 19, 2014)
AI + Wikidata
Leading the application of machine learning to cultural heritage metadata. My 2019 article "Combining AI and Human Judgment to Build Knowledge about Art on a Global Scale" describes the Met Museum's collaboration with Microsoft and MIT — using human-in-the-loop AI to enrich Wikidata with art knowledge accessible to anyone in the world.
Keynotes & Conferences
- Keynote, Wikisym 2010 — academic conference on wikis and open collaboration
- Keynote, WikiConference USA 2015 — at the U.S. National Archives
- Steering committee, Wikimania — the annual global Wikimedia conference
- Speaker, Chautauqua Institution (2022) — "Wikipedia's Power in Cultural Heritage"
In the Media
- CNN TechWatch — First television story about Wikipedia (August 4, 2003)
- CNN International — 10th anniversary of Wikipedia (August 6, 2013)
- KCET SoCal Connected — Technology trends commentary