Transcripts For ALJAZAM Talk To Al Jazeera 20151110

Anyone can edit the usergenerated pages, but wikipedias model has been accused of leading to a gender bias. But the truth is you know, your sort of the typical kind of wikipedia editor is a 26yearold tech, male, computer geek single. What makes for a noteworthy wikipedia subject and what isnt relevant enough, is open for debate. Also of concern vandalism. Once my entry said in his spare time, he enjoys playing chess with friends. Its not actually true laughter at all i would like to be that guy who plays chess. He could have cashed in, but wikipedia remains a Nonprofit Organization over which he yields significant influence. Just how much, hes not sure. And im trying not to find out laugh much like the queen of the u. K. Who knows how power she has . But, as long as she doesnt try to find out, no one will ever know. I spoke to jimmy wales when he was in new york. If you were able to talk to your younger self, a guy who was involved in finance. You were out there, trading futures in chicago, and you told them that you were going to create a notforprofit internet encyclopedia, what would he have thought . I would have thought, cool, thats sounds great. You know . I was always an internet geek from very early on. I think i first got on the internet itself in 1989 thats preweb days. And yeah, so i was very excited about doing stuff online. So, yeah. But it was a natural move then. Being somebody who was so interested in the internet, and especially with the internet exploding in the 90s, to go over and try to do something for profit. You did a malecontent website; then you decided to create an online pro forprofit encyclopedia. How did you get to that . Well, i mean, it was a great time of innovation and experimentation. I always love to give i give a talk to young entrepreneurs where, the title is, failure jimmy wales is really good at it. And talk about all the different kinds of things i did. I one of the things i did was the concept was ordering food online for for lunch in Downtown Chicago which was a great idea; but, boy, it was way too early. So i tried a lot of different things. And so the idea of an encyclopedia a free encyclopedia for everyone really captivated me. Did you ever expect that it would have the kind of explosive growth it had . I always say im a pathological optimist. So i did think it could be big. I mean, i thought, you know, this is a this is something i wish existed in the world. And i would use it a lot. And so, it seems like it could be big. But now, today, wikipedia is the number five website in the world. So in that sense, exceeded my expectations, for sure. Was there a moment where the optimist said, oh, this isnt just going to be good; this is going to be an international phenomenon. Obviously, we didnt n i mean, getting, you know, 20 articles written in two weeks wasnt really a fundamental change in the world, but it was like, hmm, this might work. Later on, you know, there were various moments when we were seeing the traffic was doubling every threetofour months. So, you know, your first few doublings, its not much. But then, you get to the point where like, you know, oh, suddenly, we need two servers. overtalk . And then, we need four. And then, we need eight and 16. And that was a sort of the a real crunch time. At any point in that process, you could have said, were gonna get some ads into this, and you could have made it forprofit. And of course, as you said, this is one laughter of the most visited websites in the world, and the company is worth if it were a forprofit company, it would be worth billions and you would be a billionaire. W why did you resist that . Well, i mean so, part of it is just the unfolding of history. I dont regret it at all. But, at the time that w it was the only way forward, the only obvious way forward, to say, you know, we need to we need to buy more servers. There is no Business Model here, so were just going to try to get donations. And so, we just moved in that direction. Even if there were a Business Model, could it have succeeded do you think, if it had been forprofit . Well, so this is the interesting thing. Because, if we had gotten Venture Capital funding lets say we had we had been a year earlier or something, before the crash happened, and, if we had gotten you know, 10 million in funding, theres a lot that we would have never tried. We were actually forced we were kind of a child of the dot. Com crash in the sense that, throat clear you know, if you see something youve got a community website, and you see, oh, theres some problems here and there, your immediate thought is, oh, we need to hire some moderators. So we would have gone out and hired moderators to do things. And, instead, there was no money for moderators. So we suddenly had to think in a very innovative way about, how could the community moderate itself . What are the things that we need to do in the community, the institutions we need to build of people so we have, you know, admins volunteer admins in the community . So the a lot of the social innovation came about because there was no way to hire people to do those things. And we would have never gotten very far. So how does the Organization Work now . So everything you see on the website, including the choice of what goes on the front page, the article of the day, picture of the day, all of that is controlled fully by the community. So what happens then, when there is especially hotbutton issues, when youve got. Abortion rights or. Gun rights, things that people are very passionate about where youve got people who are gonna go in and edit those pages with completely different opinions . So how does that get you know, whos the referee . So, basically, what we do wikipedia we have a policy, neutral point of view, that wikipedia itself shouldnt take a stand on any controversial issue. And, as it turns out, if you get together a very kind, thoughtful Catholic Priest and a very kind, thoughtful planned parenthood activist they can come together, and they can say, look. Were never going to agree about the topic of abortion. But we can still write a good summary of the issues. And so, the the Catholic Priest will understand wikipedia cant say, you know, abortion is a sin. But it can say, the Catholic Church position on abortion is thusandsuch. The pope has written this, and critics have responded that. So, those two people can, if they are kind and thoughtful people, at the end of the day, at the end of a period of work, they can point to the entry, and they can say, yeah, thats good. Well, what happens if those two kind people dont manage to agree . Well it works more often than not. If if there are people who arent so kind and thoughtful. And and they really have an agenda they push. And those people dont do very well in the wikipedia community. If you come in and. But how do you stop them from getting their. Well, so we have a lot of behavioral policies. So, if you insist on continually editwarring, we call it, where youre just trying to push an agenda over and over, youll be first thing, youll be temporarily blocked. Its you know, look. Take a break, 24 hours or whatever. Ultimately, people do get banned. Activists come in and try to push an agenda, or pr people come in and try to push an agenda. So it actually works most of the time. But people do have to be banned, and it does happen. On the other hand, theres the argument that the model itself lends itself to bias, because of the fact that the people who are gonna have access to it and to be able to edit are almost by definition, have to be wealthier, they have to have access to the internet. Sure. They have to have computers. Yeah. They have to have the time to be able to do that, which makes them generally and and the passion to do this kind of thing, which. They have to have good grammar. laugh . And good grammar, laughter which tends to make them not on the grammar side, but laughter that it makes. T tends to make them m much more male, fewer minorities represented, and, again, mostly voices from the developed world. Yeah, thats absolutely right. Although, people say, isnt it true that wikipedias, you know, only written by white men . I say, well, obviously, youve met the chinese wikipedians; theyre all chinese men. But it is a problem. And its one that we really are taking seriously in the sense that we know that you know, diversity in the community is very important. And its not so much about overt bias in the entries; its more you know people write about what they know and what they care about. And so, our community is very good about trying to make sure that, okay, we want to reflect different viewpoints even if we dont hold those viewpoints ourselves. But the truth is you know, your sort of the typical kind of wikipedia editor is a 26yearold tech, male, computer geek single you know, theyre at a certain point in life typically, a college graduate, you know, reasonably welleducated, reasonably welltodo. But that means that some entries so, if you go to our entry on the usb standard, which is, you know, usb plugs for your computer, and you want to learn about that, its a fantastic entry really wellwritten. Its easy to understand. But the further down you go, it gets more and more technical. Its a really good entry. But, you know, as a parent, i can tell you our entries on Early Childhood development, well, they can be a bit thin. Theyre a bit thin, because your 26yearold male, single, computer geek doesnt know anything about children, and doesnt think about it very much, laughter and just doesnt take an interest. At the foundation level, we are supporting various kinds of initiatives to try to address the problem. And that is a recent criticis criticism that youve faced, is that its become tougher to edit. Yeah. That m it really becomes inaccessible. Yeah. So were. So the whole open, collaborative model gets narrower and narrower. Yeah. Well were were getting closer. So weve invested a lot in our visual editor. It continues to improve. Some people are now using it by default. And so, its starting