Why I built WikiNative Studio

Professional Wikipedia editing applies the encyclopaedia’s content policies, guidelines, and manual of style. Encyclopaedic writing is not creative; it is deterministic. Closely related to academic writing, secondary sources form the article’s evidential basis. The methodology that Wikipedia’s editors apply determines what Wikipedia says. Encyclopaedic practice is the antithesis of non-factual, indeterminate attempts at writing from a neutral point of view, with verification as an afterthought.

Since 2018, I have witnessed countless educated people attempt to write an encyclopaedia entry backwards. Backwards writing starts with a first draft malformed by teleological bias. It ends with the writer searching for reliable sources to support their assertions. The writer then learns that reliable published sources are rare. Confounded, the writer, usually the article’s subject or someone connected to the subject, resorts to increasingly desperate measures to change the predetermined outcome by altering the article’s evidential base. Subsequently, the inevitable conflict begins between ‘it is true because I believe it to be so’ and reality’s inescapable truth. At some point, the vast majority of my clients will reveal their mistaken belief that Wikipedia’s epistemic framework doesn’t apply to them. They will claim that they or their organisation is entitled to special treatment from Wikipedia’s community.

Unlike general encyclopaedias like the Britannica or my encyclopaedia, Wikipedia sets its scope broadly to capture subjects like current affairs, living people or active companies. However, its broader remit carries with it a broader set of issues. Roughly 270,000 active registered users aren’t enough to maintain the English-language edition’s more than seven million articles. Much of its content hasn’t been updated for years. Brands frequently forget that its message boards are publicly facing and the mistakes that they make on the platform do not get purged from Wikipedia’s servers.

My software gives my clients a private environment to protest or accept Wikipedia’s strengths and limitations without bringing shame upon themselves or their organisation in Wikipedia’s public spaces.