Weekly Wide Web

One Million Edits

Congratulations to laid-off pizza-delivery guy and king of Wikipedia edits Justin Knapp, who goes by the name Koavf on the site.

Knapp, who is apparently 29 and has been part of the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia (and place where time goes to die) since 2005, is—likely nearly everyone else who participates in the curation of the massive site—not getting paid for his work. But on April 18, he broke a milestone seemingly no one had previously considered: 1 million edits.

Knapp, who has college degrees from Indiana University in political science and philosophy, generally edits articles focused on those subjects (as well as religion). He has received some notoriety online thanks to the million-edit milestone, but the only Wikipedia reward was a note on the site. Not a plaque, not a King of Wikipedia sash and crown ... nothing in return for hours, days and weeks of work on the sixth-most-popular website in the world.

I suppose Knapp gets to feel that he's helped countless high school students take a research shortcut, and Wikipedia is an ad-free entity, so it's not like someone is getting rich off Knapp's work (unlike The Huffington Post does with its contributors, for example), but it's a little hard for me to understand why a now-unemployed guy gives this much to something that won't return anything in the transaction.

Still, since I spend far too much time reading Wikipedia entries, I salute your efforts, Justin Knapp.


The week on The Range

We discussed the push to get former U.S. Sen. Dennis DeConcini to resign from the board of the Corrections Corporation of America; we suggested you read an editorial from the Sioux City Journal; we let you know that Nicholas Fontana will replace Daniel Patterson in Legislative District 29; asked if you know who the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court is; suggested that Frank Antenori examine the lack of success Florida is having in drug-testing welfare recipients; watched the fireworks as Ron Barber and Jesse Kelly began their general-election campaigns; and discussed the highlights of the week's political events with Carolyn Cox and Jeff Rogers on Arizona Illustrated's Political Roundtable, with your host, Jim Nintzel.

We looked forward to the release of Dragoon Brewing Company's IPA; examined the fray between Lindy Reilly and Redline Sports Grill's Luke Cusack; tried to understand what sort of person posts a photo to Velveeta's Facebook page; talked about urban chickens; and took a look inside Cartel Coffee Lab's new location.

We gave you a head's-up that local bluegrass act Run Boy Run will be heading up to Sedona for a bluegrass festival; shared a review of Andrew Bird's show at the Rialto; suggested you hit up a national park for free this week; asked people to just leave Ted Nugent and his stupidity alone; showed you a trailer for a super-adorable movie about a guide dog; offered a meditation by Ricky Gelb; thanked Ghostface Killah for his game-show-theme vigilance; grimaced as the temperatures began to rise; asked you to listen to Phoenix's Ladylike; watched the new R. Kelly and Last Call Brawlers videos; shrieked with glee that Gillian Welch is coming to town; asked you to help out some robot-building high schoolers; and said farewell to Cash Cab.


Comment of the week

"It's a stroke of genius on the fair's part. Get all the (Tea Partiers) there on one day so normal people can enjoy themselves on the others."

TucsonWeekly.com commenter "sangria" apparently won't be stopping by Ted Nugent's show at the Pima County Fair ("Trying to Cancel Ted Nugent's Show at the Fair Is a Colossal Waste of Time," The Range, April 20).


Best of WWW

The first Tucson Taco Festival is this Saturday, April 28, and we'll be there as a sponsor—and your web producer, Dan Gibson, will be present as a judge. While it might be impossible to capture the pure excitement of the festivities in digital form, we will have photos and Gibson's recap of what it was like to weigh in as a culinary King Solomon on Monday, April 30.

On an unrelated note, we'll be giving away a pair of tickets to see super-popular comedian Gabriel Iglesias (with special guest Ozomatli!) at Casino del Sol on May 12. For more information, head to The Range. You could be a few clicks away from winning free admission to see the man they call "Fluffy."