An Interview with Wikipedia's Jimbo Wales

Raul654 writes "The Wikipedia Signpost, Wikipedia's weekly in-house publication, is this week featuring an interview with Jimbo Wales. The questions, which were submitted by Wikipedia regulars, hit on subjects related to the Foundation, the budgeting and legal issues, the blocking of Wikipedia in China, as well as where Jimbo sees Wikipedia in the future."

Comments

Balkanization Risk as Wiki Grows

[JehCt]

Hey Jimbo, missed the interview... How will you prevent Wikipedia from becoming balkanized, just like ordinary society, as groups of users with differing views form up their own projects, and start slinging mud at each other and calling each other "trolls"? Won't additional restrictions on editing, in the name of "quality," drive potential contributors to other pursuits? How will you prevent Wikipedia from turning into a collection of cranks, slackers, and trolls?

Re:Balkanization Risk as Wiki Grows

[Uber Banker]

Pretty intersting that questions were requested from the /. audience, to which Jimmy Wales would reply one week later. Now two weeks later we get replies from questions submitted by 'Wikipedia regulars'.

I wonder if the (highest moderated) /. questions were questions Jimmy Wales didn't want to answer. The questions from the 'Wikipedia regulars' seemed to facilitate snappy answers which were pretty obvious, though still useful as a snapshot of ambitions to refer against in the future.

someone post the interview, please

[Anonymous Coward]

it's all blocked in china... :(

Knowledge in their own 'language'

[dtsazza]

Jimbo's comment, that "in 10 years, it seems likely to me that many languages which are now quite small will have very large Wikipedia projects," ties in in an interesting fashion with the current blocking of Wikipedia in China. At the moment, it's a relatively small issue in their grand scheme of things. But fast-forward 10 years, (if and) when the Chinese wikipedia is about the same size as the English version, and I wonder how the government will cope. It's already technologically very possible to circumvent the block with proxies - and although I don't envy those who go against the regime, doubtless many thousands, if not millions, will, and Wikipedia will continue to grow. Will the Chinese government continue to try to brush it under the carpet, perhaps coming up with more exotic and powerful blocking techniques? Or will it decide it can't just be stamped out, and perhaps more worryingly, attempt to influence the content of articles on Chinese Wikipedia? I would imagine that a government can't bring enough force to bear in a Wiki context to overcome the concensus of the userbase as a whole, which is fantastic and one of the major pluses of wikis. But a possibly more interesting question is those situations where the majority of the userbase does have a different viewpoint - how would Arabic Wikipedia relate the Danish cartoons incident as compared to the English one, for example? Scale that up to millions of entries, and then re-read Jimbo's goal:

"a freely licensed high quality encyclopedia for every single person on the planet"

and it seems that everyone will have an encyclopedia, but the knowledge contained therein may well differ depending on the flavour you have. Now I'm not knocking the concept and I think it's a great thing to aim for - but I see this as an extremely interesting issue for wiki-style collaberative projects in general. Most projects have a standardised community invisibly guiding them - and what we're seeing here is multiple communities with essentially the same task and input, so it'll be extremely interesting to see what comes out. Hopefully Wikipedia's emphasis on neutrality will be enough to overcome cultural bias, but I'm not sure if it'll be completely successful (I'm not sure that people will even notice that bias half the time)...

Perspective Affinities & Wiki-certified Creden

[Selecto]

Should we look for new ways to deal with the inevitable vitality of Wikipedia, as a social mechanism to present additional sides of an argument or contentious issue? I'd say there are easy indicators of contention that we'll call 'revisionism,' where the sheer number of edits holds the greatest clue. Perhaps if there were some way to 'diff' the contents of edits / revisions in a summary fashion? It would be cool, for instance, to be able to summarize the changes one party made, and see all "relevant" historical changes on one page. Of course, what is 'relevant' as a summary topic or interpretation of a point, is subjective, but then, could this be user-interpreted, too? What if Wikipedia adopted learning 'preferences' to show a user what they deem to be relevant of issues they have researched on Wikipedia? That would be cool. These interpretation-affinities could be used to score related topics, or to make other suggestions. Some of this is already available, but in my opinion, not where it could be. Also, there are a lot of people who claim to be authoritative when their references are out of scope for Wikipedia. Why don't we provide authority within WikiP's scope, where a reader could judge on any particular poster's credibility based on accessible body of wiki 'precedence'... I'd rather not go all over to determine if s/o is credible as an informer regarding Earth Sciences. I would be glad to have available the highest-level scientific research, it's not really all that complicated if you've got the right attitude.

