Stan Shebs wrote:
One thing that I think editors should do is to make employers and such aware of their WP activities as much as possible. WP's visibility and reputation is now such that it's generally a positive thing to be seen as an important person in WP, and should a nasty person call, it helps the callee to recognize it as stalking rather than anything legitimate. Be proud of your work for Wikipedia, and let everybody know about it.
I don't think we should let our role as an "important person" go to our heads. When I mention my role to people that I meet the results are either benignly positive, or I still have to explain what Wikipedia is. In the latter case people are not impressed by an important role in something that they have never heard of.
Perhaps my biggest drawback in these circumstances is my own lack of MediaWiki expertise. I can easily see where MediaWiki software would be useful benefit in areas related to the practice of education, but feel restricted in my inability to describe how they could download and apply the software. There is a tendency among school systems to get bogged down in expensive software licences, and a lack of will to explore less expensive alternatives.
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