Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Interview: Ask Jimmy Wales What You Will

Posted by samzenpus on from the question-and-answer-time dept.

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.

31 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. NY Times magazine article by peter303 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  2. Why are you a vigilante? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Why are you a vigilante? by spintriae · · Score: 3, Informative

      Who's Eric Snowdon?

    2. Re:Why are you a vigilante? by jwales · · Score: 2

      I thought this worthy of just popping in to comment even before the real interview because the question is so ludicrously misinformed.

      I am a strong supporter of personal privacy and freedom of speech. Based on everything that I have seen so far, Eric Snowden will go down in history as a hero. I have been reading lots about him, including his youthful posts to Ars Technica. I think it really interesting to think about the process by which the young man who made those posts became the man we see before us today facing down all the might of the US intelligence services based on a strong belief that mass surveillance is wrong and illegal.

      My actions at Wikipedia around this were perfectly honorable and noble and did not violate any rules of any kind. I invited a discussion of information that is already completely public - the user accounts that he used at Ars Technica have been widely reported. I was curious (and am still curious) to find more of his past writings. I am working through various connections to try to talk to him - I had hoped to do so in person when I visit Hong Kong in August, but obviously he's gone from there now.

      I think he needs strong support from people well positioned to provide that support. I think that what he did was illegal - quite clearly so. I highly recommend the book "Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobendiance" by former US Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas for a very interesting analysis of the ethics around breaking the law deliberately in the interests of justice.

      The knee jerk reaction by some in the Internet community has been, as usual, annoying. They call it anonymous "coward" for a reason - it's easy to sling mud and pretend to have the high moral ground if you feel completely and utterly unconcerned about the facts of reality.

      --
      Wikia
  3. Deletionists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you feel they are a problem? If so, what should be done?

    http://milowent.blogspot.com/2011/03/wikipedia-deletionists-delete-article.html

    1. Re:Deletionists by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

      Do you feel they are a problem? If so, what should be done?

      http://milowent.blogspot.com/2011/03/wikipedia-deletionists-delete-article.html

      {{subst:prod|This comment duplicates thousands of other comments all over the internet}}

      But seriously, what constitutes signal, and what constitutes noise is a very complex question that can't really be answered by arbitrarily categorizing people into "deletionists" and "completionists". Some things, like hoaxes, ads, and self-promotion, hinder informed-ness, and some things are really boring and minute, but informative.

    2. Re:Deletionists by amaurea · · Score: 2

      Well, the original philosophy of wikipedia was that if somebody made an inaccurate article about a subject, then among the thousands of eyes reading the article, there would eventually be somebody knowledgable enough to improve it. That model seemed to work pretty well, and lead to wikipedia growing rapidly while still being pretty high quality, if I recall correctly. This was the big surprise about wikipedia - most people I knew (and myself included) were too cynical to believe something like that could work, but it did!

      But it has gradually shifted to an increasing focus on external references. References are very good, don't get me wrong, but I don't agree with the assertion that an article without references is useless. I think a mature article should eventually have references, but the person who writes the first version of the article might not be the same as the person who adds the references.

      If any article without references is deleted, then it won't get written until somebody who is both knowledgable about the subject *and* good at tracking down references comes along. On the other hand, if the referenceless article is left alone, then somebody might come along later and add references to it, and it will probably be improved quite a bit by others before that too.

      Basically, my experience is that some deletionists want articles to spring fully formed into existence, and kill baby articles on sight.

      There is also the question of notability, though that is a bit off-topic with regards to what you said. But I'll say it anyway. I think the appropriate notability threshold is strongly related to the target size of an encyclopedia. For example, if you are trying to build a 100 page mini-encyclopedia, then the notability threshold would have to be extremely high. For a 100-volume encyclopedia the threshold would be much lower. For an encyclopedia like wikipedia, which has is not limited by print size, I think the logical thing to do is to have a gradually falling notability threshold. That way, the most important articles get written first, followed by gradually less notable ones as the encyclopedia grows. So notability should be a guide for the order in which articles are written, rather than a cutoff at which wikipedia is finished.

      I think this viewpoint was more common in the early wikipedia, before deletionism became dominant. I remember reading a page of numbers wikipedia aspired to, which as a tounge-in-cheek goal included "6,000,000,000 articles -an article about every person in the world" or something similar. While that is a bit of an exaggeration, I think it shows a very different goal for the project than pruning, guarding and dotting of i's and crossing of t's, and being satisfied with a mere 4 million articles.

