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Got a Question for Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales?
We did our first Slashdot interview with Jimmy Wales back in 2001. We did another one in 2004. In 2005 we ran a feature article about Wikipedia's history. Now Wikipedia is in the news again, so this seems like a perfect time to make Jimmy Wales our first Slashdot Interview "three-peater." Ask whatever you like. Expect answers to 10 or 12 of the highest-moderated questions by next week.
I was a user and contributor to Wikipedia (en.wikipedia). Now I'm located in China and Wikipedia is nationally blocked, as are most caches (the Google cache work-around was eliminated a few days after becoming widly known). There have been blocks in the past, the present one in force since late October.
/. is viewable but any discussion on the issue from wikipedia.org is not. If this has been discussed on wikipedia.org then please excuse my redundancy, it would be sweet if you copied that discussion into this thread.
I was curious what Wikipedia's approach to blocking in the PRC was. Note that the entire wikipedia.org site is blocked, not only zh.wikipedia.org. Also 'wikis' are not blocked outright, such as blogs were in 2005 (for using 'blog' in the URL, a block which has now been reversed, now only selective blogs are blocked).
Does the Wikipedia organisation have any plan, such as a work-around or an agreement for a selective ban (such as blocking zh.wikipedia.org only, thus preventing casual browsing by Chinese internet users)? Has any analysis been done on the PRC's blocking of Wikipedia, and if so what is the status?
This message is sent from inside the PRC, where
What do you feel is more important to Wikipedia: Open-ness or accuracy? Do you feel that you have to make sacrifices in one to get the other? Has it been difficult to strike a balance?
...but somebody edited it to say something else.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Are you considering any major changes to Wikipedia's policy's? Many people have called for some sort of moderation or approval system. Are these or any other serious reforms likely to happen?
Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard. Be evil.
Has the U.S. government ever attempted to outright censor any part of Wikipedia to your knowledge? Have you been contacted and asked to take down incriminating and/or secret information? Has anyone connected with the government tried to find out who has accessed/modified certain pages?
Lastly, I notice that Wikipedia is available in many languages, all across the world. Given that vantage point, could you describe the reaction (if any) of various governments to the possibility of the sum of human knowledge being available to their citizens with just a few keystrokes?
Thanks for the great resource!
Electric Monkey Pants
How hard was it to get funding for this project at the vision stage? Did you have to first produce some kind of working model? Or were you able to 'sell' the idea to benefactors at the idea stage. More generally can you comment on the challenges/opportunities about getting funding for projects that benefit the community?
"Is Wikipedia as fun now as you originally thought it would be?"
In light of recent Congressional attempts to sanitize biographies, will there be any additional steps taken to ensure that biographical information is not only neutral in content, but accurate and complete? How much outcry was there in your attempts to sanitize your own biography and what have you learned from that?
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
Wikipedia appears to be founded on the principle that "with enough participants, you converge on correctnenss".
This seems similar to stock market theory and other areas (the "wisdom of crowds").
But this is obviously not always the case. You have market bubbles. You have widely believed fallicies (Eg, if you survey in Kansas on evolutionary theory). Etc.
The question: Is there any thought on how to deal with the situations where enough participants will converge on the consistantly wrong answer? There appears to be no mechanism for the correct minority to eliminate the large ignorant majority.
Test your net with Netalyzr
An expert in a field could 'sign' a version of an article that they deem to be accurate. This article can still be edited, amended etc. On the article page, the user is given the option to consult a frozen-from-edits version of the article
Moderators would be able to contact the 'expert' and confirm their authority in the field, since pre-authorising the individual before they can confirm the article's accuracy would deter busy individuals from making the effort in the first place.
I would be greatful if other Slashdotters would like to develop this into a more eloquent point and question.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
What's your opinion about the large amount of "geeky" trivia that seems to have accumulated on Wikipedia? I'm particularly thinking of stuff like large articles about fictional characters, rather comprehensive episode guides and that sort of stuff, usually about Sci-Fi and anime etc.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
The Wiki article format is essentially unstructured. Formatting and content standards are decided upon by the community and enforced by peer moderation, but it is not precise and it is not semantic. Are you thinking about a way of introducing enforced, queryable, structured data templates? Think Google Base with community moderation of both structure and data.
The whole site is editors to moderate what people are saying. Anybody (or at least any registered user) can change/delete/revert/add/modify (almost) any article at (almost) any time.
Wikipedia's greatest weakness is also its greatest strength -- 50 million editors and contributors. Some of whom are brilliant, some of whom are morons. Hopefully the brilliant ones win out but every now and then you have to put up with (or even step in and edit) some inanity.
Just like democracy, it only works when informed, concerned and intelligent people step forward and take an active role.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
Are you considering having a "stable" branch of the pages where only a "few" trusted sources are allowed to edit the pages, as well as an "experimental" branch which would be like the current version, ie. editable by anyone?
/Tomas
The reason would be because when I direct students to a certain page on Wikipedia on an assignment, I can't be sure it will contain the same, correct, information today as when I wrote the assignment description. For all I know, it can be edited by the first student reading the assignment!
If I could enter the "stable" version of the page, I'd be sure it will be correct in the future as well.
I assume lots and lots of people would like to have a "stable" version to use as reference in their papers and reports.
ps. I got the idea from a post by a fellow slashdotter...
I have 1 Gbps Internet access@home