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get a free box of their best seller, namibian see salted macadamia, nuts, plus twenty percent off your entire order. I don't know why, but is really fun to say, that's how some macadamia dot com slash lacks. This is less figment park ass, the supported these jacket, our sponsors in the description and now, dear friends, here's jimmy whales. Let's start at the beginning. What is the origin story of? What could be there? The origin story of Wikipedia So I was watching the growth of the free software movement purpose or software and seeing crop programmers coming together to collaborate new ways.

In code doing their under free licence, which is really interesting because it empowers an ability to work together. That's really hard to do. If the code is still proprietary, because then, if I chicken and how far we still have to figure out how I'm gonna be rewarded in and what that is, but the idea that everyone can copy at an end it just as part of the commons really empowered a huge way. of creative software production, and I realized that kind of collaboration could extend beyond just software to all kinds of cultural works, the first thing that I thought I was and encyclopedia from how that seems obvious that an encyclopedia collaborate on it. There's a few reasons. Why one we all pretty much know what an encyclopedia entry on say the eiffel tower should be like you know, you should see a picture. Few pictures, maybe history, location, something

the architect of etc. So we have a shared understanding. What it is were trying to do, and then we can collaborate in different people. Can chip ahead and find sources and solar so forth, so set up first new pdf, which was about two years before Wikipedia and with new peter? We we had this idea. That in order to be respected, we had to be even more academic than a traditional encyclopedia, because, oh a bunch of volunteers on the internet, getting into the right at an encyclopedia. You know you can be made fun of if it's just every random person, so we had implemented this seven stage review process to get anything published and and took two things came of that. So one thing one of the earliest entries that we published after this rig

this process. A few days later, we had to pull it because, as soon as it hit the web, the broader community took a look at it. People notice plagiarism and realise that it wasn't actual but even though I have been reviewed by academics and so on, so we had to pull at us. I hope I was so much for substantially process. but also I decided that I wanted to try. I was frustrated and why is this taking so long? Why is it so hard? So I thought. Okay, I saw that Robert merton had won her nobel prize in economics,

for his work on option pricing theory and when I was in academia, that's what I worked on was option pricing theory how to publish paper. So I had worked through all of his academic papers and I knew his work quite well. I thought oh I'll, just I'll write a short biography of merton and when I started to do it I'd been out of academia. I had been a grad student for a few years. Then I felt this huge intimidation because they were going to take my draft and send it to the most prestigious finance professors that we could find to give me. feedback for revisions and it felt like being back in grad school. It was like this really oppressive sort of like you're, going to submit it for review and you're going to get critiques elaborate. The bat yeah yeah, the bad part of grad school right, and so it was like. Oh, this isn't intellectually fun. This is like the bad part of grad school. It's intimidating and there's a lot of you know: potential embarrassment

grew something up and so forth, and so that was when I realized. Ok, look. This is never gonna work. This is not something that people are really going to want to do so, Jeremy Rosa farewell my place had brought and showed me. The wiki concept december than larry Sanger brought in the same said. Without this wiki idea I so in january we decided to launch wikipedia, but we weren't sure so that the original project was called new peter and even though it was a successful, we did have a group of academics and like really serious people, and we were concerned that or maybe these academics are going to really hate this idea and we shouldn't just convert the project immediately. We should launch this as a side project the idea of one here's, a wiki where we can start playing around. But actually we got more work done in two weeks. Then we

in almost two years, because people were able to just jump on and start doing stuff- and it was actually a very exciting time- you know you could back- then you could be the first person who typed africa is a continent and pit safe. You know which isn't much of an encyclopedia entry, but it's true and it's a start and it's kind of fun like I. You know you put your name down they are funny story was several years later. I just happened to be online and I saw when his name's robert aman one.

Nobel prize in economics and we didn't have an entry on him at all, which was surprising, but it wasn't that surprising. This was still early days. You know, and- and so I got to be, the first person to type rubber amen, one nobel prize in economics and hit say, which again wasn't a very good article. But then I came back two days later and people had improved it and so forth, so that that second half of the experience were with Robert merton. I never succeeded because it was just too intimidating. It was like. Oh no, I was able to chip in and help other people jumped in. Everybody was interested in the topic because it's all in the news at the moment. So it's just a completely different model which worked much much better, well, what is it that made that so accessible, so fun so as natural to just add something, while I think it's you know, especially in the early days and this by the way, has gotten much harder, because there are fewer topics that are just greenfield. You know available, and but you know you you could say, oh well, I

I know a little bit about this and I can I can get it started, but then it is fun to to come back then see other people have added an improved and so on and so forth. and that idea of collaborating. You know where people can much like open source software. You know you, you put your coat out and then people suggest revisions and a change in him and a model it gross beyond the original creator is just a kind of a fun wonderful, quite geeky, hobby button. enjoy it. How much debate was there over the interface of the details of how to make that well seem? since frictional yeah I mean not as much as they probably should have been in a way during two years of the failure of pity our very little work got done. What was actually productive was there was a huge long discussions, email discussion, very clever people talking about

things like neutrality, talking about what is an encyclopedia, but also talking about more technical ideas. You know things back, then eczema was from all the rage and they about could we, You shouldn't you have certain data That might be in multiple articles that gets updated automatically. So, for example, in the population of new york city every ten years, there's a new official census. Couldn't you to supper? They update that bit of data in one place it would update across all those that is a reality today, Then it was just like me. How do we do that? How we think about that? So is a reality. Today, words yeah, there's some as a wicked variables. Wikipedia wiki data you can, you can link. Ah you know from a wikipedia entry. You can link to that piece of data in wiki data and it's a pretty advanced thing for users who are doing that and then when, when that gets updated, it updates in all the languages where you ve done. That I mean that's really interesting There's this chain of emails and early days are discussing the details.

What is that there is the interface there's, the yes or the interface? So an example. There was some software called use, mod wiki, which we started with quite amusing actually, because the main reason we launched with us made wiki is that it was a single perl script. So it was really easy for me to install it on the server and just get running, but it was a you know some guys hobby project of a school, but it was just a hobby project and all the data was stored in flat textiles there was no real database behind it so that to search the site you basically used grab, which is just like basic unix utility. There, like look through files are so that clearly was never gonna scale, but also in the early days. It didn't have real logan's. So you can set your user name, but there were no passwords. So you know, I might say, Bob smith. In the summer

It comes along and says no, I'm bob smith and they both attic. Now that never really happened, we didn't have a problem with a boat was kind of obvious, like you can't grow a big website where everybody can pretend to be everybody. That's that's not going to be good for trust and reputation and so forth. So quickly. I had to write a little. You know log in the store, people's passwords and things. Also, you can have unique identities and then another example of something you know quite he would have. Never thought would have been a good idea and it turned out to not be a problem, but to make a lincoln wikipedia in the early days. You would make a link to a page that may or may not exist by just using camelcase, meaning it's like uppercase lowercase. Then you smash the words together so may be a new york city he might type in.

W no space capital Y york city, and that would make a link. But that was ugly. That was clearly not right, and so I was like okay well, that that's just not going to look nice. Let's just use square brackets to square brackets makes a link that may have been an option in the software emulator. I thought up square brackets, but even we just did that and which worked really well. It makes nice links and you know you can see in it's red links or blue links,

if the page exists or not, but the thing that didn't occur to me even think about is that, for example, on the german language standard keyboard, there is no square bracket, so for german wikipedia to succeed, people had to learn to do some alt codes to get the square bracket or they lot of users cut and paste a square bracket where they could find one. They were just cut and paste went in, and yet german wikipedia been a massive success. So somehow that didn't slow people down, how is it that the german keyboards don't have a square bracket how'd he do programming. How do you are you live it's life to its fullest with us? We will have a very good question. I'm not really sure I mean. Maybe it does now, because our keyboard standards have, you know, drifted out over time and becomes useful to have a certain character minutes.

