Paul W

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My name is Paul Wilkinson (not to be confused with the late political scientist or the former footballer) and I live in Blackheath, London in the Westcombe Park district of the Royal Borough of Greenwich. I have previously lived in other parts of London (including Kingsbury – where I was born – St John's Wood, Kilburn, Islington, Mile End, Kennington (in the Brandon Estate) and the Maze Hill district of Greenwich). Before adult life in London, I grew up in other parts of England – notably Nantwich in south Cheshire, and Leicester.

I started editing on 3 October 2003 (the first article I created was Greenwich Park), and have drifted away from time to time, only to find myself drawn back for sometimes quite intense periods of editing. My edits total passed the 10,000 mark in May 2009, 20,000 in February 2016, 30,000 in April 2018, 40,000 in May 2020, 50,000 in August 2021, then 60,000 just twelve months later^[1] – I was clearly accelerating. I passed 70,000 edits in December 2023.

My interests mainly relate to:

the geography and local history of places in south-east London, and the people associated with them (particularly civil engineers and architects, but also artists, writers, politicians and others)
cycling – I am a former member of Crewe Clarion Wheelers, Zenith Road Club and Woolwich Cycling Club.
football – I am a supporter of Crewe Alexandra, getting the club's article to Good Article status in July 2021. In late 2016, as the subject expanded beyond Crewe, I started the United Kingdom football sexual abuse scandal article. I have also extensively edited (200 edits each) the Southend United, Bury, Macclesfield Town and Wigan Athletic articles, among others.
social policy – I studied public administration at Leicester Polytechnic. I later volunteered and was a temporary publications worker at the Child Poverty Action Group.
criminology – I have written about London prisons and about magistrates (I did a PhD – awarded 1993 – at London School of Economics on sentencing practice in English magistrates' courts, and once worked for the Magistrates' Association).
construction – Working in the construction industry (since 1987) often gets me delving into architecture and civil engineering, particularly tunnels, dams and bridges, both recent and historic, in the UK and overseas. More recently, I have tried to expand Wikipedia's coverage of industry membership and trade associations, and construction companies (contributing extensively to pages on Carillion, Interserve, Kier Group and ISG, among others) and have contributed on construction computing topics, such as building information modelling. Outside of Wikipedia, I have written a book and journal articles and I write a blog about certain niche areas of construction ICT; I was on the information systems panel of the Institution of Civil Engineers (2010–2020), a member of the Government & Industry Interoperability Group (2021–2023), and, since 2019, have been a volunteer with the UK BIM Alliance – which rebranded as 'nima' in October 2022 (I became a vice-chair of nima in July 2023).

I worked for the Halcrow Group (1987–1994), Tarmac Professional Services (1994–1998; TPS later formed part of Carillion) and BIW Technologies (2000–2009) as a marketing and PR professional (I am a Fellow and past council member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, and was a board director in 2016 and 2017). From 1998 to 2000 and since 2009, I have worked as an independent consultant. I have been a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster (two short-term contracts in 2015–2016 and 2016–2017).

For disclosure purposes, I maintain a list of current and recent clients on my website (see External links below – look at my 'About' page). I have edited pages about my former employers (after I left their employment), and about organisations of which I am a member. There have been past occasions when I had conflicts of interest in editing articles, but as have I learned more about Wikipedia and as COI policies have developed, I have – I hope – learned where not to tread (or, at most, where to amend minor factual inaccuracies, revoke vandalism, and/or provide verifiable, independent references).

I am an occasional photographer and have contributed photographs to Wikimedia Commons (sometimes using the now-discontinued Flickr Upload Bot - now do so via Commons:Upload). I have also added Voice Intros to three biographies of living people.

Wikipedia community activities

I'm a member of Wikimedia UK
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I was formally accepted as a member of Wikimedia UK in February 2011.

In April 2012 I arranged for a volunteer (Andy Mabbett) to facilitate a workshop at the Institution of Civil Engineers, followed by a GLAM Editathon at the ICE in July 2013.
In July 2016, I attended a Wikimedia UK 'Training for Trainers' weekend, and became an accredited trainer (see my Wikimedia UK user page).
As a Wikimedia UK volunteer, I have:
- helped at a Women in Architecture editathon at the Architectural Association (October 2015)
- gave a talk, at the request of Wikimedia UK, to staff at a London-based marketing/PR agency outlining key principles of Wikipedia (June 2016)
- helped at a BBC 100 Women editathon in London (December 2016)
- helped at a Women in Classics editathon at University College London (January 2017)
- been a Wikipedian spokesperson on BBC Radio 4's Law in Action programme (March 2017; an opportunity that enabled me to update Joshua Rozenberg's Wikipedia profile)
- helped at a women in chemistry event at Northwood School for Girls (June 2017)
- helped at a women human rights defenders editathon at Amnesty International in London (May 2018)
- helped with a Wikibook project at University College London (November 2018)
- helped with a Cancer Research UK editathon on women in cancer research (March 2019) and an online editathon in September 2020
- was lead trainer at a Women in Engineering online editathon in June 2020
- helped with a Wikipedia session at a UK universities sustainable transport conference, DecarboN8, in September 2021
- helped with a Wikipedia editathon at Google UK, London, in November 2022
- led two Wikipedia editathons at the 21st International Anti-Corruption Conference in Vilnius, Lithuania in June 2024 (invited by Transparency International)

CIPR-related Wikipedia activities

In 2010, I met two WMUK members who contributed to a 'social summer' event at the CIPR; I subsequently wrote about the CIPR, PR and Wikipedia during development, with Wikimedia UK, of the CIPR's first guidance notes (published June 2012).
In 2014, I contributed to two guidance updates (the second update); in guiding PR people in their interactions with Wikipedians, I stress I am first and foremost a Wikipedian.
In 2018, I contributed a chapter about Wikipedia to Platinum: Celebrating the CIPR at 70 (Amazon), a collection of essays marking the 70th anniversary of the CIPR.
In 2021, the CIPR published a skills guide (How to avoid PR disasters on Wikipedia) about engaging with Wikipedia, which I co-authored with fellow Wikipedian Alastair McCapra.

I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0
I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under Wikipedia's copyright terms and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides.