MONDAY, AUGUST 10 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
Goodknight said. “I feel like I’m
just one small hand in the middle
of this. I’m just one small person
who has done one small bit.”
West remains a true believer,
convinced the world could benefit
from the philosophy held by the
site’s many editors.
“Maybe more people can buy
into the ethos of getting it right,”
West said. “Maybe that’s one of the
antidotes to misinformation.”
[email protected]vulgarities or clearly operating
outside the rules of Wikipedia, we
have no problem blocking those
people,” Moore said. “We will ban
you and your IP address if we
think you’re not here for the right
reasons.” Plus, the editors will
quickly fix errors — often within
seconds.
“We have this sense of responsi-
bility to write these articles and
ensure that what we’re writing,
we’re getting right,” Stephenson-ates these distorted objectives,”
West said. “Sometimes they pull
things and sometimes they don’t... while Wikipedia’s processes
for slowing the spread of misinfor-
mation are much clearer.”
With so many Wikipedia edi-
tors (and bots) constantly moni-
toring the mountain of informa-
tion, misinformation tends to be
quickly weeded out. If a troll
comes along or “if there are anony-
mous editors who are putting in
useless — in fact, harmful — if
they’re not accurate. And most
anyone who attended school in
the first two decades of the millen-
nium is familiar with a common
refrain: “Wikipedia is not consid-
ered a credible source.” Which
would be a problem, given that the
English-language covid-19 page
received more than 73 million
page views as of July 30.
Jevin West, a professor in the
Information School at the Univer-
sity of Washington, said not to
worry, that the Wikipedia has han-
dled the virus “overall, exception-
ally well.”
“It’s not only what people go to
and read,” West said. “It’s what
feeds a lot of the major search
engines, too. So it sort of has dou-
ble impact.”
He added: “As someone who
studies misinformation and disin-
formation, it’s kind of a ray of hope
in a sea of pollution. It’s almost
like people’s passion to get things
right and to be these curators of
human knowledge makes them
even more careful.”
He also cited Wikipedia’s trans-
parency. Certain discredited
sources aren’t allowed, and the
entire website’s edit history is
readily available to the user. Final-
ly, every fact is plainly sourced.
“That level of transparency pro-
vides trust,” he said.
As a result, Wikipedia stands in
stark contrast with social media
sites such as Facebook and Twit-
ter, which are often slow to re-
move misinformation. Even when
they do, it has usually already
spread. Both companies banned
the conspiracy-laden “Plandemic”
video in early May — after it
racked up millions of views.
“Twitter and Facebook are be-
holden to stick the user to the
platform at all costs so that they
can sell ads. And I think that cre-remains reliable and updated.”
Editors will ask one another to
create or expand articles on cer-
tain subjects. Hussain, for exam-
ple, was asked to write about
covid-19 and its effects on preg-
nancy for its own break-off page.
The effects of the pandemic
spread beyond medicine, howev-
er, touching on everything from
“human rights” to “national poli-
tics” to “world economies,” Hus-
sain said. Other editors rushed to
fill those gaps.
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight,
66, a visiting scholar at Northeast-
ern University and veteran Wiki-
pedia editor, has been working to
expand Wikipedia’s coverage of
important women from history —
only about 18 percent of Wikipe-
dia’s biography entries are about
women, according to The Lily. (Di-
versity, particularly along gender
lines, is one of the areas where
Wikipedia’s process notoriously
breaks down.) Like so many other
editors, Stephenson-Goodknight
was also captured by the gravita-
tional pull of the pandemic.
“What we did is what we do
about everything: We just jump in
and do it. We just start writing,”
she said.
As the main page grew super-
saturated with information, edi-
tors created pages for various
countries, then states. Some are
hyperspecific, such as the impact
on Walt Disney Co. or disc golf.
Stephenson-Goodknight noticed
that pages existed for the disease’s
impact on the performing arts,
sports, music, retail tourism and
oil prices — but not one on the
upended fashion industry.
