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This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WWB. |
About WWB
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This Misplaced Pages user page belongs to William Beutler, a writer, consultant, intermittent creative person, and Misplaced Pages editor going by the handle WWB.
I have been part of the Wikimedia community since 2006, when I first registered this account. Much of my editing activity has centered on topics related to Oregon, the District of Columbia, offbeat phenomena, and assorted media figures. As an editor at enwiki I am active sporadically at best; a significant majority of my contributions to the Wikimedia movement have been through other channels.
In 2009 I began writing about Wikimedia-related topics for a blog, The Wikipedian. My annual round-up, "The Top 10 Misplaced Pages Stories of " is something many Wikimedians look forward to annually (or so I have been told). At the end of 2020—an exhausting year, you may recall—I put the site on pause for a while, then revived it as a Substack newsletter in late 2023.
From 2010 to the present, I have owned and operated Beutler Ink, a PR consultancy focused on "white hat" Misplaced Pages engagement for brands, e.g. seeking to improve Misplaced Pages around topics of interest to our clients. All activities related to Beutler Ink clients are carried out via my alternate account, User:WWB Too. Prior to establishing Beutler Ink, I undertook similar work for clients of my former employer using the account User:NMS Bill.
In 2014 I convened a roundtable discussion of Misplaced Pages editors and digital PR execs to discuss issues related to COI on Misplaced Pages and later published an open letter to Misplaced Pages on behalf of 8 of the top ten global PR firms. While not connected to the Wikimedia Foundation's establishment of a new paid-contribution disclosure requirement, I believe these events, which occurred within weeks of each other, taken together have helped to create a more equitable and conducive environment for managing COI situations on Misplaced Pages.
Both The Wikipedian and Beutler Ink have given me the opportunity to publicly discuss my views on Misplaced Pages in the media and at conferences. Examples of the former include The Economist, Wired, and an interview with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN's Q&A, and the latter at SXSW, Wikimania, and Wikiconference North America. In 2020 I contributed an essay to the book Misplaced Pages @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution, published by MIT Press.
Prior to establishing Beutler Ink, I was a strategist at New Media Strategies, writer for National Journal's The Hotline and, in college, editor of a student magazine, the Oregon Commentator.
I currently reside in Crozet, Virginia with my family. Prior to that I lived in Washington, DC for nearly twenty years working in journalism and digital media; Eugene, Oregon attending the University of Oregon; Hong Kong SAR for a short stretch of my childhood, as well as Portland, Oregon, where I was born and principally raised.
The first comprehensive rewrite of this user page occurred at the end of 2023; the last version prior to this revision can be found here.
Articles created
I have created dozens of new articles over my years on Misplaced Pages. Personal favorites include:
In the media
Conferences
- Critical Point of View: WikiWars, Centre for Internet & Society / Institute of Network Cultures, January 12-13, 2010
- How the PR Industry Views Misplaced Pages, WikiConference USA, New York City, May 30, 2014
- We Need to Talk About Paid Editing... Sorting Out Misplaced Pages's Most Enduring Argument, Wikimania 2014, London, August 10, 2014
- Paid Editing of Misplaced Pages: Getting Past "Gotcha", SXSW Interactive, Austin TX; March 13, 2015
- Can Conflicts of Interest (COI) be aligned with the Wikimedia project?, Wikimania 2015, Mexico City, July 17, 2015
Columns
- It's a Wiki World, Politics Magazine, April 2010
- Wiki Wars: Inside the increasingly nasty battle for Misplaced Pages’s soul, Quartz, February 23, 2015
- A Misplaced Pages Expert's Thoughts on the NYPD Editing Controversy, Hubspot, March 23, 2015
Quoted
- Wikipedians Wrestle over John Edwards Love-Child Rumor, Sarah Lai Stirland, Wired, July 3, 2008
- Rep. David Rivera's war with Misplaced Pages, Marin Cogan, Politico, April 7, 2011
- New signs Misplaced Pages began a long decline in 2012, Eric Mack, Crowdsourcing.org, December 30, 2012
- War is over: Imaginary ‘Bicholim Conflict’ page removed from Misplaced Pages after five years, Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News, January 4, 2013
- The War Over Elizabeth Warren's Misplaced Pages Page, Elizabeth Flock, US News & World Report, January 7, 2013
- WikiPeaks? The popular online encyclopedia must work out what is next, The Economist, March 1, 2014
- Saving Misplaced Pages, Noah Rayman, TIME, April 2015
Audio
- The Wisdom and Folly of Crowds, To The Point, KCRW, June 18, 2010
- Q&A: Bill Beutler on How Executives Should Handle Misplaced Pages, Chip Griffin, Franeo Insights, August 30, 2013
Video
- The State of Misplaced Pages (executive producer, writer), January 2011
- Q&A with William Beutler, Q&A, C-SPAN, December 13, 2011
- Bloggingheads.tv, September 10, 2013
- Bloggingheads.tv, September 22, 2014
Resources
- Miscellaneous storage
- Useful templates
- WWB's Sandbox
- User:WWB/Understanding Misplaced Pages's content standards