Same thing like there is not really a w character in italian and- and it wasn't on keyboards are. I think it is now, but in general, w is not a letter in italian language, but it appears that enough international, worse than its crept into italians, and all these things are probably wikipedia articles. in itself. So this is where practical discussion unsure on both the english and then- they had the german wikipedia and and the difference between those two, my were very interesting, so wicked data's, fast, meaning, but even the broader discussion of what is encyclopedia, you gotta, that's a philosophical question of short it. What is it? What is inseparably cyclopaedia? Some way I would put it is and encyclopedia what our goal is, is as the sum of all human knowledge, but some meaning summary so

And this was an early debate, I mean somebody started uploading, the full text of hamlet, for example, and with wait hold on a second, that's, not an encyclopedia article, but why not- and so hence was born wiki source, which is where you put original texts and things like that out of copyright tax because they said no an encyclopedia article about hamlet, that's a perfectly valid thing, but the actual text of the play is not an encyclopedia article, so most of it's fairly obvious em, but there are some interesting quirks and differences. So, for example, as I understand it, in french language encyclopedias. Traditionally, it would be quite common to have recipes which an english language not be unusual. You wouldn't find a recipe for chocolate cake in Britannica and so I actually don't know, the current state haven't thought about that. Many many years now state of cake recipes and what could be done in english. Wikipedia, I wouldn't say, there's chocolate cake recipes, I mean you might find a sample.

be somewhere announcing their number in general. Now like we wouldn't have recipes. I told myself I get outrage in this conversation, but now amare am deeply upset is actually very complicated. I'm I'm! I love to cook, I'm I'm! You know I'm I'm actually quite a good cook and what's interesting. Is that it's very hard to having neutral recipe? Because, like a fanatical, beef, and cannot enter recipe is kind of difficult to combine. because there are so many variance and it's all debatable an interesting for something like chocolate cake. You could probably say you know here's one of the earliest recipes or here's one of the most common recipes, but- You know for many many things. The variants are as interesting in us. Somebody said to me recently. You know ten spaniards, twelve,

fire recipes, so you know that these are all matters of open discussion. Well, just to throw some numbers. As of may twenty, seventh, twenty twenty three there are six million Point six, six million articles in english wikipedia containing over four with three billion words, including article the total number of pages is fifty eight million. The boy your mind I mean yes, it does. I mean it doesn't because I know those numbers and see them from time to time, but in another sense a deeper sense. Yet had done I mean it's really remarkable. I remember when ah english wikipedia past one hundred thousand articles and when german wikipedia pass one hundred thousand, because I happened to be in germany with a bunch of wikipedia that night and it will. Then it seemed quite big and we knew at that time that it it was nowhere near complete.

I remember, add wiki mania in harvard when we, when we did our annual conference there in Boston and someone who had come to the conference from Poland had brought along with him a small encyclopedia, a single volume, it's like of biographies, so short burglaries, normally a paragraph or so about famous people in poland, and there were some twenty two thousand entries and he pointed out that even then two thousand six wikipedia felt quite big and he said English Wikipedia there's only a handful of these in a less than ten percent. I think he said, If so, then you realize the actually. You know who the mayor of warsaw in eighteen, seventy three probably not an english wikipedia, but it probably might be today, but there's so much out there

and of course what we get into. We were talking about how many entries there are. And how many? How many could there be? Is this very deep philosophical issue of notability, which is the question of well? How do you? How do you draw the limit? How do you draw what what is there? So sometimes people say there should be no limit but that does not stand up to much scrutiny. If you really pause and think about it. So I see in your hand there you ve, got a big pen, pretty standard everybody seen guenaud billions of those in life classic. There is a classic clear big and so could we have an entry about that big panel. I bet we do that type of big pen because it

classic everybody knows it and it's got a history and actually there's something interesting about the big company they make pens. They also make kayaks and there's something else there for him, so we're basically they're they're sort of a a definition by non essentials company anything that's long and plastic. That's what they make. So you want to find the comic drawn, the platonic form of a big. But could we have an article about that very big pen in your hand, the lex Friedman's bic pen, as of default, the very this a very specific instance: there is no there's not much known about it. I dare say unless you know it's very special to you and your great grandmother gave it to you or something you probably know very little about it. It's a pen, it's just here in the office and so that that's just to show there's a there's. There is in german wikipedia these to talk about the the rear not of the wheel,

the fuchs bicycle the folks, the well known wikipedia, have the time to sort of illustrate that you can't have an article about literally everything, and so then it raises the question: what can you have an arc about? What can't you and that can vary too? on the subject matter, and one of the areas where we try to be much more careful would be biographies reason is a biography of a living person. If you get it wrong, it can actually be quite hurtful quite damaging, and so, if someone is a private person and somebody tries to create a wikipedia entry log, there's no, it updated. There's not much nato, for example an encyclopedia article. my mother, my mother, school, schoolteacher later a pharmacist, wonderful woman, but never been in the news. I mean other than me talking about why there shouldn't be a Wikipedia entry that is probably,

