One of the things that I’ve meaning to do for ages, in the event that I had any spare time or energy, is to contribute something to Wikipedia. The basic principle of the collective creation of a gigantic repository of knowledge is inspiring, the overall quality of entries has improved so much over the years so that we academics need no longer discourage students from drawing on it (as a first step, and without citing it, of course, let along copying it…) – and it has been very helpful at times, when trying to correct Thucydides misquotations and misattributions on the Twitter, to be able to point people towards the small Misattribution section within the entry on Thucydides, which gives the correct source for the ubiquitous ‘Scholars and Warriors’ quote.
Don’t bother looking for it; it’s not there any more.
Today is the first day of the strike over the proposed wrecking by Universities UK of the pension scheme for lecturers in universities like Exeter. Taking strike action and cancelling classes makes me deeply miserable – yes, I know how far our devotion to teaching leaves us wide open to exploitation within the marketised modern university, but it doesn’t take away the feelings of guilt and frustration – and so spending a bit of this unwanted free time on Wikipedia editing seemed a good idea, since it’s anonymous and so can’t be counted by the university as research, impact, engagement or anything else.
What a waste of an hour, adding five more of the most common misattributed quotes, with full references; within half an hour it was all gone, taken out by one of their established contributors on the grounds that sections on quotations and misquotations have no place in an encyclopaedia entry. Now, I can actually see some merit in that argument, so I’m not going to bother getting into an editing war, but it would have been nice to see it put in less dismissive terms, with some acknowledgement of the work I’d put in. The disclaimer on their personal page, that this isn’t anything personal but they just don’t want to see the encyclopedia wrecked, doesn’t do anything to improve the impression.
More than that: there’s been a section on Quotations in the Thucydides entry for years, but this contributor has clearly only just noticed this and decided that they rdon’t like it. So, not a Thucydides obsessive who jealously watches over that particular page and objects to anyone making changes to it, which I could half understand, but presumably someone who jealously watches out for anyone making any changes to anything at all Antiquity-related, to decide whether they like them or not. Yes, that’s going to encourage other people to get involved…
I’ve taken my changes off to the Wikiquote page (where we’ll see how long they last before some self-important tosser decides that this is an affront to his amour propre), and will now go and hack down some brambles for the rest of the afternoon.
On a more cheerful note, some of my brilliant colleagues out on the picket line in Exeter, showing that classicists make the best protest signs…
Update: I’m very grateful for the supportive response from various people over on the Twitter, especially Adam Parker (@adamarchaeology), and I’m happy to accept that loads of the people involved in Wikipedia are great – but it doesn’t persuade me to spend any more time on it, however long the strike lasts…
Sphinx 
Excellent blog title (and blog, obvs.)!!
Yes, thinking up that title did make me feel slightly better,
As for the post, I’ve just seen yours, and am feeling very second-rate.
Prof. Morley, sadly that seems to be common when learned people try to edit Wikipedia articles. Contributing to wikipedia requires developing a specific set of political skills and contact, just like academic publishing, only it does not give a path to a job or have a clear end point (someone can rubbish my journal article after it is printed, but they can’t delete it because it cited too many sources or was tainted with original research!)
Maybe offering to contribute an entry to a speciality site on misquotations would be more fruitful?