Field Notes on Knowledge: Why Being There Matters for Digital Archiving

​When people ask me what it means to be a Wikipedian, I think back to a quiet realization I had years ago: you can’t fully document the world from behind a screen.

​Academic papers, archived books, and verified online databases are the essential bedrock of any solid reference work on Wikipedia. Rules matter, and citations keep us grounded. But if you only ever research from a distance, you’re missing the heartbeat of the story.

​For me, documenting knowledge isn't just about reading sources; it’s about lived experience. It’s about being in a place offline—walking the soil, listening to the conversations, absorbing the atmosphere with my own senses—so that when I  sit down to write, I actually have a lived experience. 

​Seeing Past the Text

​There is a world of difference between reading a policy brief on dryland restoration and actually standing in the Sahel, watching local communities turn degraded earth into thriving food forests.

​When someone show up in person, the entire perspective shifts from a passive aggregator to a thoughtful steward:

• ​You can catch the nuances: The way a community relies on a specific river bed, or how a festival transforms an island's street corners—details that rarely make it into formal reports, but hold everything together.
• ​Your intuition sharpens: Physical presence teaches you which questions to ask next. It helps you spot when a secondary source is slightly off-mark, or when an online narrative flattens a complex reality.
• ​You see the silences: So much of our world’s wisdom—especially around oral traditions, indigenous practices, and hyper-local ecology—simply isn't online yet. You only realize what's missing when you stand right where it happens.

​Lessons from the Road

​Over the past couple of years, three distinct journeys reminded me why this offline work is so vital for what we build online:

​1. Crossing Borders in the Sahel

​Attending an Ecofest organized by REDES across Senegal and Mauritania completely reshaped how I think about dryland ecology. If you only read headlines, you might view the region strictly through a lens of climate hardship or scarcity. But being on the ground showed me the vibrant reality: cross-border ecovillages, practical permaculture, and incredible local solidarity networks fighting desertification every single day.

• ​The takeaway: It revealed whole networks of grassroots sustainability projects that desperately needed to be documented and given visibility in the open-knowledge world.

​2. Karoc

​Visiting an Ogiek village in Karoc, Kenya offered a masterclass in ancestral forest stewardship. You cannot truly grasp how deeply indigenous land rights, local biodiversity, and cultural identity are intertwined until you sit with the community.

• ​The takeaway: It brought a depth of respect and accuracy to how I edit topics around land rights and traditional knowledge. It’s not abstract legal theory; it’s real people protecting their home.

​3. Rhythm and Restoration in Ndar

​Earlier this year in Saint-Louis, Senegal, I found myself navigating two very different, yet deeply connected worlds. On one side of the island, the vibrant sounds of the Saint-Louis Jazz Festival filled the historic streets. On the other, I was out capturing video in a nearby nature reserve, tracking local conservation efforts.

• ​The takeaway: Culture and ecology don't exist in silos. Capturing both through media—video, audio, photography—allows us to preserve a complete, living picture of a landscape on platforms like Wikimedia Commons.

​Bridging the Digital and the Physical

​At the core, being a digital archivist isn't about sitting back and summarizing what others have already typed out. It’s about building a bridge between physical reality and digital history.

​When we ground our research in genuine, human experience, we do more than just update articles. We ensure that global knowledge remains grounded, authentic, and above all, deeply human.