Ask Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales About Online Collaboration 300
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.)
Licensing and the Wiki (Score:5, Interesting)
Academic Co-operation? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know people contribute individually, but I am just curious to see if there has been any major institutional contributions that the project is aware of.
google ads.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Online collaborators? (Score:5, Interesting)
Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs? (Score:5, Interesting)
And do you see the future direction being more or less that way?
Quality Control (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, the concept of a community-built encyclopedia, open to submissions and revisions from users, is wonderful. It's much like open-source, in fact, and Wikipedia certainly exemplifies how to reapply the OS model to other contexts.
However, the contexts of encyclopedias and software are different. Significantly so. I'm interested specifically in quality control- you know when code doesn't work when it doesn't compile or results in unexpected behavior.
In what ways can a Wiki article be bad, and how can one tell? Do you think QC is a large issue for Wikipedia, and do you have any plans to further integrate the community in the QC process (perhaps akin to the slashdot moderation/metamoderation system)?
Best,
Raindance
How to balance coverage? (Score:5, Interesting)
The constant bickering... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sociopaths (Score:5, Interesting)
P2P? (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting people involved (Score:5, Interesting)
How extensible is the model? (Score:5, Interesting)
Advertisers, Spammers, Search Engines, oh my! (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now, we are seeing several instances where crawlers are disrupting wikis, spammers are embedding wiki links to their sites to boost their Google rankings, and advertisers are placing ads in wikis until someone goes through and nukes them.
Do you have any thoughts as to how wikis can be modified to prevent things like this in the future?
wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
Applying wikipedia success to other projects? (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you think your techniques could be used for other
projects as well?
(Specifically, as an open source author, I would love to have my users collaboratively developing the user manual - what do I need to get this going?)
Han-Wen
Re:Donations (Score:4, Interesting)
Limits of Wiki collaboration / vandalism defense (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you think that a volunteer force can defeat this forever manually, or do you expect that wikipedia will be more restricted at one point?
For instance, an Advogato-like trust network could be used to make sure that people are real, and a voting system for entries from unknown contributors.
Overcoming knowledge hoarding (Score:4, Interesting)
Is a collaborative world the future? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ofcourse, these projects go dead against the brick and mortar corporations (Microsoft, Britannica), which, for years have based their business around selling content that is now available for free due to the effort put in by organizers and volunteers of these open-source projects.
Needless to say, these corporations have been openly attacking these volunteer activities as anti-constitutional, anti-capitalistic, etc. Do you think, that collaborative, volunteer-based societies are the thing of the future? Do you think that someday people/organizations doing things for the good_of_society rather than for profit (hate that term) will become a rule rather than an exception?
Re:P2P? (Score:2, Interesting)
Webservices ? Data Formats ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever thought of offering alternative data access services other than HTML ?
examples of other successful community driven sites such as IMDB [imdb.com] can be queried via email (in a structured way) and a huge number of applications are now built upon these capabilities alone, ever thought of offering up the data in alternative formats (XML/SOAP/TELNET/TXT etc etc) so clever programmers can create applications that could utilise the data in new and interesting ways ?
China and Wiki (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you feel about China's blocking of Wiki, and what effect, if any, do you think it'll have on the service that Wikipedia can and cannot provide to both the Chinese and the world community?
Corporate intervention (Score:3, Interesting)
How to stop the Cabal (Score:2, Interesting)
Currently, the direction and "policies" of wikipedia are set by a very small, very active, and very vocal cabal. This group of users rejects any change to the fundamental power structure of wikipedia unless it suits their needs, and detracts from the project either by driving away users who disagree with the power structure, or outright banning of those users.
There seems to be no effective way to get the cabal members under control, and looking at the history of wikipedia over the past two years shows that this group has steadily grown in influence, control, and outright power through their monopolization of VfD (to squelch dissent) and the Sysop-creation process (to insure only like-minded users are granted any privilege). Additionally, every new ability granted to Sysops, despite being wrapped with "rules" and "policies", has found itself wide-open to abuse with no effective punishment being directed at the abusers.
Jimbo, what can be done to re-level the playing field and rein in the cabal?
Re:The constant bickering... (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you ensure the accuracy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:google ads.. (Score:5, Interesting)
To be able to set a simple cookie that says "Yes, show me ads so I can support this site" would help on many levels. It would allow people to contribute money without actually contributing money, it would provide a source of income for the site, and you wouldn't have anyone complaining about the ads because they specifically had to select to see them.
I don't think I've ever seen a site do anything like this, but I think Wiki might be a great place to try it. I know many of us have Wikipedia's Random Page [wikipedia.org] as our start page and I would happily have a couple of banners pop up everytime I launch my browser as just another way to help.
What I would like to see comments on would be... (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this something that is possible with the type of frame work? Would it be possible within the artistic communities?
Re:Quality Control (Score:5, Interesting)
Local copy of Wikipedia (Score:3, Interesting)
My Question (Score:4, Interesting)
What can we do to help in the current efforts?
Do you have frequent legal issues brought against you by others with regards to your material, or has this been the exception rather than the rule?
How are these issues dealt with, are there any cases that are particulary indicative of the problems with today's copyright laws?
Thanks for your time, keep up the good work.
Hiawatha Bray's article in today's Globe... (Score:5, Interesting)
One great source--if you can trust it [boston.com], contains the familiar criticism that "it lacks one vital feature of the traditional encyclopedia: accountability."
How do you respond to this comment?
