Richard Knipel

Richard Knipel is a Wikimedian based in New York City. As of 2025, Knipel is the Wikimedian-in-Residence at the City University of New York. thumb|Knipel at the United Nations Open Source Week, June 22, 2026, NYC Quotes Wikipedia is the CUNY of the Internet. It tries to be something that reaches people where they are. We try to support folks all around. There is definitely some sensibility that is shared with public knowledge and public education that is wide ranging.” Episode 112: “Wikipedia is the CUNY of the Internet” August, 2025 On Wikipedia and CUNY Some people think about Wikipedia as a technological projects. I don't think of it as that way. I think of it as a community project and really community organizing. And that could be done one level with like volunteers in different places and another way could be done, throughout an institution... finding the stakeholders and what folks are interested in and ways to support them. And the nice thing about Wikipedia is it's kind of an encyclopedia. And so it has a little bit of everything. And so there are a lot of different aspects of CUNY, of the University, of classes that folks teach, of archival projects, that might match up with different aspects of the wikiverse. Episode 112: “Wikipedia is the CUNY of the Internet” August, 2025 On Wikipedia and community organizing ...in certain circumstances, different cultural institutions have hired folks. It could be on a temporary basis. It could be on a more long term basis to help support Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects from within an institution, to help connect the collections at the institution or the areas of study of the institution with the Wikimedia websites and with the community, and various communities. So this actually started, around museums. So that was previously as the Wikimedia residents at the Guggenheim and at the Met. It's an idea of sort of modeled on an artist in residence, which is a strange analogy, but that's the terminology they have. But it's basically finding a way to make connections between the larger volunteer communities and the institution and finding ways that these institutions can collaborate with each other. It's part of a larger network. Episode 112: “Wikipedia is the CUNY of the Internet” August, 2025 On Wikimedians-in-Residence I think Wikipedia is a pretty good, valuable resource if you come across the casually, in like a search engine or something. But I think it's a lot more valuable if you understand how it works and you understand how to read it, you understand how the citations work. You can see the history of every Wikipedia article from the day it was created till today. Every single change back and forth, good and bad. You can see all the discussions that people have had about that article. What's included in that article? What's not included in that article? What, how, how things should be included? What proportion should we show this view or that view? What are the appropriate, appropriate sources to cite? So I think the value of Wikipedia, which is I think it's probably enough if you find it in a search engine, but if you go through it and you understand how it works, I think it's exponentially more valuable and more interesting and more like sort of creative and more of a fun sense of community, and understanding. Episode 112: “Wikipedia is the CUNY of the Internet” August, 2025 On the value of Wikipedia External links Category:Richard Knipel