When you edit Wikipedia, what do you write about? Did you sit in the front row or the back row as a child? Did you grow up on science fiction, were you an activist in college? Did no one understand you, or have you always been perfectly normal? Tell me, because I want to know who’s in this conversation.

Do you edit your subject of expertise, or the one you wish you were an expert on? Is Wikipedia so shallow it makes you cringe, or so technical that only experts can read it? Is editing an impulse for you, that fanboy urge to correct, or do you plan your essays? Do you learn by editing? Do you know what you’d like to learn?

Who is writing our collective present? Are they white and middle-class like me, geeks with too much education and even more bandwidth? Are they high-school kids in small towns with no one else to feed their minds? Are there any women on the internet? When will Wikipedia be on StuffWhitePeopleLike? What does the Arabic version talk about? Will British or American spellings prevail?

Wikipedia is a tool of the conservatives; wikipedia has a liberal bias. Food irradiation is perfectly safe, and you’re violating NPOV. Who made you an administrator, anyway? So, revert revert revert! Biodynamics is not psuedo-science, it’s anthroposophy. Why can’t the entry for The Beatles just explain that they were way better than Elvis?

If you wrote your own book, what would it be on? Will Google Books ever let us read every page? Will our parents ever be comfortable with instant messaging? Do you believe that touch is more important than words? Do we all need to get out more?

Who was that one person in your life who was once patient enough to give you their best answer, over and over, to your plaintive “why?”