WikiPedia Founder Wales Speaks About Wikinews

sebFlyte writes "One of Wikipedia's founders, Jimmy Wales, has given an interesting interview to news.com.com.com about the new WikiNews project. He talks about his dissatisfaction with IndyMedia's bias, the problems with traditional news media and how to make Wiki content credible (a problem WikiPedia faces, as previously reported)."

Comments

Moderation?

[EnronHaliburton2004]

I was around in the early days when Indymedia was being planned. I helped a bit from the technical end, how to set up Apache, which Linux would I recommend, etc. I dropped out of the project because I disagred with their moderation scheme, there is very little accountability.

I'm a flaming liberal, and these days I can't stand Indymedia. Why? Because many comments and stories are hidden by the fascist moderators.

Apparenly I'm not liberal ENOUGH to have my comments read by others, especially when I dare to criticize some Black Blockster when they do stupid shit like setting a trashcan on fire...

Does Wikinews have a similar moderation scheme?

A Prime Example of Wikifailure

[Baldrson]

The epistemology of Wikidom has some weaknesses that render it useless for anything where there might be important information. Important information inevitably involves various interests and there is no way to remove the human element of resource competition from those interests.

A great example is what just happened to the fusion power article. Two of the three founders of the Tokamak program have come out against the Tokamak and one of the founders circulated a letter to all of the plasma physics labs as well as to the relevant Congressmen, stating categorically that the Tokamak program was never real -- it was just a vehicle for raising funding so that other more hopeful ideas could be tried.

I scanned the original letter and presented a link to it as an aspect of the fusion power article. This is primary source material -- not original research -- from one of the foremost authorities, indeed one of the fathers of the US fusion energy program. The nothing-better-to-do-with-their-times censored it and quite honestly I just don't have the time, energy or patience to bother with a reversion war with the bottom feeders at wikipedia.

Well...

[euphonaesthesia]

But what's interesting about the way the wiki process works, and the openness of it, is that if you write something and you want it to survive the process, you have to write it in such a way that is broadly satisfactory to people of many points of view.

But what about issues and facts that may indeed offend a lot of people? One of the problems with mainstream media is that they must retain an audience and so they often frame the information such that it is in a view that is pleases as much of its audience as possible. A single issue has many viewpoints, and each of those viewpoints may be presented with a bias. Take nuclear energy for example--one can explore the dangers of it or talk about its advantages. Both can be reported in a netural way, but by highlighting one and not the other, there is another form of bias. They may circumvent some types of political and opionated biased in this way, but they do not eliminate the bias as to what does and does not receive attention.

Wikipedia with 'Expert-Certified' Articles

[davide101]

Would it kill a project to have 'expert versions' of pages that have been okayed by a panel (elected by majority vote, of course) of experts? These could be right next to regular pages and inspire a little more confidence in results.... especially in more specialized or scientific areas. Your thoughts?

To a man with a hammer...

[bcrowell]

...everything looks like a nail.

To Jimmy Wales, everything looks like a job for a wiki.

Wikipedia was a smashing success, and that surprised a lot of people, including me. But if we step back and analyze why it was successful, I think there are some very specific things that made it work, and that don't apply so much to other types of work:

1. instant gratification -- You can be the one to create the article on Green Day, or crustaceans, or whatever you happen to be interested in, and there you go, half an hour later, it's something useful that you've given to the world.
2. permanent value -- You can tell yourself that your article on crustaceans will be something that will always be there for other people to read, albeit with modifications over the years.
3. factuality -- The job of an encyclopedia is mostly just to describe the world as it is. You don't need to be creative, you just need to describe the facts.

Well, wikinews fails criterion #2, and probably #3 as well -- its writers probably aren't going to be flying to Fallouja to report first-hand, so all they'll have to contribute is their own opinions about the news. The one place where wikipedia really falls flat on its face is topical and controversial articles, i.e., wikinews' entire prospective subject matter.

Then there's wikibooks, which fails criterion #1. There may be some healthy, thriving books in there, but as for the physics textbook I've been checking on now and then, nobody seems to have the long-term motivation to write anything past the first chapter.

"I'm being censored!!" -battle cry of a wikinutter

[deglr6328]

I feel I should chime in here, as the person who originally removed the geocities links from the article.

I removed the link because; number one - wikipedia does not publish original research, two -Jim Baldrson has been a known trollish crazy on Kuro5hin for years and a troll on Usenet for over a DECADE landing himself on a kook-of-the-month list way back in 1994, three -The ideas expressed on his geocities site (which is down now but I'll link anyway, maybe it'll be back up) are just plain insane. Here's a real gem: "Immigration Causes Autism" a lovely little racist tract (also, racist extremists endorse his views), fourth -he started editing wikipedia articles in suspicious anti-semitic and racist ways (see here, though these are merely revivals of his MANY earlier anti-Jewish ramblings) though his changes were reverted by other users fairly quickly, fifth -he seems to go "underground" when he's noticed by others as a problem and then starts posting changes to articles using only his IP. So in conclusion I think its quite clear that neither he nor his ideas or motives are trustworthy. He is closely watched on wikipedia right now and I doubt he will get away with too much shenanigans.

One hilarious bit of irony I can't help but relish is that he came here to cry a river about how he was being "censored" on wikipedia and then had four +5 comments posted below him agreeing with his opposition after recognizing him for the kook he is. Wow, congrats Jim!