to be easier. So, when you click edit, you should get it should look more like a word processing document. So something everybodys familiar with doing to make it easier for people to contribute. We we try to be welcoming to newcomers, but we know its gotten harder. And, also, in the early days, it was really easy. You could you could be the first person to say, new york city is a city in new york state. You know . And its like, okay, thats not a very good entry. Yeah, right. But it was easy to get started. Now, if you want to contribute to the entry on new york city, well, its quite comprehensive; its meticulously researched. There are more languages on wikipedia than there are countries in the world. Coming up jimmy wales on the linguistics of the the site. This is talk to al jazeera. Im antonio mora. My guest this week, jimmy wales an entrepreneur and founder of wikipedia. I know, early on, you were kept up at night worrying in your words, that extreme rubbish would find its way laughter on onto wikipedia. How concerned are you now about accuracy . Because i mean, i dont i dont know the numbers im sure its thousands of edits. Oh, yes. Maybe more a day. Huge, huge. Yeah, many, many thousands yeah. So how do you possibly. Yeah. Well. Control that . So part of it is that communities inherently scale. So the more people you have editing, the more people, by definition, you have editing, the more people you have looking at it, the more people you have discussing things. I worry about, you know, we we seek to be comprehensive and thats a good thing, to be comprehensive. But we do have limits on what we can write about. Wikipedias in all these different languages. Yeah, yeah. So talk about controlling it. And i was looking at and, according to wikipedia two of your ten largest language editions are filipino language that arent even the main language of the philippines. So how does that happen . Well some of that, tho those numbers are a bit skewed in a way that i think we should do something about the list actually. So some languages have experimented with machine translations, or experimented with autogenerating entries from databases. Im not a big fan of it, but it just shows that sometimes the article count number isnt really a valid count of activity. We have some more sophisticated measures, but theyre hard to explain. Youve been described as a benevolent dictator ive read that you prefer laughter constitutional monarch. But, laugh as you know, constitutional monar monarchs living in england now dont have that much power. So how much power do you have . I i dont know. laughter and im trying not to find out laugh much like the queen of the u. K. Who knows how power she has . But, as long as she doesnt try to find out, no one will ever know. No the truth is, in terms of power in the traditional sense very little. And thats by design, that basically, everything we do is consensusbased and open discussions. In terms of influence, i have an enormous amount of influence. And i i think one of the reasons i have enormous amounts of influence is that ive always stuck to the same principles and values that built the community. When you talk about quality, does it ever wrangle you that colleges and high schools will tell their students that wikipedia should not be used as a primary source . No. Thats actually something thats very, very interesting. So our goal is to be as high quality as possible. But, when i was at college we werent allowed to cite Encyclopedia Britannica not because of the quality, but because, i mean, youre in youre at a university now, and thats not the role of an encyclopedia in the research process. An encyclopedia gets you oriented. It should be a good quality introduction to a subject. But, at that level, you should be digging deeper. And so its interesting. So we, having using wikipedia as an academic source is not really a goal that we have. Do you care to have the same respect that an Encyclopedia Britannica has . Or is the reality that youre much more important than the laughter Encyclopedia Britannica already . Yeah, some of some of the latter. At the same time, we do want to you know, we want people to we want to be good enough that people can feel comfortable relying on it. We also want to make sure people are educated about wikipedia. So one of the things we do theres a very common, you know citation needed. Right . Everybody knows this expression. Because, in wikipedia, if somebody writes a claim and didnt put a footnote, and the claim seems a bit bold or possibly wrong, somebody will tag it and say, citation needed. And, you know, i always say, i wish the New York Times would occasionally print, citation needed, you know, laughter when theyre reporting something. Or, you know, put a note at the top saying, we had a big argument in the newsroom as to whether this was, you know, good enough to run with. We didnt resolve the argument, but were gonna give it to you. But heres a warning. Right . Warning sign were not 100 sure about this. Some people thought we shouldnt run it. Well