•Hot Press scoops interview with Wikipedia Guru
hotpress.com (subscription), Ireland
Jimmy Wales, the normally reclusive creator of Wikipedia, now the fourth most visited website in the world, has spoken at length, for the first time, about his life and his work. The interview, conducted by Jason O'Toole for Hot Press magazine, ...
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QUOTE(Newsfeed @ Wed 25th March 2009, 11:29am) 
•Hot Press scoops interview with Wikipedia Guru
hotpress.com (subscription), Ireland
Jimmy Wales, the normally reclusive creator of Wikipedia, now the fourth most visited website in the world, has spoken at length, for the first time, about his life and his work. The interview, conducted by Jason O'Toole for Hot Press magazine, ...
View the article
Normally reclusive?????
Jimbo is many things, but I wouldn't call him "reclusive"...
It's a misprint. It should have read "normally elusive".
QUOTE(Moulton @ Wed 25th March 2009, 7:27am)
It's a misprint. It should have read "normally elusive".
More like "abnormally delusional" …
Ja Ja
Looks like more-o da same-o, I'm afraid... You can pretty much rest assured that the interview is going to be a softball-fest when the first thing the teaser article mentions is death threats. Goshers, let's not be unclear on who the "bad guys" are, heaven forbid!
Also, it's Time's 100 Most Influential People, not the 10 most influential. Not that one should expect high-grade fact checking here - it's mainly a music-review site, after all. (And hey, Spandau Ballet is getting back together! Can Visage, Ultravox, and Dexy's Midnight Runners be far behind?
)
Also, it's Time's 100 Most Influential People, not the 10 most influential. Not that one should expect high-grade fact checking here - it's mainly a music-review site, after all. (And hey, Spandau Ballet is getting back together! Can Visage, Ultravox, and Dexy's Midnight Runners be far behind?
)
for what it's worth (not alot really) - 'Hot Press' is the same outfit (and the same journo.) who also interviewed the colourful italian lawyer 'Givanno di Stefano' about his 50 million Euro suit against WMF (and named editors, I think) - Jason O'Toole (for it is he) is a wiki curious sort of chap, it seems.
QUOTE(privatemusings @ Thu 26th March 2009, 12:54am)
for what it's worth (not alot really) - 'Hot Press' is the same outfit (and the same journo.) who also interviewed the colourful italian lawyer 'Givanno di Stefano' about his 50 million Euro suit against WMF (and named editors, I think) - Jason O'Toole (for it is he) is a wiki curious sort of chap, it seems.
well, di Stefano represented both Dutchy Holland, the footsoldier deemed responsible for the infamous killing of Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, and John Gilligan, the kingpin deemed to be behind the hit. (Everyone in Ireland knows Gilligan's name due to this.) O'Toole has interviewed both these figures in Hot Press, with the Gilligan interview in particular resulting in considerable controversy.
O'Toole is also the guy who interviewed Ian Paisley Jr. and led him to the -- one would think, unastonishing -- admission that he hates teh gayz, sparking a month of very public debate up north which resulted in his having to tell the Northern Ireland assembly that he was totally committed to equality and human rights and yadda yadda. The New Humanist called this flap Northern Ireland's first secular debate about a point of religious contention.
It was to O'Toole in Hot Press that then-minister and now-Taoiseach Brian Cowen chose to reveal that he had smoked marijuana (and inhaled). O'Toole has since authored Cowen's authorized biography.
Just to correct Somey's impression, Hot Press is not principally a site, but a print publication. And as well as the rock n' roll thing, it advanced a liberal agenda regarding sex, drugs and politics through the 80s, when Ireland was still largely under the reign of guys in black with funny collars. As such, it attracted the brightest and best from far-flung rural outposts to its pages, most of which are now fixtures of the establishment press, just as the liberal agenda eventually largely prevailed in various referenda in a changing Ireland through the 1990s. It ran regular columns by a left Labour politician and a socialist. Its main innovation was in publishing lengthy verbatim interviews in a raw Q&A format, which occasionally caught out those used to more decorum and politesse in the editing process -- most famously an expletive-laden interview with the then-Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in which he observed of political commentators that there were some fuckers whose throats he would like to cut before throwing them off a cliff.
It now reads like a glossy music industry publication, with some off-topic news and interviews thrown in.
In the Wales interview, O'Toole tries four times to ask Wales about the Marsden incident, but Wales refuses to discuss it. Some extracts from the interview:
QUOTE
Sanger said that proof of his being co-founder is on the initial press releases. Are you saying that he basically just put himself down as co-founder on these press releases?
Yes.
Yes.
QUOTE
You got into a spot of controversy for editing your own biographical entry on Wikipedia. You remooved references to Sanger as the co-founder. Sanger said that you were trying to rewrite history.
