Sunday, February 14, 2010

Four years ago, on February 9, a major Polish newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza published a report detailing a hoax in Polish Wikipedia entitled Henryk Batuta. The author of the report was Konrad Godlewski; several weeks later, Godlewski began editing Polish Wikipedia. The results of his work include one featured article – pismo chi?skie (Polish for “Chinese character”) – as well as various articles relating to China.

During our interview, Godlewski discusses memes, hoaxes, and the Batuta Army – the creators of the hoax his paper reported on. From February this year, a special project on the Polish Wikipedia, BATUTA, saw a makeshift taskforce work on improving the quality of content. BATUTA stands for “Bezwzgl?dna Akcja Troskliwego U?ród?awiania Tysi?cy artyk?ów”, roughly translated as “Ruthless Action of Carefully Adding References to Thousands of Articles”.