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Interview: Ask Jimmy Wales What You Will
The last time we talked to Jimmy Wales Wikipedia had just reached the 300,000 article mark, and there was some question about whether it would be a viable competitor to World Book or Encyclopedia Britannica. Things have changed a little since then. Wikipedia now includes over 26 million articles in 285 languages, and Wales is advising the UK government on making taxpayer-funded academic research available for free online. Jimmy has agreed to answer your questions about internet freedom and the enormous growth of Wikipedia. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
A NY Times Sunday Magazine article was published about you today. I thought it was reasonably balnced telling good and bad things happening in your life recently. Would you like correct any misconceptions in this article?
Why did you try to find Eric Snowdon's editor account, a clear violation of Wikipedia rules?
Why do you assume he is guilty, and thus worthy of outing, when you have not been privy to all of the evidence pro- or con- his actions (and whether they constitute a crime), since you are not sitting on the Jury at his trial?
I'd like to ask if there's the possibility of collaborating with National Libraries in scanning material (specially +25 year books) and let people access them. I know there's a lot of material just gathering dust and I see a potential for collaboration.
Wikipedia has become so large that students and youth in particular deem it the official truth. As such governments, companies, and individuals will constantly try to spin that to their own advantage.
Do you believe you will ever be able to reconcile with governments in regards to information they deem classified showing up on Wikipedia and private citizens that consider articles about them to be libel? Or, perhaps, is that just a fight you will need to struggle against for all eternity?
Currently, Wikipedia Foundation is a single point of failure. It is not difficult to imagine various Alexandria Library scenarios in which Humanity looses crucial information.
Instead of begging people for monetary donations to Wikimedia Foundation, wouldn't it be better to ask for donations of storage and bandwidth to keep the whole thing reduntant and de-centralized? Are there any ongoing efforts to change Wikipedia's model in this direction?
On a more serious note, Wikipedia, quite clearly knocked off Encarta and Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedias themselves evolved out of a need to catalog the immense amount of knowledge that existed.
What do you imagine to be the technology or concept that will eventually push Wikipedia(as it currently exists) off the throne of general knowledge?
There's the notion that the information on wikipedia can be editted for anyone, and referencing wikipedia sometimes brings a smile.
I always wondered why Wikipedia does not ask known experts for article certification. For example, you as the co-founder of wikipedia could certify that a section of the wikipedia wiki article (or the entire wiki article for wikipedia) was correct. Maybe you could even pay in some cases.
Has this ever been considered, or do you have any other ideas on how to get wikipedia to be received as a irrefutable source of information?
This question is such nonsense. Who's keeping it a secret? There's an [edit] link above every section of every article. A tagline isn't a full description of an object.
Also, the fact that people track changes on articles, with lots of people tracking popular and worthwhile pages, means that the quality is high on most pages that matter. They're also locked when necessary. It is very easy to tell roughly how reliable a given page is, and starred pages are always good. If I only heard a description of Wikipedia, I would guess that it's open to serious abuse and misinformation, but in fact, the system works.
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Make a legitimate edit on a controversial article that fails to indulge the bias of an admin and you'll learn all about the ways admins have to ostracize non-admin contributors. Are you aware of this and if so, what has been done recently or what is planned to moderate abuse by admins? How frequently are admin privileges revoked for abuse? I hope this is frequent because I know for fact the abuse is frequent.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
It seems like most major articles are "owned" by some editors who want to impose their own views and opinions on them. The rules of Wikipedia seem to be designed to facilitate this. The only solution seems to be for other editors to sit on the article constantly undoing the other editors edits.
It's a war of attrition and it seems like the bad guys mostly win. A lot of good editors have given up. I gave up, tried it again a few years later and gave up again. Many previously good articles are now full of industry shill references and obviously biased rubbish. The quality of Wikipedia is degrading steadily over time.
What is being done to reverse this trend? Can anything be done, or is this as good as a wiki gets?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Mr. Wales, what are your views on introducing a system-wide flagged revisions implementation that requires the first 500 edits by new editors (both IP and regular) to be reviewed and flagged before these revisions are shown to readers?
