Interview: Jimmy Wales Answers Your Questions 146
A while ago you had a chance to ask Jimmy Wales about the amazing growth of Wikipedia, and his role advising the UK government in making academic research available online. Below you'll find his answers to your questions.
Collaboration with National Libraries by robcfg
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.
Wales: Our community, particularly through local chapters, is engaging increasingly in partnerships and collaborations with galleries, libraries, and museums, but there hasn't been very much work done to date on scanning per se. In general, we aren't necessarily the right partner for that sort of thing - we are a community of writers, editors, photographers, etc., rather than a hosting service for scanned materials. Having said that, fortunately there are some great projects who are working on this sort of thing. Take a look at http://archive.org/scanning as a leading exemplar.
Editing of Information
by sylivin
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?
Wales: Human beings will never stop quarreling. It's part of the glorious nature of our species. Government will never cease being stupid and overstepping their boundaries. That, too, is part of the human condition.
The real question is: can open systems adapt and respond in mostly effective ways to deal with the worst of it? And the answer to that is clearly YES.
SPOF
by Anonymous Coward
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 redundant and de-centralized? Are there any ongoing efforts to change Wikipedia's model in this direction?
Wales: The Wikimedia Foundation is not a single point of failure. There are many people and organizations who do backups which are already redundant and de-centralized, and this is in addition to our own internal backup strategy. If the Wikimedia Foundation were to vanish tomorrow, anyone could take the archives (freely licensed!) and start again tomorrow.
This is one of the key reasons why I've been so firm over the years that Wikipedia must be freely licensed.
Certified articles?
by rjlouro
There's the notion that the information on wikipedia can be edited 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?
Wales: This is what I would consider to be a fallacious line of thinking. There's a notion that the way to get the very highest quality information is to have an expert certify it. But there's actually little evidence that this is true. There is far more evidence that the best way to get to high quality information is to have a thoughtful, open, public dialog and discussion and debate. To ask anyone with a concern to come forward and voice it reasonably. And to respond quickly and openly to errors.
So, no, I doubt if we'd consider stepping back to an antiquated way of thinking.
Game of Articles
by AmiMoJo
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?
Wales: Every aspect of this question is false. No major articles are "owned" by anyone. The rules of Wikipedia are designed to prevent this.
There is a bit of a war of attrition in some cases - but it is overwhelmingly the case that the good guys win.
All evidence is that the quality of Wikipedia has steadily increased over time. It is not perfect. It needs more work. There are problems, even problems with people trying to sit on articles. But the ongoing improvement of Wikipedia will continue.
As a side note, usually people who have this complaint fade into the background when asked to justify it, or show me an example - and in the vast majority of cases it turns out that the complaint is really "Why am *I* not allowed to own this article?"
Interactive tours and applications
by MassiveForces
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).
Wales: I really hope we'll see more of this in the future. One problem that we've had is that for a significant period of time, Adobe Flash, which was a Frankenstein's monster of horrifically stupid and broken and proprietary technology, sucked the wind out of efforts to do interesting open multimedia. The ongoing and glorious demise of Flash is going to help a whole new generation of developers do more interesting things, in a freely licensed way. At least: I hope so.
Editors Dwindling
by Kagato
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?
Wales: Things have mostly stabilized. It's still not a crisis, but I still consider it to be important. One of the most exciting developments is the visual editor, which I hope will bring in a whole new class of editors who were turned off by the complexities of wikitext. As I put it: there are lots of geeks who aren't computer geeks.
Wikicurriculums & Wikitextbooks
by PortHaven
When can we see this be developed? I know there is a start with Wikitextbooks. But they seem sporadic. I think we could create an entire curriculum and support library (textbooks) to accompany said curriculum. And have it freely available for all...
Wales: I agree, but it's a really big job. :-) I think it will come in due course, but leadership is needed. I hope something awesome emerges, possibly from the fast-growing MOOC movement.
Use university essays to replace stubs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Such an excellent initiative (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Such an excellent initiative (Score:4, Interesting)
And over the years, my respect for wikipedia has dwindled to a tiny speck. It's a corrupt place, and nothing on it can be trusted.
Game of Articles (Score:5, Interesting)
Okay Jimmy, here is some evidence for you. Look at the Nuclear Power [wikipedia.org] article.
It's been heavily spammed by two editors who own the article. Whenever anyone else tries to improve it their edits get reverted. Boundarylayer is particularly bad, inserting loads of industry shill references. I tried to improve it but eventually gave up, and now it has degenerated into a poor quality article with lots of very obvious bias and weasel words.
If you look at Boundarylayer's edits he has a history of doing this sort of thing, along with several others he associates with (or may even be). The situation is the same every time: attack an article and keep going until they either win and take control of it or get driven away by bans and other sanctions.
To pick another total unrelated example look at the naming fiasco for Japanese manga/anime related articles from a few years ago. A group of editors decided to troll by renaming them all to the western version names. We ended up with, for example, the article on Detective Conan, one of the longest running and most well known series ever, being renamed to "Case Closed" because some shitty American company re-wrote a few episodes and dubbed them into English. I really do mean a few, compared to the 500+ that have been produced. A lot of editors objected but in the end the trolls won and drove all the good guys who added all the well referenced and well written information in the first place away. Unsurprisingly the articles then stagnated and degraded.
Being in denial doesn't help. Wikipedia is supposed to be a community, but actually it's just factions playing some kind of MMORPG by conquering as much of it as possible.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait a minute, wouldn't it eventually piss you off too if you tried to correct obvious and trivial spelling or punctuation mistakes, doing your little contribution, only to be indirectly told "go fuck yourself"?!
Re:Game of Articles (Score:5, Interesting)
Not trying to detract from your concerns, but could you mention more specific revisions that you think show the problem. I'm genuinely curious, but am having a hard time digging through all the revisions to find the problems you are talking about. It is certainly clear that Boundarylayer edits the page a lot, but I didn't see anything that seemed out of place, at least in the recent edits. (Granted, my own knowledge of the topic is limited.)
Re:Articles aren't "owned." (Score:2, Interesting)
You are truly deluded if you believe that. Wikipedia admins have turned the whole thing into one giant e-penis / pissing contest. People with zero knowledge in a field can sit at as reverse editors on pages where professors enhance and fix subject, only for a the same pillock come back and delete everything done since they took unofficial ownership of the pages. Admins themselves are in a clique that circle the wagons as soon as anti-edits and overzealous deletionists are flagged.
Re:Peer review is worthless? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's the opposite of what he said. Wikipedia strives on peer review. But not necessarily expert peer review. The idea he was replying about was to get certification from a single expert. What you want is for experts to have special accounts with special authority. It might work, but it would be expensive to implement (credentials would need to be verified, and you would need a system to scope the articles to different fields). It would also not likely solve any issues. Most of the articles that cause problem are at the heart of a debate (be it political or scientific), where the arguer on either side could be considered an expert. Furthermore, having a degree in higher education does not eliminate bias.