Who writes Wikipedia?

Since middle school, students have always been taught to stay away from Wikipedia as a source, as random people can just alter and edit the information found on the page, making it an unreliable source in the eyes of many. Although this has been the research norm ingrained in students minds for so long, no one, myself included, has yet to really think about who actually writes these articles on Wikipedia. In a 2015 article found on BBC News titled “Wikipedia: Meet the men and women who write the articles”, it was stated that there is a force of about 85,000 volunteers across the world, with hundreds located in just Washington DC alone, who constantly write and maintain the pages, making sure that no change is invalid and nothing random is put up. Wikipedia is a very popular site, holding 22 million articles in over 250 languages, and so there are a variety of professionals that focus on certain topics related to their field or role. Likewise, in a 2006 blog post titled “Raw Thought” by Aaron Swartz, he discusses how, after meeting the face of Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales, how Wikipedia is writtten by a community. Wales insisted that there is a group of dedicated volunteers, where everyone knows each other personally and they all know him, that dedicates their life to maintaining this popular source. Wales believes that this group is much like a traditional organization, where the focus is on very important site. Additionally, Wikipedia articles are crafted by this village of contributors, according to Discovery News, and these contributors are not anonymous and contribute at different levels of engagement. Therefore, although people can edit pages and make certain changes, these changes are not just left there unchecked, but rather this Wikipedia community makes sure that all information is valid.