Re:Wikipedia: Dangerous Personality Cult?

[dtsazza]

But from the very same link:

"I respectfully disagree with the assertion that actions by Jimbo Wales may not be overturned except by appeal to Jimbo. Jimbo seems to agree, noting he will accept it if the arbcom issued a ruling overturning something he did."

And that hasn't been seen in any dictatorship in history: "Yes, I have supreme ultimate power, but if you, the puppet parliament, don't like something I've done and decide against it, I'll go with what you want."

While I recognise that dictatorships (especially in the real world) are far from ideal, those powers let you get important things done rather quickly. From one angle, it's nice to know that Jimbo has the ability to immediately and permanently put a stop to childish back-and-forth 'arguments' between two contributers who both believe they're in the right.

Why Wikipedia isn't working

[blueZ3]

or, The Emperor's New Clothes

I have karma to burn, so here goes...

Here on Slashdot, it's popular to tout the wonder that is Wikipedia, to revel in the wild-west democracy of it all, and break into rapturous platitudes about what a terrific source of high-quality information it is. Unfortunately, the reality (which none of the Wiki-boosters is likely to admit) is that Wikipedia is broken... fundamentally flawed, and can't be fixed.

Here's a tidbit for you concerning the food crisis in the Horn of Africa: drought is caused by high prices, overpopulation, and conflict. From the Horn of Africa Food Crisis article on Wikipedia: "This shortage, along with other factors including high cereal prices, overpopulation in the region, and conflict, have led to severe drought conditions." (1/11/06)

This is another example of why you can't rely on Wikipedia-the online encyclopedia written and edited by people with a limited grasp of the English language and (frequently) an even more limited knowledge of the subject matter. If you think that things written by committee are the epitome of bad writing, wait until you read articles that were both written AND edited by committee. And not just any committee, this a committee composed of your average basement-dwelling Net geeks, know-nothing Web noobs, and agenda-driven politicos.

Drought is a condition created by a shortage of water. That's the definition of the word. But here we have a Wikipedia article that plainly states that 'high cereal prices' are causal. Hmmmm... Explain to me again, oh geniuses, how high prices for cereals have 'led to severe drought conditions'? Apparently high prices are drying up the water supply. Clearly the author of this one is confused, either in their understanding of causality, or their understanding of the definition of the word 'drought.' Yet they felt competent to write (or edit) an article about the issue. Welcome to the world of the encyclopedia written by the ignorant.

The usual response of Wikipedia-philes is to answer any concern about the quality or accuracy of articles with 'anyone can edit it.' Which leads us to the immediate response (mine when I saw the above error): Why would I? Why would anyone waste their time? The person or persons who wrote this incorrect article will either a) change it back, or b) edit it further to destroy whatever correction I make. Where's the value proposition in this editing task? Am I supposed to feel satisfaction if I can see that it's corrected for 20 minutes before being reverted or overwritten? How am I supposed to feel tomorrow when I come back and see my efforts undone? Why would anyone with writing or editing ability or subject matter knowledge go to the effort of changing something that will almost immediately be screwed up again by someone without any.

No one is willing to address this issue. In forums, anyone who questions the problems of articles being written by people lacking essential subject-matter expertise is immediately shouted down. Long Live Wikipedia! Nothing possibly can be wrong! You just don't like the egalitarian nature of a "people's encyclopedia"... and on and on. Hello, McFly! If Wikipedia worked, it would be a wonderful resource. But if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, as the old saying goes.

In a community where everyone is 'equal' in power, despite inequalities in knowledge and ability, those with the later will, eventually -- inevitably, decline to participate. This particular type of communism (and that's not a pejorative) leads inexorably to a devaluing of the best in favor of not just the good, but the bad. In the case of Wiki articles, this means that a physics article is as likely to be written by a 12-year-old as a physicist. Or that 'drought' is as likely to mean 'famine' as 'water shortage.'

Wikipedia is an amusing read, but I wouldn't look to it for accuracy or anything resembling an even-handed explanation of a topic. The most that can be said for it is that it's an interesting social experiment. Nothing more.

