Ask Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales About Online Collaboration

Back in 2001 we did a "double" Slashdot Interview with Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg and Jimmy Wales of the then-brand-new Nupedia, which has since become the amazingly useful Wikipedia. This is a perfect time to catch up with Jimbo (as friends call him), and learn not only how he managed to make Wikipedia work and grow so well, but what we can do to help -- and what future plans he has for this outstanding Web resource. (10 of your highest-moderated questions will be sent to Jimbo by email. We'll post his answers as soon as we get them back.)

Re:Academic Co-operation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, see Wikipedia:School and university projects [wikipedia.org]

Re:google ads..

[Anonymous Coward]

Jimbo has said before that Wikipedia will never show ads.

Re:Advertising?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is probably the second most recognized Open Source project out there (Linux is prolly number 1). See Wikipedia:Press coverage [wikipedia.org] (or Google cache [64.233.167.104] if it's /.-ed)

Re:Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs?

[Anonymous Coward]

There were some interesting quotes from Britannica's VP regarding Wikipedia on the Boston.com website [boston.com]:

"I think it's exactly the right price," said Michael Ross, senior vice president of corporate development at Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. in Chicago.

Ross admits to reading and enjoying Wikipedia, and has even gotten ideas there for future Britannica articles. But the absence of traditional editorial controls makes Wikipedia unsuited to serious research. "How do they know it's accurate?" Ross asks. "People can put down anything."

A few years ago, Microsoft Corp. scoffed at free software; today the company is running scared. Britannica's Ross seems a lot more relaxed about his company's future. It's difficult to see why.

Re:How to balance coverage?

[hashar]

The community portal highlights things that could be done to enhance the encyclopedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_P ortal One example is a request to create the article "Tibet independance movement". Articles wich are really small are often listed as "stub" and a list of them is available. Often editors looks at those stubs and try to enhance them somehow (see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Find_or_fix _a_stub ). There is also a lot of translators that keep importing / exporting articles. A good example is the Român wikipedia that import french articles :o)

Re:Donations

[thue]

I am almost sure a big organisation will eventually give found like UNESCO or UN

Some wikipedians are currently writing an application [wikimedia.org] for a grant of $500,000 from The National Endowment for the Humanities [wikipedia.org].

It needs to be done by tuesday (tomorrow!), and they seem to be far from finished...

Re:Licensing and the Wiki

[pete-classic]

What do you mean? The GFDL is very friendly to dead-tree publishing.

The only "hurdle" is that no publisher can get exclusive rights to publish it. Is that what you mean? Do you think that is really a practical limitation in this case? (I don't, as I think it is too big and would take too much startup cost with too small a market for some other publisher to come in and poach.)

-Peter

Re:Advertising?

[arvindn]

Until now, word of mouth. For instance, I have talked about 10 people into participating. Jimbo has been saying advertising is one of the things that needs to be worked on. You can help. Put a link to it on your website for starters. Limited print editions of wikipedia (called "wikireaders") are being tried out; if it takes off perhaps the revenue could be used for advertising. Currently, though, the priority is to buy more hardware and keep the site going.

Re:The constant bickering...

[arvindn]

Check out dispute resolution [wikipedia.org] and the three revert rule [wikipedia.org]. Its not a silver bullet, but there are guidelines to make it possible to make progress even on highly controversial issues.

Re:Applying wikipedia success to other projects?

[bcrowell]

I'd suggest that the wikipedia model doesn't really transfer well to other types of projects. I run a web site that catalogs free books and accepts user-submitted reviews (see my sig), and there are really no other successful examples of this kind of informal collaboration that I know of. (Some other people are trying, but I can't think of any finished projects.) Of course, just because something hasn't yet been done more than once, that doesn't mean it can't ever be more than once, but I think there's very special about an encyclopedia. It requires knowledge about more fields than any small group of people could possibly hope to have, and most of that knowledge is factual and not rapidly changing. A person is going to write a wikipedia article on marsupials typically because he's a young academic who studies marsupials, and he's among the people in the world who are best qualified to do the job. The person best qualified to document open-source software is the author of the software.

For software documentation, I think TeX is a good example. Knuth wrote it using literate programming techniques, and published the annotated source code in book form, along with the TeXbook. Because TeX and LaTeX were very useful, and had become very stable, other people came along and provided aftermarket books, some of which are very good. We're now seeing a third generation of documenation, which is free, such as this [ee.ethz.ch]. I doubt that any of this would have happened if Knuth hadn't started out by stabilizing the software, and writing his own high-quality docs.

Re:How to stop the Cabal

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, provide some links. Here are some to start with:
Wikipedia:What is a troll [wikipedia.org]
Lady Lysine Ikinsile/WhyWikipediaWorksNot [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia:List of banned users [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia:Banning policy [wikipedia.org]

Re:Local copy of Wikipedia

[FooAtWFU]

You can already download the software, the database (just current articles, or history too), the image dumps (available separately- copyright violations and fair-use images at your own risk!) and there are periodic Tome Raider exports as well. So, as we say in Template:sofixit, why don't you throw one together for us? :)

Re:Quality Control

[Raul654]

Wikipedia currently has several organized quality control efforts - Cleanup [wikipedia.org], peer review [wikipedia.org], and feature article candidates [wikipedia.org]. As the name implies, cleanup is for articles that are really in need of TLC. Peer review is for people to assess the factual/neutrality of an article, and featured article candidates is the promotion process for our featured articles (from which I choose the daily main page article). In addition, watchlists let people see when an article changes, so factually incorrect changes do not last very long on well-watched articles.

Re:User system complexity.

