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C-SPAN Interviews Wikipedia Founder

Posted by Zonk on from the multi-dimensional-knowledge dept.

TrentL writes "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (aka Jimbo) was recently interviewed on C-SPAN's primetime program Q&A. Topics included the origins of Wikipedia, governing philosophy, and criticisms from members of the print encyclopedia community." From the article: "I had the idea basically from watching the growth of the free software movement. So all of the software that really runs the Internet, Linux, Apache, the Web serving software, it's all written by volunteers collaboratively working together using free licenses. And it's really good quality stuff."

10 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Election Stuff by putko · · Score: 5, Interesting

    During the election, the bio on Kerry was full of lies. Perhaps it still it. It was like reading about Bizarro-Kerry, where everything bad was turned to good. I guess that's anti-Bizarro Kerry or something.

    Wikipedia is great for articles on technical or trivia, but there's too much incentive for people who have a strong interest in a certain story being told to go in there and muck it up, whatever the cost. Usually there are two sides, but one side will win - and that's what you see.

    E.g. I'm pretty sure that either the Zionists or anti-Zionists have filled up wikipedia with their viewpoint. One side has likely one and then twisted things freely.

    That is similar to the book reviews at Amazon: authors routinely attempt to manipulate their rankings -- e.g. ordering a bunch of books, then returning them. They have too much of a stake in doing it.

    If this guy could figure out some way to make Wikipedia correct on controversial issues (or at least not have blatant falsehoods), he'd do us all a lot of good. This would require some sort of motiviational/compensation system that I simply can't imagine, because the truth doesn't pay.

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
    1. Re:Election Stuff by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Blatant falsehoods are usually spotted quickly and fixed, at least in my experience. I work on a lot of the political pages that get mucked with a lot. It is a pain though and it only works because so many editors devote so much time to keeping articles accurate. I tell students to use wikipedia as a resource rather than a "source" - I don't let them cite it in papers but I encourage them to use it as a resource for finding other sources of information and for finding out basic background info. There is no guarantee that an entry is correct at any given time, but by and large corrections are made quickly, and it is very often a useful starting place for doing research or finding answers to questions.

    2. Re:Election Stuff by hachete · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I like the current system that tags certain articles controversial. One way of insuring accountability is to ban easily obtained accounts, or having identity checked and then tracking the changes made. But then it wouldn't be wikipedia would.

      Even hard-copy publications like the Encylopaedia Britannica has bias.

      I don't believe there is such a thing as "the truth". Just doesn't exist. I think the best you can get is to identify the changer, mark articles which are controversial as controversial. Certainly sensitive articles like Kerry's or Bush's should be marked as such, possibly banning editing during sensitive times. These are fine-tuning issues. I think the basic model is sound, and based on a well-founded historical precedent.

      I regard the original large-edition OED as the ultimate volunteer-effort. In fact, I don't think the original could have been completed without volunteer effort. Compare and contrast the OED with simmilar projects in other countries i.e. Sweden which, as far as I am aware, use a more academic-type effort to try achieve a similar aim as the OED but with less success in that they're prover harder to complete with this methodology. Most of these projects are works in progress after a very long time.

      --
      Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
    3. Re:Election Stuff by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Blatant falsehoods are usually spotted quickly and fixed, at least in my experience.

      Depends where they are. I found a few physics pages about a year ago which were filled with references to the "POOP equation". The references had been there for months.

      I work on a lot of the political pages that get mucked with a lot.

      Those are usually the high trafficked pages, so yeah things get fixed more quickly, unless they're popular myths among Wikipedians. Try reading some of the pages on the GPL for instance. I go back every once in a while and fix it, but it's constantly filled with misnomers and propaganda.

      It is a pain though and it only works because so many editors devote so much time to keeping articles accurate.

      What's probably worse is that many of the long standing editors overcompensate and will delete many things that are indeed true thinking that they're not. I'm not sure what the sense is in letting anonymous users contribute if you're going to have 100 non-anonymous users each fact checking anything they contribute anyway. Might as well just force the anonymous users to leave a message and let one of the logged in users fix things themselves.

      There is no guarantee that an entry is correct at any given time, but by and large corrections are made quickly, and it is very often a useful starting place for doing research or finding answers to questions.

      I completely agree there. In fact, I think Wikipedia *usually* shines when it comes to current events and obscure subjects or subjects with multiple points of view. Of course, they kind of totally screwed up in their initial coverage of the Menezes murder, but the vast majority of the media did too.

