"The Encyclopedia Game" Interview with Barry Kort

Phil Eldred is a documentary filmmaker who originally planned to produce a film about shenanigans in Wikipedia. He ran out of funding before the film could be completed, and so he had a fair amount of unpublished material from multiple video interviews.

About a decade ago, he recorded an hour-long interview with me for potential inclusion in the film.

Phil has just uploaded that footage to YouTube and made it public.

Be sure to read his introductory remarks below the video to understand the context.

 

10 years ago, Phil Eldred was working as a writer and researcher for an unfinished film project entitled "The Encyclopedia Game." The concept for the film was to do a deep dive into Wikipedia vandalism, revealing not only the design elements that make Wikipedia vandalism possible but also the personalities and interactions lurking behind Wikipedia's apparently sterile façade.  

In the course of that research, Phil had the pleasure to meet Barry Kort. Barry is a serious scientist with only the purest intentions who managed to get banned from Wikipedia for "vandalism." Although Barry had no vandalistic motives, he nevertheless managed to find himself in conflict with a Wikipedia administrator who banned him for his repeated attempts to correct the biography of a friend and colleague. 

This interview was shot as a part of the research for the film. The film was never made, but the insights Phil unexpectedly gained from the interaction have been compounding in value ever since. 

Barry compellingly tells his Wikipedia story as a microcosm of the story of civilization itself. Please enjoy these interviews, which were never intended for a public audience and have only been lightly edited.