I edited the entry about me. I corrected what I felt to be some very simple errors. In doing so, I accidentally created some controversy that I didn't mean to. The funny thing is how that's reported sometimes. It says that I edited Wikipedia contrary to the rules of the site. Well, at that time there wasn't even a guideline against it ...
I edited the entry about me. I corrected what I felt to be some very simple errors. In doing so, I accidentally created some controversy that I didn't mean to. The funny thing is how that's reported sometimes. It says that I edited Wikipedia contrary to the rules of the site. Well, at that time there wasn't even a guideline against it ...
Later, in response to fourth attempt to ask about Marsden:
QUOTE
... I think that all people should try to avoid editing any article when they have some personal interest in the subject, outside of very minor fact corrections. For myself, I have always been very, very careful about that ...
QUOTE
It's a socially important topic to say, 'What is the quality of Wikipedia?' What are the strengths and weaknesses of Wikipedia? And how might we address the weaknesses? If people have a very simplistic view, they say, 'Well, because it's open it's unreliable'. I'm going to respond and say, 'Actually, what we have discovered - over time - is that the more open we make it the more reliable it becomes' ...
QUOTE
What we really need is a lot more academic research into this question of the reliability of Wikipedia. Partly because I think we will come out well ...
QUOTE
... what you most often see reported is some goofy vandalism that lasted for a minute. It's unfortunate of course but, for me, it really doesn't get at the right things to criticize Wikipedia about ...
No suggestions are made as to what these right things may be.
QUOTE
Is there anything you could introduce to make people reluctant to vandalise?
I would like to have it that when you're editing as a logged-out user that we show you - just before you click on save - 'By the way, we see you're editing from this IP number in' - let's just say for example - 'the White House and you may want to reflect for a moment on whether this edit reflects well upon your organization'. Just to let people know a little more clearly what's involved.
I would like to have it that when you're editing as a logged-out user that we show you - just before you click on save - 'By the way, we see you're editing from this IP number in' - let's just say for example - 'the White House and you may want to reflect for a moment on whether this edit reflects well upon your organization'. Just to let people know a little more clearly what's involved.
QUOTE
On the subject of contributors editing anonymously, why not change that? Surely people have a right to know who is writing something on Wikipedia. People do have hidden agendas... (ellipses in original)
The anonymity factor of Wikipedia is overestimated. What is not generally understood is that nearly all of the core community is not anonymous, they are known. It's very common for people to write under a username, but on their actual user page they say exactly who they really are ...
The anonymity factor of Wikipedia is overestimated. What is not generally understood is that nearly all of the core community is not anonymous, they are known. It's very common for people to write under a username, but on their actual user page they say exactly who they really are ...
QUOTE
Is it common for contributors to be banned from Wikipedia?
Oh, yeah. People get banned all the time. People come and they won't behave, then they can get banned in a number of different ways. This is the part I try to communicate about how Wikipedia functions: if you have this idea of Wikipedia being 10 million people each adding one sentence each -- that really isn't how it works. It really is a core group of people who are supervising, editing, generating new content. Although a lot of new content comes for outsiders who just write four paragraphs and vanish and the community will fact check it and put it in the house style and do all that kind of work. Under a pseudonym you can see the history of someone's work and I can see where other people who I respect have praised him and checked his work. You begin to see that this is a guy who does very good work; he has a reputation and that reputation is valuable to him; and therefore if he did something bad under his user account he would lose his reputation.
Oh, yeah. People get banned all the time. People come and they won't behave, then they can get banned in a number of different ways. This is the part I try to communicate about how Wikipedia functions: if you have this idea of Wikipedia being 10 million people each adding one sentence each -- that really isn't how it works. It really is a core group of people who are supervising, editing, generating new content. Although a lot of new content comes for outsiders who just write four paragraphs and vanish and the community will fact check it and put it in the house style and do all that kind of work. Under a pseudonym you can see the history of someone's work and I can see where other people who I respect have praised him and checked his work. You begin to see that this is a guy who does very good work; he has a reputation and that reputation is valuable to him; and therefore if he did something bad under his user account he would lose his reputation.
QUOTE
... it's always a little bizarre for me if I'm walking down the street in San Francisco and later I see somebody twitted on Twitter that they me walking down Second Street. One time somebody said, 'I just saw Jimmy Wales buying a muffin at JFK Airport!' I was just buying a muffin - please let me have a little privacy.
QUOTE
Prior to starting Wikipedia, you had a web company called Bomis, which according to your own Wikipedia profile, has been described as the 'Playboy of the internet'.
That's completely false. It was never described as that. Absolutely false.
That's completely false. It was never described as that. Absolutely false.