in somewhere standard example? But you know there's not enough known and you could sort of imagine that a database of genealogy having date of birth date of death, and so certain elements like that of of private people, but you couldn't really bought right. A biography. One of the areas this comes up quite often is what we call beale p one money. We got lots of acronyms biography of a living person whose notable for only one event is a real sort of danger zone and the type of example would be a victim of a crime. So someone who's a victim of a famous serial killer,

about whom, like really not much, is known, they weren't a public person there just a victim of a crime. We really shouldn't have an article about that person. They'll be mention, of course, and maybe the specific crime might have an article, but for that person no, not really, that's not really something that makes any sense, because how can you have read a biography about someone? You don't know much about, and this is in a way it varies from from field to feel so, for example, for many academics we will have an entry that we might not have in a different context because for an academic, it's important to have a sort of their career. You know what papers they published. Things like that. You may not know anything about their personal life of this action. Not encyclopaedic, we relevant in the same way that it is for member of a royal family, where it's basically all about the family, so You know we were fairly nuanced about notability him who comes in, and I've always thought that they

The term notability, I think, is a little problematic minutes. We we struggled about how to talk about it, The problem notability is its. It can feel insulting. So now that you're not noteworthy my mother's note, where they really important person in my life right. So that's not right but it's more like verify ability. Is there a way to get information, actually makes an encyclopedia entry. It so happens that wikipedia page about me, as I've learned recently and The first thought I had when I saw that was Surely I am not notable enough, so I was very surprised and grateful that such a page could exist and actually just allow me to say thank you to all. incredible people that are part of creating and maintaining Wikipedia is

favorite website on the internet. The collection of articles that wikipedia has created is just incredible. I will talk about the various details of that, but the the love and care that goes into creating pages for individuals for a big pen for all this kind of stuff is just is just really incredible. I just felt the love when I saw that page, but I also felt just because I do this podcast and I just threw this pocket got to know a few individuals are quite controversial. I've got to be on the receiving end of something quite to me as a person who was other human beings, have gone to be at the receiving end of some kind of attacks through the wikipedia form. Like you said, When you look at living individuals, it can be quite hurtful little d, hills of information and because at the conference of the mosque

I have interviewed him, but I've also interviewed people on the left or far left people on the right. Some people say far right, and so now you take a step. He put your toe into the cold pool of politics shark emerges from the depths and because you write in a boiling hot putin politics. I guess it's as hot as I get to experience. Some of that and I think. Will you also realise is that there has to be for wikipedia kind of credible sources, verifiable, fiercest and there's the dance there, because some of the sources are pieces of journalism and, of course, journalism operates under its own complicated incentives such that people can write articles there, not factual or

a cherry picking all the flaws, it can have an a journalist, cardiff ashore, and those can be used this as well as the sources is, like the dance hand in hand and so for me. Sadly enough. There was a really kind of concerted attack the sailor, I was never at mit. I never did anything in mit just to clarify. I am a research scientist at mit. I have been there since two thousand and fifteen am there. Today. I met a prestigious amazing laboratory called lids and I hope to be there for law. I'm a working! I robotics machine learning, there's a lot of incredible people. There and by the way I might, she has been very kind to defend me. Unlike Wikipedia says, it is not an unpaid position, there was no conscience.

see. It was all very calm and happy and almost boring research that I've been doing there and the other thing, because I am half ukrainian half russian and have travelled to ukraine I will travel to ukraine again and I will travel to russia for some very difficult conversations. My heart's been broken by this war. Have family in both places has been a really difficult time, but the little battle about the biography. They're awesome starts becoming important for the first time. For me, I also want to clarify sort of personally. I use this opportunity of some inaccuracies there. My father was not born in cows crusher. He was born in kiev, ukraine. I was born in she calls, which is a town not in russia. There is a town called that in russia, but is another.