give it to you anyway. They never say that. So they always write in a very authoritative way even when theyre not quite sure. And thats a little bit problematic. How big a problem is vandalism . I think sorta outright vandalism is you know, theres always some of it going on. And then, its just a dull roar in the background; and we fix it, and it it its not a major problem. Im more worried about subtle vandalism. You know, people coming in and inserting something that seems plausible but isnt. Particularly if the you know, its it is v very difficult to vandalize the entry on barack obama. Because so many people look at it every day. Because yeah, its its its very well monitored. And, in fact, usually, its semiprotected so that you have to have had an account for a while before you can edit it. But, if its you know, a fairly obscure politician in a local city, and you put in something plausible but false, it might last longer than we would like. And and thats you know, thats not good. Now, normally, its also harmless. Because its its you know, it if its an accusation of something horrible, people will catch it very quickly. I always give this example. Once my entry said in his spare time, he enjoys playing chess with friends. It only lasted for a day or two, Something Like that. Okay, but, i mean, it sounds great, but its not actually true laughter at all. I i would like to be that guy who plays chess. Ah, yes. Doesnt happen. laugh . Doesnt happen. But what was interesting is, during that small period of time when it was vandalized to say that, a biography magazine picked that up, and and, basically, said it as if it were true. Which meant n then then there was a source for it. I guess an otherwise respectable magazine said it. Fortunately, i had already said, no, this is wrong. So we didnt put it in. But we do get that that can happen sometimes, that an error in wikipedia then gets repeated. Do you face censorship in in some countries. We do. Like china. Yeah. Uhhuh affirm . You might have to deal with tough defamation and libel laws in other countries. So how how do you deal with that . Well so, we have a very principled stand. Well we will never cooperate with government censorship. And we never have; we never will. Which means that we try to be diplomatic. We try to reason with governments if theyre doing something. Oftentimes they they dont want to lose access to wikipedia; they know its very important and very worthwhile. And, sometimes, if they once they begin to understand, okay, like wikipedia is strives for neutrality, and so, its not onesided rants and things like that. Still, not every government is comfortable with neutrality. So we still do face problems around the world. One of the recent developments is, because of the nsa spying, amongst other reasons, and because of the general p very positive trend, in my opinion trend towards encryption everywhere online so, the increasing security of the internet is a really important topic now, wikipedia is encrypted. Every when you go to visit wikipedia, its the same as going to visit your bank. No one can see what is being said between you and and and your bank, only that youre talking to your bank. What this means is that governments no longer have the ability to filter just certain pages out. So they used to do that. They would say, oh, no. Well just block these pages about, you know, opposition political figures, or whatever it might be. Now, they dont have that option. Now, they can either have all of wikipedia or none of wikipedia. And were finding, by and large, theyre opting for all of wikipedia. On the knowledge front, do you see google as a competitor . And and, if you do how do you compete as a nonprofit with this behemoth . Yeah. No, we dont really think of google as a competitor. But part of that is because we dont think about competitors at all. Like its just not in our nature. Weve always been a community. And so, we dont think much about, you know how to defeat competition or or what it means. Obviously, we have to you know, in terms of Strategic Thinking at the organizational level, so not in the community, but in in the wikimedia foundation, we do think about, okay, what are some of the changes that are taking place on the internet . The shift to mobile, the rise of social networks, and so on, how does that impact us . How do we make sure that we stay nimble . How do we make sure we are on top of technology so that we dont get left behind . And, obviously, thinking about google and and rankings and things like that is a piece of that work. But we dont really think of google as a as a competitor. Theyre not obviously, google sends us a lot of people, you know . laughter and, actually, one of. An awful lot of people, im sure. An awful lot of people, yeah. But, i mean, one of the interesting things about that is, if you think about you know, when you search. If you go to wikipedia right now, and you search for Queen Victoria, i can pretty much guarantee you i havent done this recently but wikipedias going to be first or second