Re:Why Wikipedia isn't working

[BenjyD]

I think the basic Wikipedia problem is that the more obscure a fact is, the more likely a user is to want to look it up (nobody uses Wikipedia to look up things they already know). But the more obscure facts are the ones with fewer people qualified to write about them and the ones with more people who don't fully understand them, so they are the least trustworthy.

Re:Why Wikipedia isn't working

[gowen]

Now, I don't disagree that that's a badly written sentence, and, interpreted literally, wrong for exactly the reason you say.

But, even though that sentence is rubbish, it's also abundantly clear what is meant. High cereal prices exacerbated the food shortage caused by the drought.

So, there are two responses :
i) correct the sentence so that it reflects the intended meaning [needless to say, someone has already done this].
ii) generalise from this mistake into a lengthy diatribe about the inaccuracy of Wikipedia, pretending there exist infallible sources of information elsewhere.

I would suggest, that exactly one of these would not constitute an enormous waste of your time.

Re:Why Wikipedia isn't working

[LnxAddct]

I was going to mod you flamebait, but I guess you'd be expecting that. Wikipedia is significantly more reputable than *any* encyclopedia that I've ever used. Look up Crooke's Radiometer on Wikipedia, then go look it up in Encyclopedia Britannica, then go look it up from at a reputable 3rd party in the sciences field. You'll see that Britannica has been giving out the wrong explanation for decades, and you know what? There is nothing any of us can do about it. Britannica is filled with innaccuracies, typos, and biases that have propagated from one version to the next for years. Wikipedia is the best source of information I've yet to come across. Every now and then there are some errors, as there are in all works done by humans, but they are often quickly corrected. If you get into a revert war, there are provisions in place to put an end to it and to facilitate debate and discussion. Essentially, not only does Wikipedia cover a significantly larger base of human knowledge, but it does so more accurately than any source I've come across and in a way that encourages little to no bias. Everybody has something to add, regardless of what you think of their intelligence. Don't be so full of yourself.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Why Wikipedia isn't working

[mdwh2]

Here's a tidbit for you concerning the food crisis in the Horn of Africa: drought is caused by high prices, overpopulation, and conflict. From the Horn of Africa Food Crisis article on Wikipedia: "This shortage, along with other factors including high cereal prices, overpopulation in the region, and conflict, have led to severe drought conditions." (1/11/06)

Let's look at that article again, shall we? It now says: "These conditions of drought, together with other factors including high cereal prices, overpopulation in the region, and conflict, are leading to conditions of famine."

So, despite your claims, it has been fixed. It doesn't have to be YOU who has to fix it - the claim is that someone else will. The idea that someone else will revert it is mistaken - if your change if genuinely better, but it gets reverted, then someone else what put your change back.

The article was fixed on 11 January, the same day that you quoted - let's have a look at the progress:
* Some changes "drought" to "famine" (I don't know if this was you?)
* Someone reverts - it's clear from their edit summary that they misunderstood the intent, and they have a point when they say it isn't being referred to a famine yet.
* Someone *else* then rewords it, to the current form. So even if the original editor was no longer paying attention, despite the revert, the change has made it through, in a manner that's even clearer than the original edit.

So, you posted an example supposedly showing Wikipedia's flaws, but it disproves the claims you make! Namely - the claim that no one else will spot the error (they did), and the claim that if it's reverted, the improvement is lost (it was fixed, despite a revert).

And let's be clear here - this wasn't some badly worded article which remained for months - this was sorted out in a matter of hours, just one day after the article was first created!

I have karma to burn, so here goes...

Here on Slashdot, it's popular to tout the wonder that is Wikipedia

On the contrary - on Slashdot it's trendy to criticise Wikipedia at every opportunity, far more than any other source that is ever mentioned. After all, look how you've got modded up ;)

It's popular to write long-winded explanations of why Wikipedia supposedly can't work in theory, completely ignoring the reality of the situation of how things actually work in practice. And when they do post an example, it only disproves the claims they make!

Re:Why Wikipedia isn't working

[DerekLyons]

But, even though that sentence is rubbish, it's also abundantly clear what is meant. High cereal prices exacerbated the food shortage caused by the drought.

By no possible standard reading of the English lanquage can that sentence be interpreted that way. None.

So, there are two responses :
i) correct the sentence so that it reflects the intended meaning [needless to say, someone has already done this].

