St. Louis, MO (KPLR) — You might say Mark Schierbecker runs interference on the internet.
‘So this is not quite my Facebook profile,’ says Mark Schierbecker, the 18-year old Wikipedia Volunteer Contributor. ‘I like that you’re giving the peace sign in front of a tank. I know I’ve had that profile picture since three years ago.’
That`s the same time that Schierbecker started getting involved online with the world`s largest encyclopedia.
‘I try to get in one to two hours a day either browsing or editing Wikipedia,’ says Schierbecker.
The 18 year old isn’t really into updating his Facebook status or playing Farmville. Instead, he wades through the web for the flotsam and jetsam of misinformation.
‘Basically my job is to counter those efforts to put wrong information on Wikipedia,’ says Schierbecker.
He doesn’t get paid for his work as Marcus Qwertyus. Instead he`s like a super trouper patrolling the information superhighway…weeding through the web to fight those not so reliable sources.
‘Let me get this right you have more than 6,000 pages on your watch list that you are checking?’ asks Patrick Clark.
‘It’s pretty crazy,’ says Schierbecker. ‘A lot of editors have more than this. I don’t know how they function.’
To be exact he`s edited 32,800 entries. He ranks among the top 1500 among the 85,000 active contributors worldwide. And he was the first to post an entry about Pinterest when it started peaking interests last year.
“And I looked at statistics from Alexa.com and it was going through the roof. I thought this is going to be the next big Facebook, twitter.” said Wikipedia Volunteer Contributor Mark Schierbecker.
Schierbecker will be studying journalism in the fall at the University of Missouri. Until then he takes pride in his Wikipedia work.
‘It’s a really great feeling when you see that you got 5,000,000 page views in 1 month and you are like this is awesome,’ says Schierbecker.
You better believe he`ll continue keeping an ever vigilant eye on the internet.