In my opinion this would make vandalism on Wikipedia an extremely rare occurrence, and semi-protecting articles would no longer be necessary anywhere.
New editors (both IP and regular) get away with so much, so much slips through, unfortunately.
Some examples of vandalism by new editors; on the History pages you can see it takes months before their edits are being reverted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Getdownwithspencer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/2602:306:CFC8:9F70:A40D:A9E4:55FB:3252
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Mustaqim.221815
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/58.164.63.41
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/77.248.13.242
Some of my fondest memories as a child was firing up the old 486 and playing through the interactive quests and games in Encarta. Some of them were timelines and guided learning experiences, others were programs that simulated things like gravity and orbits, and I liked playing with some software that could model particle behavior based on your parameters to describe gas diffusion and so on.
My question is, will Wikipedia ever be able to flex any interactive multimedia muscle, and create a more interactive and guided experience for young learners? People may be willing to devote their time writing out separate articles in the pages of an encyclopedia, but I imagine attracting multimedia development would be difficult (unless you can find whoever has been wasting their time writing a plethora of useless apps for browsers and mobiles).
Aside from a few snarky comments about begging, I just do not understand why Wikipedia cannot be self-sustaining?
While I know you do not like ads on Wikipedia, by now you should have created an infrastructure and solutions to problems that could be used by other companies. So why not sell the SDK or API or solutions so that you can sustain Wikipedia without begging for donations?
Sure if you do not want to be rich off of Wikipedia, that is fine. I don't consider it noble by any means, but its your choice after all.
There is no reason however why Wikipedia could not be a non-profit entity that is self-sustaining by generating revenue in some way. Non-profit does not mean "no revenue" btw.
What I feel is a shame is that even if Wikipedia was a money making enterprise with obscene profits you could have put 100% of the proceeds BACK into the community, whether through educational programs, creating new solutions for education that builds off the Wikipedia platform, or otherwise have done more then be a one trick pony.
Wikipedia has not changed much over the years, it could be more interactive, dynamic, fresh. Its a shame that products like Encarta had to demise in favour of a collection of static boring web-pages. By begging for money to barely exist means you have ignored real opportunities to grow the platform and make it awesome, instead of just mediocre.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Back in 2011 the AP reported that you commented that the ranks of Editors was slowly dwindling. "We are not replenishing our ranks...it is not a crisis, but I consider it to be important." What's have you and Wikipedia done to address that? Do you see problems do you think need to be addressed with the editor population? What do you think is working well with Editors? How hands on are you with the editor population?
I would like to know 2 things:
1) What and when is Wiki going to do something about data sets? By this I mean having easy to access, modular data sets which can be used across articles in a user understandable format (ie: a format users can interact with while maintaining the underlying structure needed for templates)
2) What is being done to simplify Wiki code? Here's an example of what a mess it can be:
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Approval?action=edit I created this template to do this: http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Approval which should be simple but due to the convoluted mess that is wiki code it ballooned into something virtually unreadable.
3) Will citations ever evolve beyond "here's a generic link to a page on the subject"?
4) Is there an effort underway to clarify complex topic pages such as maths & chemistry which use abstract, unlinkable, symbols?
5) Will we ever see summary previews for links? ie: hover over a wiki link to get the summary of the topic instead of the tooltip.
6) Are their any plans for article perspectives? ie:
Instead of having the following articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Canada
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_years_in_Canada
etc
etc
That you have a single article with tabbed perspectives?
Thanks for your answers!
Jimmy: Have anything you ever written on Wikipedia been deleted for no good reason?
Does the complete corruption infesting Wikipedia's administrative structure bother you yet?
Jimmy,
You and I had a very nice, very short email exchange many, many years ago. You ended it with thanking me, in case you've forgotten (ha!). I like to mention it when people bring up your name in connection to Wikipedia. I suppose it's my way of thanking you back.
Are there any email exchanges you remember fondly?
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