From the moment I first heard of Wikipedia.Org, I thought it was a great idea:  a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. 

If you read my blog even occasionally, you're probably already aware that I'm a fan; I often embed Wikipedia links in to articles, to give readers immediate access to more detailed information about something I've mentioned, especially if it's a piece of jargon.

Wikipedia is a wonderful multi-lingual tool, mostly because it is constantly tended by a very civilized and hardworking community.

Until yesterday, I was a user and an appreciator, but not a contributor.  I just wasn't that familiar with the inner workings, in spite of the fact that Wikipedia has a very usable tutorial for new contributors.

However, as I've volunteered with the Katrina PeopleFinder Project, I've developed some rudimentary skills in using and modifying the PeopleFinder project's wiki, which is what the volunteers use to coordinate their work.  The latter is a much smaller and (to me) less scary wiki for beginners.

One I had plunged into my task as an outreach volunteer, two things happened:  I taught myself how to modify the PeopleFinder wiki in order to log my tasks, and I realized that information about the Katrina People Finder Project needed to be added to a Wikipedia article.  By this time, I had realized that both were powered by MediaWiki, and I had little trouble performing my self-assigned Wikipedia task.

So now I'm not just a Wikipedia fan but also a contributor - and I'd also like to encourage fellow workers in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector to be contributors, too.  Why?  Partly because we are in the next best position (after librarians) to understand the power of knowledge in the public interest, and that's what Wikipedia is all about.  And partly because we know a lot of very specific stuff about our sector, and it's time that we added it to the mix.