On into jack them, which is a former republic of soviet union. It is that town is now called be: u s tee, o n boost on which is funny. were now in austin analysis in Boston. It seems, like my whole life is surrounded by these gaza towns. I was born into jackets, then and the rest of the biographies interesting, but my family is very evenly distributed. between their origins and where they go out between ukraine and russia, which is as a whole, beef complexity. This whole thing, so I want to just correct that it's like the fascinating about wikipedia is in some sense, does little details the matter but in another sense what I felt my saw wikipedia page about me or anybody I know is- is this: is this beautiful canal saving that this person existed? like a community than notices. You says, hung like a like

little, you see like a like a butterfly that floats and you're like ha. That is not just any butterflies that one I like that. One where you see a puppy or something or ah or it's big pen. I remember this one as the scratch and you get in that way, unless the beautiful thing in its main may be it, very silly of me a naive, but I feel like Wikipedia there is of individuals, is an opportunity to celebrate people. The celebrate ideas fisher and not a battleground of attacks of this kind of stuff we might and on twitter like the mockery, derision, this kind of stuff for sure I enter. Of course you don't want to cherry pick. All of us have flaws and so on, but it just feels like I'm too high

at the controversy of some sort when that doesn't at all represent the entirety of the human ear. Most cases yeah is sad yea, so there's a few things to unpack and all that so first went one of the things I find really always find very interesting. Is you know your status with him? I t okay, that's that's upsetting and it's an argument and can be sorted out. But then what's interesting is you you gave as much time to that which is actually important and relevant to your career and so on, to also where your father was born, which most people hardly notice, but is really meaningful to you, and I find that a lot when I talk to people over a biography of wikipedia is there often is annoyed by a tiny error that no one's gonna notice like this town in Tajikistan has s, got a new

and so I like nobody, even those what that means or whatever, but he can be super important. And so that's that's one of the reasons you know four biographies. We say like human dignity, really matters as oh. You know, some of the things have to do with since this is a common debate that goes on in wikipedia is what we call undue weight. So I give are given example: there was a park I stumbled across many years ago, About the mare, I know he was a mere. He was a city council. Member of I think, his pure illinois, but some small town and in the mid west and the end You know he's been on the city council for thirty years or whatever he's pretty me frankly, he boring guy and seemed like a good local city politician, but it's very short biography. There were as a whole paragraph along paragraph about it. Son being arrested for do you. I am

clearly undue weight. So what does this got to do with this guy? If it, and deserves a mention. It wasn't even clear had he done anything hypocritical had he done himself anything wrong, It was his son. His son got a dui, that's never great, but happens to people, and it doesn't seem like a massive scandal for your dad. So of course, I just took that out immediately. This is a long long time ago and that's the sort of thing where We have to really think about in a biography and about controversies to say: is this a real? which verses in general, like one of the things we we tend to say is like any section. So if there's a biography and there's a section called controversies, that's actually poor practice because it just invites people to say. Oh, I want to work on this entry through their seven. Sections of this was quite

work can add something for a go out and find some more controversies. Not that's nonsense, right and in general, putting it separate from everything else kind of makes it seem worse and also doesn't put it in the right context. Whereas if it's sort of a lie flow in there is a controversy, there's always potential controversy for anyone. It should just be sort of worked into the over all article extended that doesn't become a temptation you can contextualize appropriately and so forth. So that's, you know, that's part of the whole process, but For me, one of the most important things is is what I call community health so yeah. Are we going to get it wrong? Sometimes yeah, of course we're humans and doing good quality. You know sort of reference. Material is hard question is how do people react to a criticism or a complaint or a concern? And if the reaction is defensiveness or come

I have this bag or, if someone's, really sort of in there being aggressive and in the wrong like no no no hold on we gotta. Do this the right way you gotta say: okay hold on you know. Are there good sources? Is this contextual as appropriately? Is it even important enough dimension, and what does it mean? Ah, you know as an and sometimes one of the the the areas where I do think there is a very complicated floor and an youth alluded to it a little bit but is like we know the media is deeply flawed. We know that journalism you can go wrong and I would say, particularly in the last forever fifteen years, we ve seen a real decimation of local media locally. Papers, we see a real rise and click bait headlines and four of eager focus on anything that might be controversial. We ve always had that with his course have always been tabloid. Newspapers

