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Interview with Jimbo Wales 104

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the good-stuff-about-wiki-you-rarely-hear dept.
xandroid writes to tell us that Wikinews has an interesting interview with Jimbo Wales of the Wikimedia Foundation. From the interview: "The [Wikinews] project is a bit over a year old, with the English and Deutsch editions opening their sites officially the first week of December, 2004. Since then the project has produced more than 13 000 articles in 16 languages, with recently created editions in Hebrew, Russian, and Japanese. The project has not been without its detractors, and the questions asked of Mr. Wales reflected some of the most common criticisms."
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Interview with Jimbo Wales More

Interview with Jimbo Wales

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  • edit this page... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:09PM (#14234230)
    Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that Wikinews has a depressing interview with Jimbo Wales of the Wikimedia Foundation. Mr. Wales had just returned from prison. From the interview: "The [Wikinews] project is a bit over a month old, with the English and Deutsch editions opening their sites officially the first week of December, 2005. Since then the project has produced more than 13 articles in 2 languages, with recently created editions in Pig Latin, and Klingon. The project has been a miserable failure, and the questions asked of Mr. Wales reflected some of the most common criticisms. At one point in the interview, Mr. Wales began quoting paragraphs from 1960's bicycle repair manuals and offered his interviewers a selection of delicious sausage. A quick dose of medication returned him to his usually coherent self."

  • whoa, slow down, cowboy (Score:3, Funny)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:10PM (#14234240)
    I first read that as 'Interview with Jumbo Whales'

    • What, no mention of abuses of anonymity? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by shanen ( 462549 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @03:13PM (#14234534) Homepage Journal
      One of the big problems with discussions on /. is the incomprehensible race to be the first to post something. That's another form of abuse of anonymity (thoush sometimes the secondary form of anonymity), and the usual result is a bunch of tripe topics to start the discussions.

      With regards to Wilipedia, abuses of anonymity are the most serious problem affecting the system, and yet they are not mentioned anywhere in this discussion. At least not in the introduction or in any of the visible posts. (The visibility question would relate to the flaws in /. moderation--and I think that most of those flaws are also related to abuses of anonimity, too, so they're still an aspect of the same problem.)

      There are two major arguments made in favor of anonymity, and they both reek like the big dog's m0e, so to speak. The convenience argument is the easiest to deal with. If someone is too lazy or incoompetent to register with a simple and free system, then that person is not worth listening to in the first place.

      The other argument for anonymity is that sometimes very important information is possessed by people who could risk retribution for revealing it. This is certainly true, but in that case Wikipedia is not the correct place to be publishing it, since anyone else could change or obfuscate that important information. Actually, if I had something to hide, I'd frequently be searching the Internet to try to find out what leaks or rumors were circulating--and in the case of Wikipedia it would be quite easy to block the information or confuse, or even exaggerate it to make it sound ridiculous (elevating it to a Class 3 lie).

      In conclusion, I think anonymity is not the way to defend our personal rights. It is mostly used by people who are simply trying to escape accountability for negative actions.

      • Re:What, no mention of abuses of anonymity? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @03:45PM (#14234675) Homepage
        I agree with you that anonymity is having bad effects on Wikipedia. However, I think you're a little off-base with your criticisms.

        The convenience argument is the easiest to deal with. If someone is too lazy or incoompetent to register with a simple and free system, then that person is not worth listening to in the first place.
        Many people just flat-out refuse to register on web sites. They've had too many bad experiences with spam, etc., and they (rightly, IMO) resist the idea of changing the internet from a free press into a shopping mall. This was a big consideration when WP was first starting out, and needed to build a viable pool of users. Now, it shouldn't be such a big issue.

        The other argument for anonymity is that sometimes very important information is possessed by people who could risk retribution for revealing it.
        The logical merits of this argument depend a lot on what you're proposing as an alternative to anonymity on WP. If you just want people to have to be logged in if they want to edit, then it has nothing to do with fear of political repression, workplace reprisals, etc., because edits by logged-in users are actually harder to tie to a real-world identity than edits by anons (whose IP addresses are recorded). On the other hand, if you're proposing requiring people to tie their WP identities to real-world identities, then that's just not practical -- WP would have to start acting like porn sites that demand a credit card number before they'll let you in.

      • One of the big problems with discussions on /. is the incomprehensible race to be the first to post something.

        What's incomprehensible about it? People who post early get the most attention, it's even on the FAQ.

  • Speech control? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:13PM (#14234255) Homepage Journal
    Interesting article but it didn't answer something I've been pondering for a few months: the chance of Wikiregulations or censorship.

    History tends to be written by the winners or at least the survivors. We've seen great measures taken to control speech, especially political speech. Wiki changes that. I've seen articles with definite left-bias, similar to what I'd expect from any geek forum.

    With Wikis gaining ground (google searches seem attracted to them), will there be a push to put pressure on the wiki maintainers? Corporate and hegemony controlled major media don't seem different from one another. Wiki isn't a news source, but many articles could be taken as political speech, falling under who-knows-what regulations.

    • Re:Speech control? (Score:5, Funny)

      by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @03:21PM (#14234569)
      Wiki changes that. I've seen articles with definite left-bias, similar to what I'd expect from any geek forum. With Wikis gaining ground (google searches seem attracted to them), will there be a push to put pressure on the wiki maintainers?

      Nah. If the whole wiki-thing really takes off, the money will start to come into it big time, and they'll shift to the right on their own. The early users will wail "Sell Out!," the founders will all cash in, write books, and get knighted.

      Meanwhile, some punk in the East Village, his MP3-player cranked to '11' jamming old Velvet Underground is already putting the finishing touches on The Next Big Thing, lighting up his last clove ciggy, pledging to himself that he will Always Be True and that his work will never be used for Evil.

      Man, I love this stuff...
    • With Wikis gaining ground (google searches seem attracted to them), will there be a push to put pressure on the wiki maintainers?
      Why is this any different from any other form of free speech?

      Wiki isn't a news source, but many articles could be taken as political speech, falling under who-knows-what regulations.
      In the U.S. political speech is the type of speech that has the strongest first-amendment protection. What's sometimes regulated is the spending of money on political campaigns.

    • Re:Speech control? (Score:4, Funny)

      by vague disclaimer ( 861154 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @04:27PM (#14234843)
      History tends to be written by the winners or at least the survivors.

      It would be a bit tricky for history to be written by those who did not survive.

    • It's already censored. Just try to point out the lack of controls on its admin corps.

    • "I've seen articles with definite left-bias, similar to what I'd expect from any geek forum."

      Given one guess I'd say your a right-biased American. In which case, don't you realize that pretty much any website which has contributors from any other country in the world is going to appear 'left-bias' to you.

      Personally, I'm sick of articles in Wikipedia (mainly articles pretaining to famous individuals) containing outrageous criticisms levied from extreme right-wing commentators on Fox News.

      Suggesting

  • What's the difference? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gasmonso ( 929871 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:15PM (#14234263) Homepage

    I find the interface pretty clean and easy to navigate, but how is this different than Google News or even Yahoo News for that matter? It has nice links to Wikipedia and Wikionary, but other that it seems rather "already been done".

    gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]
    • Well, it is a wiki, edited by its users. It's not an automated service that aggregates news from AP et al., but rather a user maintained, open-sourcey news site, where the users write and publish articles (even if they use other articles as sources).
    • Is this a troll? It's the same as the difference between wikipedia and encarta--wikinews is written by the community, instead of by a reporter for the AP or Reuters or some other organization. Google News and Yahoo news are just search engines, this is a site where people actually write the news themselves.

      • It's not a troll, but they have to get the news from somewhere. Unless they have their own reporters, they are just getting the news from the same sources as Google and Yahoo news, but packaging it differently....right?

        gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]
      • Rather, Wikinews is news from the general news media that you would traditionally get somewhere else (FOX, AP, Reuters, MSNBC, CNN, NY Times, WSJ) but written with different words and then submitted to wiki.

        This isn't a site where people actual go out and find out what the news is. They don't have reporters. They don't generate news. They don't produce anything new. They just rehash existing news from existing news sites which themselves are re-hashing news from the AP -- wikinews people just do it in diffe
    • Yes, it has been done, but never by a pornographer!! (To see what I am talking about see the Jimbo Wales Bio [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia.
    • Wikinews is a bit more than just an agregator of news, people do bring other knowledge to the article than just what is listed in the Associated Press or CNN stories. Look at some of the coverage for issues in the Australian parliament, wikinews contributors are doing the research that any news organisation would have to do and sometimes beating the mainstream press to it with stories.

      Where wikinews may fall down is the application of the infamous NPOV to news articles. There's a very short timeframe t

  • The Associated Press has changed their copyright notice with articles to include "you may not rewrite this article." Is Wikinews creating an impact on how other news sources release their information?

    Huh? What's ``you may not rewrite this article'' mean? AP syndicators (ie, every single newspaper) aren't allowed to add/embellish the content? You're not allowed to copy/paste portions of the article into your blog? The first is a contract issue, the second is protected under fair use.

    WTF?

    • Fair use?

      What decade do you think this is?
    • There's a difference between copying a small sample of an article into your blog for purposes of making snarky commentary about it (Fair Use) and rewriting the article entirely, adding nothing of value and releasing it under the GFDL-CP-LM-EE-CC license.

      If Wikinews wants to be regarded as a news source, perhaps it should do as the AP did and get some reporters -- or it should do as many newspapers have done and buy a license to reprint AP content.
      • There's a difference between copying a small sample of an article into your blog for purposes of making snarky commentary about it (Fair Use) and rewriting the article entirely

        Yes, there's a difference. But as rewriting the story entirely falls completely outside of the area of copyright law, I don't see what your point is. They can't copyright the substance of a story. Particularly not a true story. Anyone can rewrite it in their own words.
    • Huh? What's ``you may not rewrite this article'' mean?

      Absolutely nothing. If you're quoting the article within the bounds of fair use, then any copyright conditions don't apply. If you rewrite the article to the extent that it doesn't constitute a derivative work under copyright law, and the conditions don't apply.

      And if you're not within the bounds of fair use, or creating a derivative work, then you need permission from them anyway, or you're committing copyright infringement.

      It's just a nonsense statemen
    • It doesn't actually mean anything. "You may not rewrite this article" seems to be a weasel-worded way of trying to say "you may not report this news using your own words after seeing it here", but it's just that: weasel-words.

      You are not allowed to copy the article verbatim, of course; that's covered by copyright law, although quoting parts of it would most likely be fair use. And of course, you're not allowed to copy the article and make small changes to it, either (creating a derivative work), but that's
  • As long as they have the Klingon language edition, I will be a happy tha'rav'.

  • Wikinews? What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ScottyH ( 791307 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @02:37PM (#14234373)
    I'm not trying to flame, I'm really wondering.

    Are these people just repackaging news from the mainstream news sources? Doesn't duplication introduce the potential for there to be omissions of important information? What is the benefit of a service like this one?
    • Well, what's the point of Wikipedia? It's just a bunch of people repackaging what they learnt from other pages they found through Google... right?

      Clearly, there's a flaw in that argument, and it's the same flaw that as the one in your reasoning. Think about it. :)
      • I didn't realize I was making an argument. From what I can see, the only advantage is multiple contributors filling out a piece of news, but if all the news is coming from the same place (AP or Reuters) the wiki model doesn't add anything.

    • Re:Wikinews? What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dubl-u ( 51156 ) * <2523987012NO@SPAMpota.to> on Sunday December 11, 2005 @03:23PM (#14234578)
      Are these people just repackaging news from the mainstream news sources?

      I ask the same thing about my local paper every time I pick it up.
    • Are these people just repackaging news from the mainstream news sources?
      These people have an entire encyclopedia for reference material, and many who follow news in a particular area will have background knowledge that a mainsteam journalist would be expected to add to a newswire report.
    • Providing a neutral and complete synthesis of news from multiple sources is something that can only be done by humans. If you use Google News, you can create this synthesis yourself, but you have to read multiple sources -- if successful, Wikinews really does give you a good overview of all available information at the time. Take an article like this one [wikinews.org] about the alleged Bush/Blair al-Jazeera memo. It incorporates information from 10 cited sources. Omissions certainly can and do happen, but I think there's

  • one-hit wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @03:01PM (#14234478) Homepage
    As far as I can tell, the Wikimedia Empire is a one-hit wonder. Wikipedia is a huge success, judged on its own terms (i.e., you shouldn't expect it to be as well written or authoritative as a print encyclopedia, but it's bigger and more current).

    Wikimedia Commons is nice, and I use it now and then to find illustrations to add to some free textbooks I've written, but actually most of the good content on Wikimedia Commons just seems to be duplicates of images from WP articles (albeit organized in a different, and sometimes more convenient, way).

    Wikinews doesn't seem to have reached the kind of critical mass it would need in order to serve as an alternative to a newspaper, and I don't think it ever will -- there just don't seem to be a lot of people who are willing to do the work of being newspaper reporters, and do it for free.

    And finally Wikibooks, which is mentioned briefly in the article, is pretty pathetic. You can spend an hour clicking around on Wikibooks without ever finding a successful, well written, complete book. Of the hundreds of free books [theassayer.org] out there in the world, I know of exactly one that is a real, complete, successful book written using the wiki method: Wikipedia.

    An encyclopedia is uniquely well suited to the wiki method. It's inherently parallelizable, and it makes sense for A. Random User to do five minutes worth of work on it and have that work constitute an improvement that's instantly visible to the world. That's just not true of other types of writing.

    • Re:one-hit wonder (Score:2, Interesting)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 )

      but actually most of the good content on Wikimedia Commons just seems to be duplicates of images from WP articles (albeit organized in a different, and sometimes more convenient, way).

      So it would seem, but that's just because if you stick a picture in Commons, you can automatically use it in all Wikipedias. Suppose if I translate an article for fi.wikipedia from en.wikipedia, I get the images for the new article without copying the images over.

      And finally Wikibooks, which is mentioned briefly in the

      • I agree, I think it's just because Wikibooks is seriously understaffed and all of the bright people who work on Wikipedia articles never bother to touch Wikibooks side - people need to take responsibility and stay working on the books. I'm working on a walkthrough and guide for Final Fantasy VII (just testing how well wiki principle works for writing game guides), and had great dreams like "Okay, I'll make a table of contents, people will fill in the chapters", but guess who has written like 90% of the guid

        • Was the other 10% enough to make it worthwhile to use the wiki method, or with hindsight would you have been better off just sitting down at your own computer and writing it using a word processor?

          Well, I think so - even when it didn't take that much workload off me, the bits done by others have been interesting enough. Plus, the guide aims for completeness and I'm not really covering every corner of the game as I go, but other people were generous enough to cover some already.

          Plus, the alternative wo

        • The #1 problem I see with your assessment of Wikibooks, Mr. Crowell, is that it is very premature to realistically judge the final output of what you find there. Some progress is being made, and some discussions are being done to make a "best of..." section that really shows off the substantive books (not just computer gaming guides) that might be valuable to those involved.

          It is much harder to write a book than a simple encyclopedia article, and like almost all book publishing about 90% of everything writ
          • The #1 problem I see with your assessment of Wikibooks, Mr. Crowell, is that it is very premature to realistically judge the final output of what you find there. Some progress is being made, and some discussions are being done to make a "best of..." section that really shows off the substantive books (not just computer gaming guides) that might be valuable to those involved.
            Can you point me to any examples of wikibooks that are good, complete books at this point? I'd love to have my negative impressions o
          • Hmm...OK, after posting the earlier reply to your post to ask for examples of successful wikibooks, I decided to sit down and see if I could find any success stories myself. I started from the main page, and looked for books that were marked with the "Comprehensive text" icon. There were 15 of those. Of those, 1 had a copyright violation notice on it, 9 weren't really book length (ranging from about 6 to 50 screenfuls of text), and 5 appeared to be books that had been written outside wikibooks, then dumped
        • Although it's not relevant to the point you're making about Wikibooks, I do know a few people who installed Mediawiki on their personal website just because it was easier (less friction) than coding all their own HTML - just using it to put together a simple site to present their personal geek projects, update manuals and FAQs, etc.
    • most of the good content on Wikimedia Commons just seems to be duplicates of images from WP articles (albeit organized in a different, and sometimes more convenient, way).

      It's the other way around. When an image is uploaded the Commons, you can instantly use it in all Wikimedia projects by specifying its filename. Anyone who is motivated to do so can watch the stream of newly uploaded images [wikimedia.org] and add them to the right Wikipedia articles, Wikibooks pages, Wikinews stories, etc. This happens, which explains

  • Interview not editable !? (Score:3, Funny)

    by adnonsense ( 826530 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @03:10PM (#14234519) Homepage Journal
    Some joker has gone and protected the interview page (even for registered users). What's the point of it being on a wiki if I can't be bold [wikipedia.org] and edit Jimbo Wales' answers to reflect a more neutral point of view?
  • Hey, I'm 16, and I still contribute to it.

    I'm 17, and i contribute somewhat regularly as well. I find Wikipedia an incredibly extensive ocean of just... stuff. There's been many a time when i get sidetracked from homework and other projects that i'm working on with Wikipedia; i click an interesting-looking link and it takes me at least a half-hour to get back on task because i always find another link to click on the article i just went to. It's really annoying. :P
  • Wikinews might have some short term utility, but it doesn't seem to me like it's destined to be a replacement for The News-- or at least, I think it's missing something.