(The phrase in the Wikipedia article was cited, correctly, to the Atlantic Monthly story "The Hive". O'Toole himself in the interview introduction refers to Bomis as a "soft porn web portal". See also "corrections" here. )
Wales has reverted to default mode.
None of these answers have any credibility, nor integrity. He has resorted to the usual hyperspin and misdirection.
When asked a question which is essentially concerned with the implementation of Flagged Revisions, Wales utters some bullshit about a warning and makes no mention of FR.
Well that isn't generally understood. Because it isn't true. And we're show Jimbo knows it.
None of these answers have any credibility, nor integrity. He has resorted to the usual hyperspin and misdirection.
When asked a question which is essentially concerned with the implementation of Flagged Revisions, Wales utters some bullshit about a warning and makes no mention of FR.
QUOTE(Wales)
What is not generally understood is that nearly all of the core community is not anonymous, they are known.
Well that isn't generally understood. Because it isn't true. And we're show Jimbo knows it.
Yes, it is a strange lie. This is the same core community of named users who, he later tells O'Toole, "fact-check" contributions from "outsiders". Of course we all know that this virtually never happens. Going by the recent BLP discussion on Wikipedia just as an example area, there are currently approximately 43,000 biographies of living people which have never been sourced or fact-checked in any way. Really only a handful of statements which someone has a) noticed and b) took issue with have ever been fact-checked. There is no established practice of fact-checking even at FAC, though at least someone glances to see if the sources used are at least reliable.
Anyway, I bump this thread particularly to note Sanger's reply to the blog post Kohs links to in this WR post.
Edit: and a blog post itself about the matter: http://blog.citizendium.org/2009/04/04/a-n...e-word-founder/ "The interview I mentioned, along with the recent rediscovery of a comment in which Wales called himself “co-founder†of Wikipedia in 2002, are really the straw that broke this camel’s back", apparently.
Anyway, I bump this thread particularly to note Sanger's reply to the blog post Kohs links to in this WR post.
QUOTE
Well, interestingly enough, Jimmy Wales has also given a similarly interview to the magazine Hot Press recently. Hot Press in turn interviewed me, asking for my replies. Should be very interesting; Jimmy made a lot of verifiably wrong claims, claims which, I’m sorry to have to point out, were also very self-serving.
To correct two of Jimmy’s mistakes from your interview, first, I was referred to as co-founder in the first news articles about Wikipedia (September 2001, New York Times and Technology Review) — Jimmy never complained at the time. In fact, the first press releases, from 2001, 2002, and 2004, all credited me as co-founder — I had nothing whatsoever to do with the 2002 and 2004 releases, either (Jimmy essentially told Hot Press that I wrote the 2002 and 2004 releases, when I was long gone!). And as we can see in the new tidbit above, Jimmy referred to himself as “co-founder†of Wikipedia in 2002 (which frankly is how I remembered him referring to himself in late 2001 through 2003 or so). Finally, the idea that I was “working under the direction†of Jimmy Wales is misleading. While I answered to him, he was usually unresponsive, and gave me almost no actual direction vis-a-vis Wikipedia. I distinctly remember him saying, when I started working for Bomis, Inc., that the encyclopedia project was mine to guide and that he did not intend to give me a lot of input. Actually, I appreciated this; as I’ve always said, he was the most hands-off boss I’ve ever had. — There should be quite a bit more along these lines in the Hot Press interview.
To correct two of Jimmy’s mistakes from your interview, first, I was referred to as co-founder in the first news articles about Wikipedia (September 2001, New York Times and Technology Review) — Jimmy never complained at the time. In fact, the first press releases, from 2001, 2002, and 2004, all credited me as co-founder — I had nothing whatsoever to do with the 2002 and 2004 releases, either (Jimmy essentially told Hot Press that I wrote the 2002 and 2004 releases, when I was long gone!). And as we can see in the new tidbit above, Jimmy referred to himself as “co-founder†of Wikipedia in 2002 (which frankly is how I remembered him referring to himself in late 2001 through 2003 or so). Finally, the idea that I was “working under the direction†of Jimmy Wales is misleading. While I answered to him, he was usually unresponsive, and gave me almost no actual direction vis-a-vis Wikipedia. I distinctly remember him saying, when I started working for Bomis, Inc., that the encyclopedia project was mine to guide and that he did not intend to give me a lot of input. Actually, I appreciated this; as I’ve always said, he was the most hands-off boss I’ve ever had. — There should be quite a bit more along these lines in the Hot Press interview.
Edit: and a blog post itself about the matter: http://blog.citizendium.org/2009/04/04/a-n...e-word-founder/ "The interview I mentioned, along with the recent rediscovery of a comment in which Wales called himself “co-founder†of Wikipedia in 2002, are really the straw that broke this camel’s back", apparently.
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