“No one had written that arti-
cle, and we needed it,” she said.
“Things like people wearing
masks now and people aren’t go-
ing to the mall to buy clothes.”
Of course, all these pages areincluding covid-19’s main Eng-
lish-language article, are sensitive
pages restricted to certain trusted
users (a decision made by other
Wikipedia volunteers), De Soto
said.
Frequent editors, according to
Moore, generally fulfill two pri-
mary roles. The first is actually
writing or editing a specific page.
The second, Moore said, “is kind of
like community organizing, is
how I often think of it,” by helping
manage WikiProjects, which act
as organizing spaces for topics
that stretch across many pages,
such as “medicine” and “disaster
management.”
Seeing that one didn’t exist for
covid-19 as it picked up steam in
mid-March, Moore created one. A
WikiProject, among other things,
includes a page of reliable sources
for editors to pull from. It also —
like every page on Wikipedia —
contains a “talk” page where edi-
tors can discuss how to approach
certain articles, which ones are
needed and what information
isn’t up to their standards.
By the end of July, the main
English-language covid-19 article
had been edited 22,000 times by
more than 4,000 editors. Among
them is Netha Hussain, a 30-year-
old doctor from Kozhikode in Ker-
ala, India, who has a PhD in clini-
cal neuroscience and is a research-
er for Sweden’s University of
Gothenburg. She began editing
Wikipedia a decade ago, when she
was earning her medical degree.
The pandemic proved more chal-
lenging to chronicle than any-
thing else in her 10 years editing
the site, as information about the
virus, even from reputable
sources, constantly shifted. Un-
like in the past, she said, “I have to
work fast and act fast to ensure it
WIKIPEDIA FROM C1
How Wikipedia is handling the coronavirus, one of its biggest challenges ever
smart the oppression” by devel-
oping a curriculum that more
deeply reflects African American
history and experiences than
public elementary schools typi-
cally offer. She’s also hoping to
recruit volunteer teachers to help
form similar pods for under-
served children that could take
place in churches and other com-
munity spaces around Dallas.Emily Oster, an economist at
Brown University and the author
of two books on parenting, argues
against pandemic pods in general
because of the likelihood that
they’ll exacerbate inequalities.
And because they’re social mine-
fields: “It’s fraught on a bunch of
dimensions,” she says. “Like, ‘Oh,
can I be in your pod?’ ‘No, we
already have our pod.’ The oppor-
tunity to shun people is so great.”
If parents do attempt to form
some kind of micro-school, Oster
says, they should put their expec-
tations in writing. “This is not a
set of relationships we’re used to
navigating,” she says. A contract,
even if it’s nonbinding, gives par-
ents “something to refer back to
later. And the bigger thing is that
it reveals potential sources of con-
flicts you weren’t thinking about.”
Robin Watkins isn’t looking for
anything nearly so formal. She
just wants some buddies. Her
parents came to visit just after she
gave birth to her second child at
the end of February. Then the
world froze, and her parents hun-
kered down in D.C. with Watkins,
her husband, their toddler and
their newborn. Because of her
parents’ advanced ages, the fam-
ily has kept to themselves — ex-
clusively.
“It just turns out that even with
my best friends, we’re not exactly
aligned around the choices we’re
making around risk to covid.”
Watkins sent a note to a local
mom mailing list with the subject
line: “ISO family to form bubble.”
“This is certainly the oddest
email I’ve ever written,” she
wrote. She included sections la-
beled “About us” (“local beer lov-
ers, Nationals fans, and Jeopardy!
Nerds”) and “About you” (“Also
social distancing, ideally have
kids around the same age and
interested in a socially distant
meetup to find out if we are a
good fit for a bubble.”) Half a
dozen women responded, and
Watkins chatted with each of
them online. They were all nearby
and had kids of similar ages. Alas,
none seemed like a perfect match.
