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WWB

Joined 24 June 2006

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This Wikipedia user page belongs to William Beutler, a writer, consultant, intermittent creative person, and Wikipedia editor going by the handle WWB.

I have been part of the Wikimedia community since 2006, when I first registered this account. Much of my editing activity has centered on topics related to Oregon, the District of Columbia, offbeat phenomena, and assorted media figures. As an editor at enwiki I am active sporadically at best; a significant majority of my contributions to the Wikimedia movement have been through other channels.

In 2009 I began writing about Wikimedia-related topics for a blog, The Wikipedian. My annual round-up, "The Top 10 Wikipedia Stories of [Year]" is something many Wikimedians look forward to annually (or so I have been told). At the end of 2020—an exhausting year, you may recall—I put the site on pause for a while, then revived it as a Substack newsletter in late 2023.

From 2010 to the present, I have owned and operated Beutler Ink, a PR consultancy focused on "white hat" Wikipedia engagement for brands, e.g. seeking to improve Wikipedia around topics of interest to our clients. All activities related to Beutler Ink clients are carried out via my alternate account, User:WWB Too. Prior to establishing Beutler Ink, I undertook similar work for clients of my former employer using the account User:NMS Bill.

In 2014 I convened a roundtable discussion of Wikipedia editors and digital PR execs to discuss issues related to COI on Wikipedia and later published an open letter to Wikipedia on behalf of 8 of the top ten global PR firms. While not connected to the Wikimedia Foundation's establishment of a new paid-contribution disclosure requirement, I believe these events, which occurred within weeks of each other, taken together have helped to create a more equitable and conducive environment for managing COI situations on Wikipedia.

Both The Wikipedian and Beutler Ink have given me the opportunity to publicly discuss my views on Wikipedia in the media and at conferences. Examples of the former include The Economist, Wired, and an interview with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN's Q&A, and the latter at SXSW, Wikimania, and Wikiconference North America. In 2020 I contributed an essay to the book Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution, published by MIT Press.

Prior to establishing Beutler Ink, I was a strategist at New Media Strategies, writer for National Journal's The Hotline and, in college, editor of a student magazine, the Oregon Commentator.

I currently reside in Crozet, Virginia with my family. Prior to that I lived in Washington, DC for nearly twenty years working in journalism and digital media; Eugene, Oregon attending the University of Oregon; Hong Kong SAR for a short stretch of my childhood, as well as Portland, Oregon, where I was born and principally raised.

Articles created

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I have created dozens of new articles over my years on Wikipedia. Personal favorites include:

In the media

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Books

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Conferences

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Columns

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Quoted

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Audio

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Video

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Resources

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The first comprehensive rewrite of this user page occurred at the end of 2023; the last version prior to this revision can be found here.

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