Ask Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales About Online Collaboration

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Ask Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales About Online Collaboration

Posted by Roblimo on Monday July 12, 2004 @05:20AM from the 90.1-million-words-and-still-growing dept.

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.)

19 of 300 comments (clear)

Licensing and the Wiki by SeanTobin · 2004-07-12 05:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

One of the more unique aspects of the Wikipedia (aside from the entire concept of a community edited reference) is its license. The current license for content seems to fit rather well with the goals of the project, but seems to cause a few hurdles as well (i.e. publishing a print version of the Wikipedia). So I guess my question is, what other license models did you consider when starting out with the project and what made you go with the current one? Also, looking back would you have done anything different with the licensing?

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1. Re:Licensing and the Wiki by swillden · 2004-07-12 08:03 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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?
  
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google ads.. by Suppafly · 2004-07-12 05:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

When is wikipedia going to get google ads or some other form of text ads?
Re:Academic Co-operation? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-12 05:26 · Score: 5, Informative

Yes, see Wikipedia:School and university projects
Advertising? by obli · 2004-07-12 05:26 · Score: 5, Interesting

How has the word about wikipedia been spread? Has wikipedia actually paid a dime for all it's publicity, I don't think I've seen any advertisement when I think about it.
Re:Online collaborators? by willy134 · 2004-07-12 05:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

What really motivates people to write extensive information about a subject? How reliable is the information the some John Doe submits?

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Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs? by ewanrg · 2004-07-12 05:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

Was wondering if you view the Wikipedia as a competitor or an additional tool compared to a World Book or an Encyclopedia Britannica?

And do you see the future direction being more or less that way?
1. Re:Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-12 05:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
User system complexity. by xconslash · 2004-07-12 05:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

Do you foresee having to add more complexity to your user system? Some kind of rating/karma system to discourage people who have a tendency to write libel?

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Quality Control by Raindance · 2004-07-12 05:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

Hi,

First of all, the concept of a community-built encyclopedia, open to submissions and revisions from users, is wonderful. It's much like open-source, in fact, and Wikipedia certainly exemplifies how to reapply the OS model to other contexts.

However, the contexts of encyclopedias and software are different. Significantly so. I'm interested specifically in quality control- you know when code doesn't work when it doesn't compile or results in unexpected behavior.

In what ways can a Wiki article be bad, and how can one tell? Do you think QC is a large issue for Wikipedia, and do you have any plans to further integrate the community in the QC process (perhaps akin to the slashdot moderation/metamoderation system)?

Best,
Raindance
1. Re:Quality Control by Ignignot · 2004-07-12 06:04 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I wonder if it would be possible to write software using a wiki approach. You know, have a web site with the beginning of the program, with clearly defined goals. Each function call or class structure would have its own web site with its own clearly defined goals. Better code would complete the goals with less bugs and / or less run time. I know the bottom line isn't that different from OSS, but I think there would be quite a bit more code reuse, resulting in both better quality code and smaller programs. If you somehow added in some automatic code checking (like submitted code was automatically compiled and then the errors, if any, added to the web site for people to fix), along with output vs desired output checking (output within certain ranges, etc.) Or even keep an old (known to work) function, then compile the new one, automatically compare their outputs for the same inputs, and if they match up for all inputs, replace the old code with new code as the current version. Holy shit I hope I didn't just give away the best idea ever!
  
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How to balance coverage? by mangu · 2004-07-12 05:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

Is there an effort to get articles written on specific missing topics? If one looks at a commercial encyclopedia, the full range of human knowledege is covered. On Wikipedia, OTOH, one finds several articles about slashdot trolls, for instance, while other (important) fields are still unwritten.
1. Re:How to balance coverage? by hashar · 2004-07-12 05:46 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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)
The constant bickering... by Rageon · 2004-07-12 05:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

How is (and how will) the constant bickering between differing sides of the more controversial issues (abortion, religion, etc...) be addressed? Do you expect any changes to the current system, in which it seems the same pages get edited by the same people back and forth every day?
Sociopaths by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-12 05:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

The systems in place to protect the database from "crapflooders" and "trolls" seems to work quite well. However, someone who is hell-bent on making it their business to turn a particular entry into an edit war unless they "win" seems to still be an issue. The lesser-read entries are more of a concern. For example, I went to look up some information on the Nintendo Mario character and found this user called Marcus2 who constantly kept making edits to other people entries based on his own point of view. Since these entries aren't as of a high profile as, say, Saddam Hussein, what kinds of safeguards can you think of to help ensure less popular topics become skewed?
Getting people involved by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-12 05:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

What methods have you found that work best for getting people not only involved in contributing, but also keeping them contributing to the Wiki?
Limits of Wiki collaboration / vandalism defense by tjansen · 2004-07-12 05:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

Is there a limit of how successful an open wiki system can be? Sooner or later, not only some simple minded lunatics will try to attack the wiki by breaking its content, but there may be distributed denial-of-service attacks from hacked systems (which makes banning-by-IP impossible) and more intelligent automated vandalism (e.g. inserting semi-random words or sentences in the texts).
Do you think that a volunteer force can defeat this forever manually, or do you expect that wikipedia will be more restricted at one point?
For instance, an Advogato-like trust network could be used to make sure that people are real, and a voting system for entries from unknown contributors.
Webservices ? Data Formats ? by sh0rtie · 2004-07-12 05:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

Ever thought of offering alternative data access services other than HTML ?
examples of other successful community driven sites such as IMDB can be queried via email (in a structured way) and a huge number of applications are now built upon these capabilities alone, ever thought of offering up the data in alternative formats (XML/SOAP/TELNET/TXT etc etc) so clever programmers can create applications that could utilise the data in new and interesting ways ?
Hiawatha Bray's article in today's Globe... by dpbsmith · 2004-07-12 06:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

online for 48 hours,
One great source--if you can trust it, contains the familiar criticism that "it lacks one vital feature of the traditional encyclopedia: accountability."

How do you respond to this comment?

Does you feel that the Wikipedia community has group standards that are comparable to, say, the group standards of people who have graduated from journalism schools?

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