[FooAtWFU]

The short answer is probably No, but the long answer is more involved. Wikipedia prefers to implement access controls in wetware where possible, to prevent abuse by technically saavy trolls and/or vandals. So, while there may be facilities (eventually) for a web of trust of some sort, and an article review/verification-type system is often spoken of speculatively (ideas and plans bandied about), Wikipedia is not [wikipedia.org] Everything2 [wikipedia.org] and does not, will not have coded experience of that sort.

Re:One area Wikipedia seems to lack

[chris_mahan]

Some are.

Most of the time, however, the knowledge come first hand.

The thing to understand is that the articles generally will point you to external links and other related articles, and that becomes the sources for cross-reference.

In reality, most sources out there are biased and were not cross-examied to the extent the wikipedia can be, so ultimately, wikipedia will becaome more authoritative.

Besides, you do know how to use google don't you?

Re:P2P?

[FooAtWFU]

Let's watch the Recent Pages [wikipedia.org] feed for a minute or two. Yes. That's a lot of recent changes. A peer-to-peer system would have problems coping.

Re:wikipedia

[Raul654]

There is a developing heirarchy of users (anons, regular users, admins, beauracrats, stewards, developers). Anons can edit pages. Regular users can do that, and also have watchlists and upload files. Admins can do all that, plus protect pages, delete pages, and ban users. Beuracrats (of which I am one) can do that, plus promote other admins (there are about a dozen of these on the english wikipedia). Stewards have beuracratic access to all wikipedias (there are about 10 of these). Developers have ssh access to the servers (and they have a heirachy of permissions there).

Re:Local copy of Wikipedia

[iantri]

Here it is:

http://download.wikimedia.org/ [wikimedia.org]

Also, formatted nicely:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TomeRaider_ database [wikipedia.org]

Re:How to stop the Cabal

[FooAtWFU]

Hello, and welcome Wiki-trolls. We're glad to have you with us. Is this 142.*.*.* speaking? Perhaps you can tell us which you are, so that we can post the detailed explanation of why you are banned? We'll be open if you are.

Besides, everyone knows that there is no Cabal [wikipedia.org].

For those not in the know, and are interested enough to type shortcuts of the form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shortcutgoeshere- WP:VFD is Votes for Deletion, where pages are sent to be voted on for deletion, WP:RFA is Requests for Adminship (now featuring at least one completely ludicous candidate), and you can look up the WP:RULES which this user finds so oppressive.

Re:How extensible is the model?

[Raul654]

Honestly, the database is already huge (90.1 milion words is *a lot* - for comparison, the Bible has about 823,000. Image how high a stack of 100 bibles would be). Misinformation does creep in once in a while, but we catch most/all of it eventually -watchlists (which let people track article changes) are a tremendous help in doing this.

Re:google ads..

[David Gerard]

The last time someone even suggested putting ads on Wikipedia, the Spanish-language version promptly forked. So I think the suggestion has already been categorised "worst. ideas. ever."

Re:How to balance coverage?

[Raul654]

Yes - see Requested articles [wikipedia.org], where anyone can request that an article to be written.

Re:How extensible is the model?

[David Gerard]

The usual answer is: the articles people care about get a lot of scrutiny; the ones that get no scrutiny, no-one cares about. So the article no-one cares about may have inaccuracies, but since no-one cares it's not much of a problem.

Re:Licensing and the Wiki

[pete-classic]

Does that mean I could take some articles [. . .], put it into print [. . .], and profit off of it[. . .]?

In a word: yes.

And if so, what's stopping anybody from doing it in the first place [. . .]?

Short answer: nothing. Longer answer: startup costs, lack of a market, etc. Bottom line is that it would be perfectly legal.

The FDL [gnu.org] is a Copyleft license. You are encouraged to copy FDLed works and, if you'd like, sell them for any price you can get [gnu.org]*.

-Peter

*This like is specifically about Free Software, but both the GPL and the FDL are by the FSF. They are two implementations of the same philosophy.

Re:Licensing and the Wiki

[swillden]

Hrm, I work at a printshop. Does that mean I could take some articles (based on a particular subject), put it into print (with all proper acknowledgement of course)

Yes and yes

and profit off of it (charging only the printer fees)?

No need to limit your profits to printing fees. You can charge whatever people will pay. Note that if you distribute more than 100 copies the license requires you to distribute a machine-readable copy with each printed copy, or provide a pointer to the on-line sources.

And if so, what's stopping anybody from doing it in the first place (aside from the constantly changing data)?

Not a thing! And that's the idea. From the GFDL preamble:

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.

Seems kinda shady to me...

Why? The authors of the Wikipedia content have explicitly given you and everyone else permission to do these things, as long as you follow the terms of the license. What's shady about doing what the owner has given you permission to do?

Re:One area Wikipedia seems to lack

[dpbsmith]

I agree with this criticism of Wikipedia. However, I disagree with the statement that "other encyclopedias cite sources for their work." Some articles in some encyclopedias have a bibliography, but even when present it is not comparable to, say, the standards of citation for a journal article. I probably need to look at the Britannica 3 again, but my experience is that MOST statements in MOST encyclopedias are delivered ex cathedra, as it were.

I just took a quick look at an Encarta article [msn.com] and I see a contributor's name, but no sources for any of the information in it.

Encyclopedias are not themselves considered acceptable as references in a scientific work.

I don't believe the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica had any citations other than the contributor's initials at the end of the article. Of course when you have contributors like Lord Rayleigh and Sir Ernest Rutherford, perhaps their initials are sufficient.

Re:China and Wiki

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/20 04-June/015818.html [wikimedia.org]