The sticking point? Social dis-
tancing. Some had in-home child
care, which meant their bubbles
were already exponentially ex-
panded in a way that feels too
risky to Watkins and her family.
Oh well. “I put it out there into
the world, and if nothing comes of
it, we’ll be okay,” Watkins says.
“It’s what we’ve been doing.”
What they’ve been doing. What
they’ll keep doing.
What else can you do?
[email protected]together in person every day, but
that wouldn’t work for the other
families, so they compromised on
meeting once a week, with virtual
learning the four other days.
Next came touchy conversa-
tions around socializing outside
of the pod, how they’ll evaluate
and pay teachers, and what each
family would do if schools reopen.
One family is adamant that if
schools do reopen, they’ll send
their son back, which could leave
the rest of the pod in the lurch,
and potentially on the hook for a
greater portion of teachers’ sala-
ries.
“You’re in each other’s personal
business,” Henry says. “You’re
sharing responsibility for each
other’s kids. I feel like it’s some
sort of polygamist community.
It’s a level of forced intimacy.”
For several weeks, the parents
have been meeting online for
post-bedtime strategy sessions.
And every time they reach con-
sensus on one issue, it seems as
though another one pops up.
(They just plotted out the school
calendar, but now there are con-
cerns about how to address learn-
ing differences.)
Think building a plane in mid-
air is difficult? Try creating a
miniature school in a month. And
doing it by committee — one
made up of deeply impassioned
parents.
As many hurdles as they’ve
faced, Henry still believes the pod
offers an opportunity to “out-couver or even Thailand, where
rates of coronavirus infections
have been kept low. The couple
has gone as far as putting down a
deposit at a Montessori school in
Chiang Mai, though moving there
would mean Julia would have to
stop working.
They’re trying to remain flexi-
ble, but they know they need to
make a decision soon. “If we’re
going to Vancouver, we need to
walk out the door in two weeks,”
Greg says. “If we’re going to Thai-
land, we need to get visas going.”
“The logistics are formidable
and overwhelming,” Julia says.
“And the logistics for keeping our
son home for a whole academic
year are even worse.”
Finding pandemic pod-mates
may be the first challenge for
parents, but Jennifer Henry can
attest that it won’t be the last. As
an educational consultant with
several years of home-schooling
experience under her belt, Henry
is steps ahead of most parents.
When it became apparent that
schools couldn’t safely open in
their Dallas suburb, several
friends and relatives asked Henry
to set up a pod.
Her son Jackson, 9, named a
few boys he would like to learn
with, and they ended up with a
four-family pod that includes one
of Jackson’s previous classmates,
a cousin and a family friend. Then
came questions of how they
would operate. Henry’s husband,
Jeffrey, wanted the boys to bestruck out in their search for
compatibility. Their son, Kai, is
the type of kid who woke up early
on school days, excited to learn
and see friends. “Weekends were
crushing for him,” says Julia, a
forensic psychologist.
The McLawsens can’t imagine
Kai, who is supposed to be enter-
ing kindergarten, going many
more months without structured
social interaction. But finding a
pod has proved difficult. Because
Julia sometimes has to go out for
work, some prospective families
considered the McLawsens to be
undesirable bubble buddies. (“It
cast a pall on our entire family,”
she says.) Others had different
philosophies around learning or
how often to be together. And,
though they have yet to find a
willing cohort, they’ve begun to
worry about how fragile a pod
setup could be.
“In addition to the matchmak-
ing problem, one thing we’re wor-
ried about is having a single point
of failure,” says Greg, an attorney.
“If you have one person teaching
the pod and they get sick or get
sick of us or get a better offer, the
whole thing crumbles.”
“And that pulls the rug out of
the stability we’re seeking,” Julia
adds.
So, even as they continue
searching for potential matches,
the McLawsens, who also have a
20-month-old daughter, are pur-
suing alternatives, including the
possibility of relocating to Van-idea of community.”
Ebony Scott is doing her own
trust fall with a woman whom she
has never met in person. Scott, a
single mom outside of Chicago
who works for a nonprofit, con-
nected through a local Facebook
page with another woman look-
ing for a pod. They live in the
same town, and both have boys
going into the third grade, though
at different elementary schools.
In their first conversation, con-
ducted via video chat last week,
the moms delved headlong into
intimate details about their home
lives, their kids’ personalities and
learning styles and their priori-
ties for the year — which,
for Scott, meant making sure
the curriculum includes les-
sons on social justice and racial
inequity.
“I don’t know this woman. I’m
telling her, ‘We are a Black family.
You are a White family. When it
comes time for Black history, we
are going to really talk about
things,’ ” Scott says.
T he women’s desires meshed
well enough to move forward
with a plan to have their sons
become a cohort of two and hope
they happen to like each other —
at least well enough to coexist.
“We’re not shopping for best
friends,” Scott says. “We’re look-
ing for kids who are going to be
compatible in a learning environ-
ment.”
Julia and Greg McLawsen of
Bellevue, Wash., have so farFacebook page for Capitol Hill
parents looking to create pods.
But so far, the process has proved
more frustrating than fruitful.
She posted a notice that she
was looking for parents of other
rising first-graders who might
want to form some sort of cohort.
Burns connected with five other
families who seemed like good
potential matches — until they
started talking or texting. Some
were uncomfortable with the fact
that Burns and her husband occa-
sionally have to work outside the
home. Others were looking to
spend exorbitant amounts on pri-
vate tutors.
Online daters can at least lay
out some basic specifications: de-
sired age range, religious prefer-
ences. But the quest for perfect
pod partners is more chaotic.
“It’s so overwhelming,” Burns
says. “I just feel like I’m trapped
on my laptop all day trying to
hunt some kind of unicorn solu-
tion.”
She, like almost every parent
interviewed for this story, ac-
knowledged how lucky her family
is to have options — and ex-
pressed concern about how their
choices could affect less privi-
leged children and kids with spe-
cial needs, an issue that has
caused contentious debate in par-
enting circles.
Randi Braun, an executive
coach who works primarily with
women — moms seem to be doing
the vast majority of online diplo-
macy around pandemic school
planning, based on the posts
showing up on parenting mes-
sage boards and Facebook pages
— says the search for solutions is
“all-consuming” for most of her
clients.
“That’s the thing keeping par-
ents up right now: thinking about
not just Plan A, but Plan B and
Plan C,” she says. “We used to talk
about the mental load before the
pandemic. This is next level.”
Braun has two kids under 4.
Her family has spent much of the
summer in Long Island with her
parents, discussing their strategy
for the fall, when they’ll return to
D.C. They have decided to send
both kids to the preschool they
had originally signed up for, even
though she knows it will probably
face interruptions or closure if
positive coronavirus cases pop
up. And by choosing that option,
they are cutting themselves off
from in-person visits with the
grandparents, out of concern for
their health.
“When we say goodbye here,
it’s goodbye for a really long time,”
she says. And once that happens,
Braun is counting on a village of
people she has never met to be
their pandemic companions: the
families of her kids’ upcoming
classmates.
“That’s going to be our orbit for
the foreseeable future until
there’s a vaccine,” she says. “I feel
like I’m taking a trust fall into this
PODS FROM C1
It takes a village — and in 2020, compatible pod partners
RALPH LAUER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
The H enrys a re trying to create a pandemic pod for the coming school year. “You’re in each other’s personal business,” Jennifer Henry
says. “You’re sharing responsibility for each other’s kids. I feel like it’s some sort of polygamist community. It’s a level of forced intimacy.”Offer valid for blinds, shades and shutters only. Excludes awnings. Same as cash fi nancing based upon approved credit, and also excludes awnings.
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