Does you feel that the Wikipedia community has group standards that are comparable to, say, the group standards of people who have graduated from journalism schools?
Copyright problem (Score:2, Interesting)
How do you protect the integrity and uniqueness of Wikipedia?
I hope you are careful about this situation, because slashdot community will not save wikipedia if such a problem occurs in the future.
How ideal is Wikipedia's license? (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand that there were not any good alternatives to the GNU FDL when Wikipedia was started. But would you rather pick a Creative Commons license for the project today?
Re:Nonsense articles? (Score:1, Interesting)
The beer aspect (Score:5, Interesting)
But one night when I was driving home with my father, I explained to him the concept behind wikipedia. He thought it was fascinating, and yet it dumbfounded him. How can such a thing afford to exist? What about the massive server costs?
I did the usual explaining of donations and such. However, he raised a valid point: It would be difficult for us to have many successful projects donation-wise.
How do you think free as in freedom content can continue to exist in the future, and where do you see it going... financially?
Have any libraries found you? (Score:3, Interesting)
One area Wikipedia seems to lack (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikicracy (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course there would have to be the normal off-wiki voting by the usual legal bodies, also probably some law experts would do a finish before that, but a "pre-final" version of the law could be developed the Wiki way.
Reliability and Sabotage (Score:3, Interesting)
Related, what is the incidence of what appears to be intentional sabotage by introducing incorrect information? Can you distinguish?
Maybe... (Score:3, Interesting)
I did this in reverse already (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.azwardriving.com [azwardriving.com]
Re:Overcoming knowledge hoarding (Score:3, Interesting)
* Altruism. I like to make knowledge available to everyone.
* Sharing knowledge is pleausurable. I think that humans might be hard-wired to be this way - it's a big evolutionary advantage to your community.
* Following on from that, sharers of knowledge are celebrated in the community.
* Wikipedia's interface is very elegant. Connecting something into the web of knowledge is fun in itself, in the same way that writing a nice piece of code or completing a piece of art is. The new category system is quite cool.
* A chance to influence the world's culture. Wikipedia is probably going to be the world's leading enyclopedia soon (if it is not already), so you have a chance to define reality in your own way. Of course, you try to do this within WP's guidelines, and subject to others' opinions, but you have considerable flexibility. You can build it up as you see fit.
Collective Authoring Process of the Future (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm wondering: Is that process going to remain the same?
What process do you see people using in the year 2015 to collaboratively build articles in the future?
What about organizing groups of related pages- what kind of process do you think will develop there?
wikipedia + e2 (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:google ads.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Licensing and the Wiki (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh well
Tels [bloodgate.com]
Re:Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs? (Score:3, Interesting)
False and swayed information? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was able to alter a current entry with no questions asked. The change was an attempt to add information according to my point of view.
It seems to me that someone could do this with an agenda and repeat daily. Is there anything to stop someone from leaning entries in favor of political or (anti)corporate positions.
Once an entry is considered historically correct, can the entry be locked? Would we want to?
I realize there is a way to point out disputes once found. I'm concerned with bent truth, finalizing a dispute and keeping it from recurring.
KenWood
Money issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Licensing and the Wiki (Score:3, Interesting)
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), and profit off of it (charging only the printer fees)? And if so, what's stopping anybody from doing it in the first place (aside from the constantly changing data)?
Seems kinda shady to me...
Re:Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs? (Score:3, Interesting)
* [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Making_fun_of_Bri
</wikify>
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How to stop the Cabal (Score:2, Interesting)
I get the impression that more or less the only people who are unhappy with the current system are POV-pushing cranks like holocaust deniers who feel consipired against by the rest of wikipedia because their nonsense changes keep getting reverted.
Re:Limits of Wiki collaboration / vandalism defens (Score:4, Interesting)
After all, slashdot and kuroshin show that voting works to weed out incorrect content!
As 'Replies to Common Objections [wikipedia.org]' explains, it's impossible to damage the information stored (short of an unpatched OS/MySQL/CVS vulnerability), easy to clean up the damage done, easy to monitor changes collaboratively (anyone can see the list of recent changes), etc. Defacements tend to be reverted in minutes. There's also a frank admission of wiki*'s flaws. Future possible countermeasures are discussed here, including authentication, peer-review, etc.
The same wikipedia response to common objections talks about bots, automated attacks, marginal quality, etc.
It's even possible to prevent defacing of a link you plan to 'publish': in July 7, 2004's wikipedia story, someone mentioned wikipedia and needing to link to a specific version of a wikipedia entry to prevent slashdot-referenced articles from being doctored. Turned out that this, too, was trivial to implement. In other words, I could create a set of URL's to unalterable articles simply by using the
'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=
Pretty cool, huh?
Can it be made distributed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you see any way in which readers of a future version of the Wikipedia could choose for themselves on an individual basis who they trust, and be presented with an edited view of the data based on that preference?
This might require third order mediated trust [toothycat.net]
Simple Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Licensing and the Wiki (Score:5, Interesting)
The GFDL seems full of arbitrary-seeming and overcomplicated rules about "Cover texts", "Back-Cover texts", "Invariant sections" and so forth that are difficult to 1) understand the reasoning behind and 2) adhere to properly. Read it yourself here [gnu.org]. It's also requires you to give credit to the "principal authors", whom exactly that would be for a given wikipedia page is impossible to tell with legal certainty. It just doesn't seem appropriate for something like the wikipedia.
Re:Advertising? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Licensing and the Wiki (Score:3, Interesting)