Ask Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales About Online Collaboration

Back in 2001 we did a "double" Slashdot Interview with Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg and Jimmy Wales of the then-brand-new Nupedia, which has since become the amazingly useful Wikipedia. This is a perfect time to catch up with Jimbo (as friends call him), and learn not only how he managed to make Wikipedia work and grow so well, but what we can do to help -- and what future plans he has for this outstanding Web resource. (10 of your highest-moderated questions will be sent to Jimbo by email. We'll post his answers as soon as we get them back.)

Comments

Re:Academic Co-operation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, see Wikipedia:School and university projects

Re:Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were some interesting quotes from Britannica's VP regarding Wikipedia on the Boston.com website:

"I think it's exactly the right price," said Michael Ross, senior vice president of corporate development at Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. in Chicago.

Ross admits to reading and enjoying Wikipedia, and has even gotten ideas there for future Britannica articles. But the absence of traditional editorial controls makes Wikipedia unsuited to serious research. "How do they know it's accurate?" Ross asks. "People can put down anything."

A few years ago, Microsoft Corp. scoffed at free software; today the company is running scared. Britannica's Ross seems a lot more relaxed about his company's future. It's difficult to see why.

Re:How to balance coverage?

[hashar]

The community portal highlights things that could be done to enhance the encyclopedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_P ortal One example is a request to create the article "Tibet independance movement". Articles wich are really small are often listed as "stub" and a list of them is available. Often editors looks at those stubs and try to enhance them somehow (see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Find_or_fix _a_stub ). There is also a lot of translators that keep importing / exporting articles. A good example is the Român wikipedia that import french articles :o)

Re:Licensing and the Wiki

[pete-classic]

What do you mean? The GFDL is very friendly to dead-tree publishing.

The only "hurdle" is that no publisher can get exclusive rights to publish it. Is that what you mean? Do you think that is really a practical limitation in this case? (I don't, as I think it is too big and would take too much startup cost with too small a market for some other publisher to come in and poach.)

-Peter

Re:Licensing and the Wiki

[swillden]

Hrm, I work at a printshop. Does that mean I could take some articles (based on a particular subject), put it into print (with all proper acknowledgement of course)

Yes and yes

and profit off of it (charging only the printer fees)?

No need to limit your profits to printing fees. You can charge whatever people will pay. Note that if you distribute more than 100 copies the license requires you to distribute a machine-readable copy with each printed copy, or provide a pointer to the on-line sources.

And if so, what's stopping anybody from doing it in the first place (aside from the constantly changing data)?

Not a thing! And that's the idea. From the GFDL preamble:

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.

Seems kinda shady to me...

Why? The authors of the Wikipedia content have explicitly given you and everyone else permission to do these things, as long as you follow the terms of the license. What's shady about doing what the owner has given you permission to do?