The Guardian of Wikipedia

Multilingualinformation, diverse and accessible to everyone: that gives us Wikipedia. Every time we have a doubt — just as we used to look for the volume of the encyclopedia in the library— today we're looking for it on Wikipedia. Let us then look for the definition they give of themselves:

Wikipedia is a free, polyglot and collaboratively edited encyclopedia. It is managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization whose funding is based on donations. Its more than 50 million articles in 300 languages have been written together by volunteers from all over the world, adding more than 2000 million editions, and allows anyone to join the project to edit them, unless the site is protected from vandalism to avoid trouble and/or trouble.

Wikipedia

It was created on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and is the largest and most popular online consultation work. Since its foundation, Wikipedia has not only gained popularity — it is among the 10 most popular websites in the world — but its success has led to the emergence of sister projects: Wiktionary, Wikilibros, Wikiversidad, Wikiquote, Wikinoticias, Wikisource, Wikiespecies and Wikiviajes.

Real people

Behind that great revolution of access to the information generated by Wikipedia — even though it is collaborative —, there are real people who edit, correct and ultimately have the latest word about what is published. One of them is Mauricio Genta, a Argentine, 27 years old. His position is that of “Wikipedian in residence”. He is in charge of a digitization project and also follows up of about 1200 items. Whenever something is modified in one of those texts, he gets an email. Mauricio is one of the 40 publishers in Argentina who have the final decision on the modifications to be made.

Mauricio Genta studies museology and shares his time between the Circe Library and the National Academy of History, where scans all kinds of documents with a scanner he made himself . It is a wooden structure with two cameras at the top. On an acrylic, support the open book and, with a red button, shoot. Immediately, the photos appear on your computer screen and then upload them to one of all Wikimedia projects.

It is that, in the age of automation, the digital and the anonymous, the human eye remains so as always. That's why there are people like Mauritius who take care of to safeguard the valuable information we have at this time of hyperconnectivity.