A Nunavut resident has contributed to more than 250,000 articles on Wikipedia

Cambridge Bay resident Alan Sim has contributed more than 250,000 articles to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, sometimes spending four to five hours a day pursuing his passion.

His work in recent years has focused mainly on the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

His contributions to the website range from creating a page dedicated to the Kátł’odeeche First Nation to ensuring that all the different spellings of the word Inuktitut specific direct Internet users to the same page, by adding an article for each airport in the North.

He has, thereby, become one of Wikipedia’s 440 active international editors, who are entrusted with access to articles in English.

I hope people find what I put there interesting […] They will learn something about the North, I hopeexplains the 68-year-old man.

A dedicated editor

Alan Sim discovered Wikipedia in 2005, while searching on his Palm Pilot, a now-defunct personal computer.

He was surprised to see that people could then edit articles without much supervision.

I looked at that and thought they couldn’t be serious: let people do what they want and change it!he explains.

So he created a username, CambridgeBayWeather, in connection with his work at the airport weather station, before embarking on what has since become his passion.

His first project was to attempt to add a Wikipedia article for every airport in the country, no matter how small. He then looked at weather monitoring equipment.

During his work as an editor, he was appointed administrator on the site. He also acknowledges that the verification process was rather lax at that time, but that it has improved greatly.

If you didn’t do anything wrong, then they could make you administratorhe remembers.

At the height of his involvement, he could spend four to five hours a day reworking certain articles. Even if he is less active today than before, he continues to be involved on the site almost every day. He now focuses on items from the North.

According to him, it is a great way to relax and learn new things. He was even able to make new friends thanks to the platform.

I just like ithe concludes.

With information from Sarah Krymalowski