link. But, when you type, Queen Victoria, theres generally speaking, when i have checked it in the past, theres no ads. Because what are you gonna sell someone whos searching about Queen Victoria . Maybe a book about Queen Victoria. You know, its like youre not really shopping. If you search you know, cheap hotels in las vegas, guess what . Wikipedia is nowhere to be seen. laughter lots of ads, lots of commerce is happening. So the truth is we fill in, you know, for google when people are doing informationbased searches. So google were, you know, symbiotic in a certain sense. So. Youve got another project going on now that just debuted in the u. S. , thats forprofit, but it also has a charitable component. Yeah. Very excited about it. So were a mobile phone company tpo which stands for the peoples operator. And the idea of tpo is 10 of your bill goes to the cause of your choice 25 of the companys profits go to charity. Our prices are a really good value in the market. So how can we afford that . And the answer is we cut out the marketing budget. So we say to you, oh, well, you can stay with you know, one of the major four carriers, and theyll spend more than 10 of your money on tv commercials, billboards, magazine ads, newspaper ads, fliers in the mail, you know, you everywhere you turn, s physical stores, those are a very expensive form of marketing. Or you can switch to us, and well spend 10 on something you care about. But what we ask in return is tell your friends, tell your family. Still ahead on Al Jazeera Jimmy Wales talks about politics and his proudest achievements. Im antonio mora. Youre watching talk to al jazeera. Im speaking this week with wikipedia founder, jimmy wales. Youre politically active in in in many ways. You attend w World Economic forums. You advise governments. You write opeds. But im confused. Because, laughter as i read about you ive s ive seen that you are that youve said youre centerright, that youre a libertarian but you dont have a good opinion of the u. S. Libertarian party. Ive also read you support labour in in england so who are you . laughter . Well, i i always say so so the the most mysterious of that would be the labour party, i think. I actually married into the labour party you would say. My wife worked at number 10 downing street for many years with tony blair and his, you know, sort of new labour through and through. You marry into the labour party. Tony blair not happy with the the recent election of the labour party leader. And you havent been shy about your laughter i mean, you called jeremy corbyn, extremely bonkers. Yes. Yeah. So are you getting involved in british politics now . I try not to. I actually you know, twitter is very dangerous, because you sort of spout off and then its in the news. But laugh but, yeah. No, i mean, i think its its its really unfortunate, right, that the labour party has gone down a path of having the leader of the party theyll go into the next election with him as the leader. And hes not going to appeal to the mainstream; hes very, very extreme. I am center centerright. You know, im not a radical; i like to see slow, thoughtful change over time. Youve disrupted the way people in the world get knowledge, or have access to knowledge. And you want people to have access to knowledge around the world in every way possible. Quite the legacy for your for your daughters. What do you tell them especially the older one, whos probably old enough to understand about how view the world . Well you know, im just like any parent, try to set a good example. For me, one of the things that i really, really value and hope that my children value is thinking. Education, thinking. Im upset by the fact that people seem to form opinions first and then scramble around looking for evidence to support their opinions. And i think thats a fundamental failing in our educational system, that we dont from an earlier age, really sort of say to people train children like, you know you you you dont have the right to have an opinion until youve earned that right in your own heart, in your own mind, by understanding the topic. And well, thats for me, thats what i hope wikipedia helps people to do, is is, lets learn about things and then have an opinion. As somebody that uses wikipedia, who knows how many times a day. I laughter will thank you. Great every monday night. I lived that character. Go one on one with americas movers and shakers. We will be able to see change. Gripping. Inspiring. Entertaining. No topic off limits. cause im like, dad, there are hookers in this house. Exclusive conversations you wont find anywhere else. These are very vivid, human stories. If you have an agenda with people, you sometimes dont see the truth. Talk to al jazeera. Monday, 6 00 eastern. Only on al jazeera america. Announcer this is al jazeera. Hello and welcome to the news hour, im shiulieghosh and rejects allegations of dopes that has shaken the sport world. Cameron and forms of the eu or britain may have to talk to the world body. Commemorating the life and death of nigerias