Fundraising 2012/Translation/Gereon Kalkuhl video (captions)

1 00:00:00,585 --> 00:00:06,891 I was always writing my whole life; I was writing fiction. I was writing just for myself.

2 00:00:07,515 --> 00:00:09,472 And then I found Wikipedia.

3 00:00:09,950 --> 00:00:13,127 My name is Gereon Kalkuhl. I'm from Germany.

4 00:00:13,127 --> 00:00:13,327 I mainly write for the German Wikipedia.

5 00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:23,568 It was a page about a part of the city where my grandmother or grand-grandmother was born.

6 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:27,570 And it's a small part of the city which doesn't exist any more,

7 00:00:28,561 --> 00:00:32,658 because they flattened it in ... I don't know, 80 years, 60 years ago.

8 00:00:32,658 --> 00:00:35,140 It does not exist anymore, so I wanted to read about it,

9 00:00:35,140 --> 00:00:41,295 and the only place where I found information about this in a form that I could understand,

10 00:00:41,295 --> 00:00:46,882 where all information about this was collected together in one article was Wikipedia.

11 00:00:46,882 --> 00:00:49,863 And one day I found out you can edit this.

12 00:00:49,863 --> 00:00:52,618 You can change this information - anybody can.

13 00:00:52,618 --> 00:00:54,052 It's a certain power that you have.

14 00:00:54,052 --> 00:00:59,836 For instance, if you read your daily newspaper, you see some things that you think might not be correct,

15 00:00:59,836 --> 00:01:05,651 or that you don't like, and so the choice that you have is writing a Letter to the Editor;

16 00:01:05,651 --> 00:01:10,465 some people do that, most people don't, they just complain at home.

17 00:01:10,830 --> 00:01:17,316 In Wikipedia you have the opportunity to correct mistakes straight away.

18 00:01:16,959 --> 00:01:25,291 Like, in a normal encyclopaedia, you've got very good people writing the articles, the entries for a lexicon,

19 00:01:25,291 --> 00:01:29,274 but you only have two editors who look over it.

20 00:01:29,274 --> 00:01:38,169 And in Wikipedia, you've got so many people with knowledge about the subjects that read it, look over it, and then correct it.

21 00:01:39,163 --> 00:01:45,400 So anything that's wrong in Wikipedia doesn't stay there for long, mostly, and that I find very fascinating.

22 00:01:46,312 --> 00:01:50,890 Anybody can write any nonsense into Wikipedia,

23 00:01:50,886 --> 00:01:55,870 but if you write nonsense, if something is wrong, you've got hundreds and thousands of people seeing that, and correcting it.

24 00:01:56,474 --> 00:02:09,410 Mainly I write about chess players. I write about airports as well. For example, birds, insects, mayors - whatever is interesting for me at the moment.

25 00:02:10,108 --> 00:02:15,300 If you engage yourself into a certain topic, other people will contact you.

26 00:02:15,297 --> 00:02:19,870 You just see the nicknames on the internet, you don't have faces to it, you don't have names to it,

27 00:02:19,871 --> 00:02:28,450 and then you see the people and they're so diverse; some are 80 years old, some are 60 years old, some are 40 year old business men.

28 00:02:28,447 --> 00:02:35,630 Or 30 year old artists, 15 year-old students from school.

29 00:02:35,630 --> 00:02:41,410 And they are so different, but what they have all in common is they are curious people.

30 00:02:41,413 --> 00:02:44,000 They want to know things, and they want to share this knowledge.

31 00:02:45,252 --> 00:02:45,760 Director: Victor Grigas

32 00:02:45,761 --> 00:02:46,400 Codirector: David Grossman

33 00:02:46,403 --> 00:02:47,090 Producer: Zack Exley

34 00:02:47,087 --> 00:02:47,640 Director of Photography: Pruitt Y. Allen

35 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:48,300 Video Photographers: Jack Harris, Adam Parr, Matthew Storck

36 00:02:48,295 --> 00:02:49,050 Portrait Photographers: Adam Novak, Karen Sayre

37 00:02:49,046 --> 00:02:49,670 Makeup: Melissa Klein

38 00:02:49,666 --> 00:02:50,560 Interviewers: Alma Chapa, Jonathan Curiel, Stephen Geer, Dan McSwain, Corey O'Brien, Frank O'Brien, Jacob Wilson

39 00:02:50,563 --> 00:02:51,400 Production Coordinators: Megan Hernandez, Bryony Jones, Beatrice Springborn

40 00:02:51,405 --> 00:02:51,940 Video Editors: Justine Gendron, Victor Grigas, Jawad Qadir

41 00:02:51,405 --> 00:02:52,090 Production Assistants: Toby Hessenauer, Kristin Rigsby

42 00:02:51,939 --> 00:02:52,710 Writer: Desirina Boskovich

43 00:02:52,709 --> 00:02:54,010 Transcription Services: Kate Aleo, Michael Beattie, Karen Callier, Petro Leigh, Mimi Li, Jacqui Pastor, Kristie Robinson, Brittany Turner, Susan Walling

44 00:02:54,006 --> 00:02:54,300 English Closed-Captioning: AlanKelly VerbatimIT