James Heilman

By reviewing and correcting medical content in the manner promoted by Heilman (and with many of his contributions), in Wikipedia articles like that about Ebola, Wikipedia has become a source of information to the general public, thus being regarded among respected sites run by the World Health Organization[34] and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,[35] covering the topic.[3][36] Heilman reduced the time he spent working in the emergency department so he could spend more time updating this page.[37] In 2014, he told the Cranbrook Daily Townsman that with respect to Wikipedia's coverage of Ebola, "The big thing is emphasizing what we know, making sure that minor concerns don’t get blown out of proportion."[38] He also said that, despite rumours to the contrary, there was no evidence that the disease had become airborne, and that Ebola had caused far fewer deaths than other conditions such as malaria and gastroenteritis.[38]

In 2009, Heilman, who was then a resident of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan,[39] added public domain images of the ink blots used in the Rorschach test to the Wikipedia article on the subject, and concerned psychologists said that this could invalidate the tests.[20][40][41] Some psychologists stated the test had "already lost its popularity and usefulness."[20][41] In an interview with The New York Times, Heilman stated that he added the entire set because a debate about a single image seemed absurd and psychologists' fears were unfounded.[42] Appearing on Canada AM on July 31, 2009, Heilman also said that "This information [i.e. the inkblots] is encyclopedic. This is what people expect to see when they see this page."[43] In August 2009, two Canadian psychologists filed complaints about Heilman to his local doctors' organization; Heilman called the complaints "intimidation tactics".[44] In September 2009, the College of Psychologists of British Columbia urged the Saskatchewan College of Physicians and Surgeons to launch an investigation into Heilman's posting of the images. Heilman told CTV News that "The psychological community is trying to exclude everybody outside their field from taking part in discussions related to what they do. And personally, I think that's bad science."[45] An extensive debate ensued on Wikipedia, and the images were kept.[42]

In 2012, Heilman noticed that the book Understanding and Management of Special Child in Pediatric Dentistry, published by Jaypee Brothers, contained a long passage about HIV that was plagiarized from Wikipedia's article on the subject.[28] This subsequently led to the book being withdrawn by the publisher.[46]

In October 2014, while reading a copy of the Oxford Textbook of Zoonoses (published by Oxford University Press), Heilman noticed that the book's section on Ebola was very similar to the Wikipedia page on that subject.[25] He initially suspected that a Wikipedia editor had copied the portion but later noticed that the part of the Wikipedia article that resembled the part of the textbook had been written in 2006 and 2010, while the textbook had not been published until 2011.[25] Christian Purdy, an Oxford University Press spokesperson, acknowledged that some of the text in the textbook had been copied but described it as an "inadvertent omission of an appropriate attribution" rather than plagiarism.[25]

In June 2015, Heilman was elected by the community to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.[9] In December 2015, the board removed Heilman from his position as a Trustee,[10][47] a decision that generated substantial controversy amongst members of the Wikipedia community.[48] A statement released by the board declared the lack of confidence of his fellow trustees in him as the reasons for his ousting. Heilman later stated that he "was given the option of resigning [by the board] over the last few weeks. As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so. I saw such a move as letting down those who elected me."[49] He subsequently pointed out that while on the board, he had pushed for greater transparency regarding the Wikimedia Foundation's controversial Knowledge Engine project and its financing,[50] and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal.[51]

The volunteer community re-elected him to the Wikimedia Foundation board in 2017, until November of 2021.[52]

In 2012, Heilman was one of two Wikimedia contributors sued by Internet Brands for shifting freely licensed content and volunteer editors from the for-profit site Wikitravel to the non-profit site Wikivoyage. The Wikimedia Foundation defended Heilman's actions in the lawsuit, citing volunteer freedom of choice.[53][54] In February 2013, the parties settled their litigation.[55] In 2014, Heilman criticized a study which concluded that nine out of ten Wikipedia medical articles contained errors.[5][56][57] In 2015, the Atlantic ran a piece about conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia which detailed Heilman's efforts to counteract edits made by employees of Medtronic to the Wikipedia page for percutaneous vertebroplasty.[25] In 2017, Vice also ran an article about conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia, in which the author noted that Heilman had vocally called on the Wikimedia Foundation to increase its enforcement of Wikipedia's policy against undisclosed paid editing.[58]