Villach IT entrepreneur writes for Wikipedia

Rene Kopeinig, a self-employed IT entrepreneur from Villach, contributes articles to Wikipedia in his spare time, ORF reported. The 32-year-old uses the username “deadlyhappen” and began writing for the German-language edition as a teenager.

The German-language Wikipedia was accessed more than 26 billion times in the past 12 months and contains more than three million articles, according to ORF.

Kopeinig said he first wrote an article after failing to find information about an E-number, the abbreviations used for food additives. “I thought other people would be interested too, so I wrote the article,” he said.

He was 15 or 16 at the time and had little experience with academic research. He taught himself how to contribute by researching topics, assessing sources and citing them in his own words.

The appropriate sources depend on the subject, Kopeinig said. Scientific publications are suitable for articles about food additives, while established newspapers or ORF can be useful references when writing about people.

Anyone can write or edit a Wikipedia article, but new contributions are not immediately visible to everyone. Experienced users with reviewer status check the text and publish it only if it meets Wikipedia’s criteria.

Not every topic is considered relevant enough for an article. Such cases can lead to deletion discussions, while the relevance criteria and the discussions about them are publicly available on Wikipedia.

The time required varies. Kopeinig said he quickly wrote an article about a “Fruchtschnitte”, a piece of fruit between two wafers, after taking a photograph and adding sources from cookbooks. Articles about movements involving several people can take weeks and may require a main article along with separate articles about the individuals involved.

Kopeinig contributes voluntarily and without payment. He said he had learned a great deal from other Wikipedia contributors and viewed his work as a way of giving something back. He particularly enjoys presenting knowledge in graphics, especially when IT processes are complicated.