    3. Re:Deletionists by Degrees · · Score: 2

      I feel they are a problem.

      I have seen two articles that I think should have been kept; but some asshole that Mr. Wales trusts decided that they should be deleted. Seems like deleting articles is a power trip to me.

      So whenever Mr. Wales asks for money, I am reminded to say no because he allows power tripping editors to ruin Wikipedia. Why would I donate money to these people?

      --
      "The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
  4. Collaboration with National Libraries by robcfg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:frist psot by SJHillman · · Score: 2

    [citation needed]

  6. Editing of Information by sylivin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  7. SPOF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:SPOF by spintriae · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can download and host it if you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download. Keeping it in sync is a different story, but I think enough people fetch it that there's no risk of an Alexandria Library senario.

  8. Re:When will Wikipedia accept Bitcoin donations? by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  9. distortion and censoring of information by iggymanz · · Score: 2

    There have been several worthwhile articles that were removed just because people are under the mistaken impression that most human knowledge is on the internet, and that if they couldn't find a linkable source sometime didn't exist.

    This foolishness has crippled wikipedia's usefulness and credibility.

    1. Re:distortion and censoring of information by iggymanz · · Score: 3

      Oh please, you actually bring up the third problem, the cry of "not notable" in the minds of a culturally ignorant young person who only relies on search engine counts to determine notability.

      I was of course referring to articles with offline sources!

      "Notability" in the minds of most of the young internet users means they find all kinds of information on the net, but they are too lazy to get off their rear end and research and discover just how notable subjects were in past decades. They only take the view of their own culture in the "reality" created on the net and mass media.

      this disgusting attitude harms wikipedia, important topics have been deleted.

  10. Certified articles? by rjlouro · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  11. Re:Full disclosure where due by cupantae · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    --
  12. Abusive admins by TopSpin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  13. Flamebait? by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On a more serious note, I'd like to ask Mr. Wales why most Wikipedia "editors" are "Class A" douchbags. Especially the "Admins".

    This will be modded "flamebait" but it's a serious question.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
  14. Which articles should we give aliens? by crablar · · Score: 2

    Imagine aliens with Internet access have appeared on the edge of the solar system and are headed for earth. At the rate the are approaching, they will reach our planet in eight hours. We do not know if they are hostile, but they have set up a server for accepting incoming messages. What are the top three Wikipedia articles we should link them to?

  15. Game of Articles by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Game of Articles by evilviper · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      As one of my favorite ongoing examples, check out Fractal Antennas:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal_antenna

      See the Talk page for all the back and forth about the corporate involvement, meat puppets being used, links to competitors being removed (fractus.com), and all other manner of wonderful stuff. There's a history temporary protection when the occasional admin wanders by, but then that expires, and the paid shills come back, and continue.

      It's a very important subject, and yet there's not a bunch of editors willing to sit on the article and continue to revert the info for years and years, as Nathan Cohen continues to corrupt it into fluffy advertising for his (and ONLY his) company.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  16. Flagged Revisions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  17. Interactive tours and applications by MassiveForces · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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).

  18. Editors Dwindling by Kagato · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  19. Data by JMJimmy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

  20. Deletion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Jimmy: Have anything you ever written on Wikipedia been deleted for no good reason?

  21. Re:Jimmy.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does the complete corruption infesting Wikipedia's administrative structure bother you yet?

  22. Quackery and the NPOV by eprubio · · Score: 2

    You are aware that homeopathy is nothing but a hoax (source), and try to enforce the neutral point of view of Wikipedia. However, in some of the editions of wikipedia, such as the spanish one, it's quite common to find entries that give a positive spin to hoaxes such as homeopathy or acupuncture; even the spanish entry on the neutral point of view is constantly edited and "interpreted" to make room to "all opinions" no matter their reliability. How feasibile is to truly enforce the NPOV in all the editions of Wikipedia?

  23. Does Wikipedia Make People Smarter? by speedplane · · Score: 2

    Does Wikipedia Make People Smarter? It seems that wikipedia is developing a very clicky culuture; you read the first few sentences of an article before clicking on to the next. It repudiates hard study and concentration in exchange for instant gratification. Is this a good thing? Shouldn't our culture strive to make incredible objects of beauty and knowledge rather than a shallow understanding of everything?

    --
    Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates