Jimbo Wales

Notes from Jimbo Wales’ speech; The Intelligence of Wikipedia

A global project.

200 languages – 22 languages with more than 10000 articles.

Multilingual

Projects

• Wikipedia
• Wiktionary
• Wikibooks
• Wikisource
• Wikiquote – Famous quotes
• Wikimedia commons – collection of media uploads
• Wikinews

Why does Wikipedia work?

Due to the community of thoughtful users.

Peer judgement. Community model. Reputation comes from actions and human judgements, instead of from ratings.

Users are powerful, have to be respected.

Small core (0.7% – 524 people) does more than 50% than the edits.

How does the community ensure quality?

Software provides easy way to view changes.

Let the community decide how it wants to interact. ie deletion votes, which arent really votes, but merely a wiki page where people put down “delete”/“keep”. More like a discussion.

The human factor!

Free knowledge

• Remains non-proprietary
• Decreases individual sense of ownership
• Increases a sense of shared ownership – “it is our article”
• Enhances the popularity of Wikipedia – branding, back links, syndication with attribute.
• Attribution requirement extends name recognition.

Neutral Point of View policy

• Diverse political, religious, cultural backgrounds.
• NPOV is a social concept of cooperation, avoids some philosophical issues.

Free Software

• GPL
• LAMP

Allows for ease of extension

Wikipedia governance

• Aim for consensus
• Democracy when consensus can’t be achieved => voting.
• Aristocracy: Some users have more knowledge, experience than others and form an “aristocracy”.
• Monarchy: Benevolent dictator == Jimbo Wales. The decision maker, last resort, a way to move forward.
  • The benevolent dictator role/power is being phased out.
• Values the results above the anarchy.

Don’t solidify social rules early.

How does Wikipedia scale

• Through software features – automating of current manual tasks
• Through policy (mediation, arbitration)
• Through an atmosphere of love and respect