You miss the grandparents point - if the Wiki Way worked - that sentence should never have been bad by the time he read the article in the first place. This basic error in logic has persisted for over a month.

ii) generalise from this mistake into a lengthy diatribe about the inaccuracy of Wikipedia, pretending there exist infallible sources of information elsewhere.

Had the grandparent post mentioned anything about other sources - you'd have a point. But he didn't. Instead, just like with i), you simply cut and paste the standard Wikipedia cheerleader strawmen - without actually reading and thinking about what he wrote.

The fact is, he isn't generalizing from a single mistake - tens of thousands of mistakes just like it exist all across the Wikipedia. I find at least half a dozen every time I do a random browse across the 'pedia on topics that interest me. (In fact, it's why I stopped editing the 'pedia - I got tired of fixing minor mistakes, again, and again, and again. Not to mention the reversion of re-written and corrected articles back to their faulty states.)

China blocking

[jez9999]

WS: On a similar topic, Vsion asks: "Are there currently any efforts being undertaken by the Foundation to address the People's Republic of China's blocking of Wikipedia or to alleviate its effect?"

JW: Beijing-area Wikipedians are working to have the block lifted. Our position is that the block is in error, even given China's normal policies. Wikipedia is not propaganda, it is basic information. We expect that the block will be lifted.

Huh? Doesn't he understand the nature of Chinese censorship?

should add a rating system...

[orion41us]

I think Wikipedia articals should be rateable by anyone. Similar to /.s..

Re:should add a rating system...

[WWWWolf]

And how do you rate the articles?

Most of the "rating" systems online don't measure quality; they measure popularity. You always get five stars on some popular topic that gets a lot of attention anyway, while marginal topics don't.

One way would be that you'd have to make sure each user would be subjected to mandatory daily "metamoderation" of random articles on their field of expertise, and the thing that kills that is that the "expertise" of all users varies depending on whether or not they've had their morning coffee, or whatever. Currently, Wikipedia works because editors are monitoring topics they care about when they care about.

Translating for third-world countries...

[Rxke]

TFA: "WS: GeorgeStepanek asks: "You've said that 'Wikimedia's mission is to give the world's knowledge to every single person on the planet in their own language.' But very few of the wikipedias in the languages of third-world countries are seeing as much activity as the first-world language wikipedias. Do you have any ideas on how this could be turned around?" JW: I am a believer in outreach. I would like for the Foundation to raise money specifically to pay one or more minority language co-ordinators. The goal would be to reach out in a more organized way to professors and graduate students and expat communities who have good Internet access, to seed projects for languages where the majority of speakers have poor internet access." If I were an English teacher in said countries, and had computer-access, I'd give them excercises by letting them translate some (printouts) of the entry-level stuff to their own language. Then, when they grow more proficient, give them more complex stuff (interesting articles, stuff to discuss etc.) I bet they'd be proud to see their stuff up at 'their' Wikipedia.

The outcome

[gidds]

Indeed. In fact, I suspect the real outcome of all this controversy will be loss of trust and respect -- not for Wikipedia, but for 'authoritative' sources as a whole. So Wikipedia's relative rating will rise!

Pick a subject you have particular knowledge of -- maybe a local event or situation, or an area of learning or technology. Then take a look at how it's reported in the newspapers, in books and encyclopaedias, in movies and documentaries and news programmes. It's a fair bet that you'll come across inaccuracies, ranging from oversimplifications and typos to bias and misrepresentation to plain ignorance and blatant lies.

Now, stop and consider that that's how everything else gets covered, too. Frightening, isn't it?

Of course, some sources are much less likely to get things wrong than others. But very few sources are as authoritative as we tend to assume; all get things wrong from time to time. We should treat all printed and broadcast material with a little scepticism.

Now, look at Wikipedia in that light. Maybe it doesn't seem that much worse than the others after all?

Yes, it's true that there's vastly greater opportunity for errors to be introduced. But to balance that, there's vastly greater opportunity for them to be fixed, too. Wikipedia's far from perfect, but the huge majority of articles seem well worth reading, and its average doesn't seem noticeably lower than other reference works.

(In fact, rather than quality, I think its main problem is coverage; it's very patchy, and has too many gaps and stubs.)

Basically, as long as enough people want Wikipedia to be accurate, it will be!

Re:Wikipedia: Dangerous Personality Cult?

[2short]

Yes, Wikipedia is at root a non-democratic institution, and, were it a govenment, would be a dictatorship. Kind of like every privately held company or charitable foundation in the world.