Grammar Girl here. I'm in Yon Fogarty and I'm here today with Jonathan Rick because he is a Wikipedia expert. He does all kinds of ghost writing and business writing. His work has appeared in, you know, all the big publications, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, all the big ones. But what interests me about what he does is that

he helps people write their Wikipedia pages. And that is such a specific niche. I just think

it's fascinating. Jonathan Rick, welcome to the Grammer Girl podcast. It is a true pleasure to be here.

Thanks so much, Minion. You bet. So, you know, when I heard about this, it made me ponder Wikipedia

and how, you know, when I was in school, we were told not to use it, that it was not a reliable

source. And it seems like suddenly in this world of AI and misinformation and

disinformation online that suddenly Wikipedia is like the last refuge of truth. I mean, that's

what I am hearing more and more. And I'm wondering, are you seeing that? Or did you actually always know that? Oh, no. Listen, when I went to school, it was verboten, you know, and even actually, so I've been a professor at the University of Maryland for almost 12 years. And certainly I think was among those when I started who excluded Wikipedia from student sources, that is to say,

don't use it. And this was, you know, sort of the prevailing opinion for quite a while. But then

things started to change. I think about maybe as early as 2004, academics were pointing out that Wikipedia was roughly as accurate as competing reference books, if not necessarily as well written.

And then today, you have scholarly studies that find that Wikipedia has continued to sharpen its

sourcing standards and has, I guess, marginalized editors known for their fringe views.

There was an article, I think, in Bloomberg Business Week that sort of concluded that while

mistakes happen, you know, we're all human, the site is self-correcting.

And the kind of viral misinformation that spreads endlessly on Facebook and what's now called

X tends to be removed instantly. So I'm not sure that I would cite it necessarily, but I use it

in what I call the bartender scenario.

If you are having a drink with somebody and you want to glean information, you want to get

information quickly in plain language, you Google it, Wikipedia comes up and you can pretty

much take that to the bank.

And not only that, you'll understand it because Wikipedia is as a rule

written in plain language. Right. And I think another thing, you know, I don't think that I cite

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