    What you need in order to write The News is a flow of information coming from people who are able to witness a situation. In the past the mainstream news media has accomplished this by actually sending their people with vans and helicopters so they can stand next to dramatic events and utter such immortal words as, "Can you give us an ide [newshounds.us]

  • Here's a vivid and current exmaple of what's wrong with Wikipedia.

    I came across the Arabic Numerals article on Wikipedia a little while ago and it shocked me how many errors there were in the article, all suggesting a strong Hindu Nationalist and Hindu revisionist bias. I have no personal anti-Indian bias as I listen to Indian music often (I'd particularly recommend Musafir, Gypsies of Rajasthan) and eat Indian food, never mind many Indian friends. I took the good part of the last week correcting the articl

    • MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:5, Informative)

      by FhnuZoag ( 875558 ) on Sunday December 11, 2005 @05:44PM (#14235138)
      Parent is being misleading. You were blocked under the 3RR - which means that reverting an article more than 3 times in 24 hours leads to an automatic 24 hour block. The opinions of the admin don't come into it. The 3RR rule is a policy designed to prevent unproductive revert wars like that which you were involved in. In your case, if you felt that the argument wasn't going anywhere, you should put a request up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Request_for _comment [wikipedia.org] or further a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation [wikipedia.org] instead if escalating the conflict into a full blown where you are yelling at people: "Look here you liar, you're the one out of loop and inserting nonsense, you're worse, you're a liar, and you know you are,"
      • They have called me "charlatan" and other things too, look at the page, and so they did to reputable and widely-respted professors I cited. He's a liar; the dictionary defines a lie as "A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood", and a liar as "One that tells lies"; "a person who has lied or who lies repeatedly". I have demonstrated what errors he was insisting on and backed it up by verifiable, reliable sources. I requested that he does the same. He has not done so despite repeate
      • Besides, you may have noticed that "you're the one" indicates that I was bouncing his claim back at him, which he actually directed not at me but an editor who was being on the side of due diligence. It was justified, we were inserting information that was cited on point-by-point basis, and he wasn't.

        I also see that the admin has now blocked another user, I suspect in response to me pointing out to him that according to wikipedia policies he should've treated all sides equally and that I was going to report

      • Re:MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:3, Informative)

        by johansalk ( 818687 )
        In addition, here are examples of my requests within the wikipedia system for neutral attention (look for Arabic numerals within the pages), and some other I made elsewhere had been edited out by people who are active on the page.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Third_opini on [wikipedia.org]
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiquette_ alerts [wikipedia.org]
      • Here, the person you're objecting to me calling a liar! He's still lying http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gurubrahma # 3RR [wikipedia.org] (Not Gurubrahma, but see my reply to that guy on Gurubrahma's userpage). This reminds me of Sanger's Kuroshin article where he says "I might have continued to participate, were it not for a certain poisonous social or political atmosphere in the project. There are many ways to explain this problem, and I will start with just one. Far too much credence and respect accorded to people
    • I came across the Arabic Numerals article on Wikipedia a little while ago and it shocked me how many errors there were in the article, all suggesting a strong Hindu Nationalist and Hindu revisionist bias.

      Welcome to Wikipedia. Writing a well organized and factual entry takes time, time which very scholars have incentive to spend knowing that their work could get edited/mangled by anyone. It may sound like an ego thing, but it's more part of the discipline that all scholars/researchers follow. A discipline th
    • I wonder if Wikipedia holds articles where people complain of being modded down on Slashdot... That would be interesting, in a delightfully pointless post-modern sort of way.
  • I've been most amused by the bad publicity given from the press following the John Seigenthaler Sr. incident - which shouldn't have become an incident anymore than any other sentance on the encyclopaedia, until a man who didn't udnerstand what it was googled himself.

    Anyway, most recently I read that "Wikipedia had banned the anonymous editing of articles". I was shocked! Would those years of history proving the concept worked be abandoned just cos of one incident. Of course not. The press, who criticise Wik
  • Last week, in the wake of John Seigenthaler's anti-Wikipedia op-ed in USA Today, CNN had a televised discussion with both Seigenthaler and Jimbo Wales. There's a video [cnn.com] and transcript [cnn.com] available (the Wales/Seigenthaler interview starts).

    I don't think the discussion went too well for Wales. The interviewer, Kyra Philips, was pretty peeved about the status of the Wikipedia article on herself, and I think Wales could have done a better job of addressing her concerns.

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