    4. Re:Election Stuff by SuperFes · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I know this message only has a 0.003% chance of being read by anybody.

      It doesn't make any sense for one guy to be forced to fix our society when all he has is a web-site. I don't understand why you would blame the creator of a community for the issues that exist in our society.

      Any time you provide access for a human or many humans for that matter to make one or more mistakes, inevitability it will happen, there are enough humans prone to at least a few more mistakes (And we're always making more!).

      I've read through some of the contributor pages, administrator information pages and moderation information pages. They have a solid set of rules to allow flexible entries even entries with mistakes into the site. They express a feeling of open and pleasant welcomeness to allow new people in to help with the site.

      I think that the site itself is as a whole showing the good part of society, the bad part will always exist and we need stuff like this, this is one thing that works. I use it often, I have a user, though I have not contributed anything yet, I wanted to in the past and didn't.

      That is the real failure here, we need to help instead of telling other people to help.

      My 2 bits.

      --
      Not today, I've another pair of pants to deal with...
  2. Re:User-defined facts vs. AUTHORITY by quokkapox · · Score: 2, Interesting
    So who can you trust? Are the days of authoritative encyclopedias like Britannica and World Book behind us? Lexis Nexis is still around, charging outrageous fees for very good information. Does Wikipedia compete with authoritative encyclopedias, or is it just a condensed version of the Internet (which is to say a sometimes useful, sometimes useless collection of random topics)?

    Wikipedia in its current state is like the knowledge corpus of a bot that could beat any human at Trivial Pursuit, by knowing correct answers to 99% of the questions. It's like that really smart kid in high school who seemed to know a lot about many things, a little bit about everything else, yet was occasionally, embarrassingly, *dead wrong*.

    Wikipedia is great for learning some background information about a topic you're unfamiliar with, but, like slashdot postings, can contain information that's drastically misleading. Instead of debating which is better, print encyclopedias and other more "vetted" sources of information, Internet users need to learn how to use critical thinking and common sense to evaluate the information they find, and make sensible decisions on how reliable that information is, based on its sources, date of publication, etc. Obviously an encyclopedia from 1930 might contain numerous "facts" that are now known to be incorrect.

    --
    it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
  3. Sheesh, get over yourself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Look like somebodies got a case of the serious. I'm not the original AC but I did mod him up because it is funny.

    Ever read the book 'Trickster makes the world' by Lewis Hyde? Tricksters and pranksters do more for society with their mischievous behavior than other archetypes. The trickster transforms societies into something it wasn't originally. So while you may complain about people like him, he is actually making the world into something better. Without tricksters, cultures would stagnate. Tricksters create through destruction.

    It disappoints me that nerdish communities like Slashdot, metafilter, wikipedia et. al. don't have a collective sense of humour. It is just like intellectuals to compartmentalize all aspects of the human condition.

    PS. I just realised you have Aussie in the first part of your name! For shame! It is part of the Australian condition to pull the piss out of authority.

  4. Wiki has changed the basic nature of truth itself by gelfling · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since Wiki can be updated by whomever has the greatest degree of brute force, it has changed the very nature of what truth, and accuracy are. One can reshape 'truth' and remake it in just about any image one desires. If for example one wanted to delegitimize evolution or uplift suicide bombing as a noble endevor one would be free to rewrite history as one saw fit. And the idea that there are even competing points of view would be driven by the sheer signal to noise ratio those competing points of view could drive through the Wiki system. Wiki is the perfect embodiment of our post modern view of the world where everything is everything, all values, ideas and beliefs are equally fair and might makes right.

  5. it's good to live in the Information Age by ryblo_f · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's a worldwide knowledge base that's free for anyone to access or edit, ever-expanding with the scope and depth of human intelligence.

    Using a PDA, we've practically got The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Earth now, ya know?

    --
    Initiate snu-snu!
  6. grammar whores by ShentarZ31 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    My only complaint with Wikipedia does have to do with people being able to edit articles. Namely, those people who use grammar in such a way that makes a sentence hard to read and removes any useful information that was contained in the sentence. I hate having to reead a sentence three times to figure out what it is supposed to mean. After a point, seldom used words makes a person sound stupid instead of more intelligent.

    Beyond the possibility of vandalism, I think thats the Wikipedia's biggest flaw.