but that makes it a little bit more challenging to say. Ok, how do we? How do we sort things out when we have a pretty good sense that that not every source is valid? So, as an example, a few years ago has been quite a while now we deprecated the male online as a source, I had the mail online. You know the digital arm of the daily mail, it's a tabloid it it's not completely. You know it's not fake news, but it does tend to run very hyped up stories. They they really love to attack people and go on the attack for political reasons and so on, and it just isn't great, and so by saying deprecated, and I think some people say: oh you bound the dilemma. No, we didn't ban it as source. We just said: look it's probably not a great source right. You should probably look for better sources, certainly

in the daily mail runs a headline saying new cure for cancer. So europe, probably there's more serious sources than a tabloid newspapers? So, you know in a in an article about lung cancer, you probably wouldn't side the daily mail at that's kind of ridiculous, but also for celebrities and fourthly, to surrender and well they do cover celebrity gossip a lot, but they also ten have that is and so forth any really have to step back in your room. Really encyclopaedic. Or is this just the daily mail going on around someone requires a great community health again. It requires massive committee, how you'd for me for stuff. I seen this kind of if he about people. I know things. I know about myself. I still feel oh, a love for knowledge emanating the article like inlet, like Hilda community. How so I will take all slight inaccuracies,

How would I love it because that means there's people for the most part. I feel a respect them and love in the search for knowledge like sometimes because I also of stack overflow stock exchange for programming related things, and I can get a little cranky, sometimes two degree words like it's not as like. You could see, you can feel the dynamics of the health of the completing a community. as in sub communities, to like a particular c, sharp or java or python or whatever, like there's little like communities that emerge, you can feel the levels of toxicity cause. A little bit of strictness is good, but all too much is bad because of the defensiveness cause. When somebody writes an answer and then somebody else kind of says will modify and get defensive and there's this. Ah, Tension is not conducive to like improving towards a more truthful depiction of like what it without that top. Oh yeah, a great example:

really loved this morning that I saw some I left a note on my user talk page in english wikipedia saying it was quite traumatic, headlining, racist hook on front page. We have on the front page of Wikipedia, we have little technical did you know and it's just little tidbits and facts as things people find interesting, there's a whole process. Things get there. I'm the one that somebody was raising a question about was was come during a very well known: u s! Football player black! There was a quote from another famous sport person comparing him to a lumber. Guinea clearly a compliment, and so somebody said actually here's a study here, some interesting information about how black sports people are far more often compare. Two inanimate objects and, given that kind of analogy in I think, is demeaning to compare a person to a car how message center, but they said I'm not I'm

with pulling I'm not deleting it. I'm not removing. I just want to raise the question and then there's this really interesting conversation that goes on where I think the general consensus was. You know it this isn't like. Like the alarming headline racist thing on the front page Wikipedia that a whole holy moly, that sounds bad, but it's sort of like I'm actually at this. This probably isn't the sort of analogy that we think is great. so we should probably think about how to improve our language and not not compare sports people to inanimate objects and particular be aware of certain racial sensitivities that there might be around that thing. If there is a disparity in the media of how people are called my star in nothing for me to weigh in on here. This is a good conversation. Like nobody saying you know, people should be banned if they refer to what was his name. The fridge refrigerator, perry that

in a very famous comparison to an inanimate object of a chicago bears player many years ago, but they're just saying hey, let's be careful about analogies that we just pick up from the media as any meaner, less good. and the sort of deprecation of new sources really interesting, because I think what you are saying is also. Well, he you want to make a article by article decision, kind of use, your own judgment, and it's such a subtle thing, because the there's just a lot of hit pieces written about individuals like myself, for example, that masqueraders kind of an objective, thorough exploration of a human being?

he is fascinating to watch, because controversy in headpieces just kept more clicks hurry, and this is, I guess, as a wikipedia contributor, you start to deeply become aware of that and start to have a sense, like a radar of click bait versus truth like to to pick out the truth from the click baby, tat language, oh yeah, I mean it's, it's really important and in a way we talk a lot about weasel words you know and you actually I am sure, will end up talking about a high in chechnya. Immunity, but just quickly mention in this area? I think one of the potentially powerful tools and will because it is quite good at this. I have played around with and practice did quite a lot but chat. Gb. T four is is really quite able to to take a passage and or point out.

potentially bias terms until to rewrite it to be more neutral. None. It is a bit anodyne in it's a bit. You know cliched, so sometimes it just takes the spirit out of something that's actually not bad. It's just like you know: poetic language and you're like well. Okay, that's not actually helping, but in many cases I think that sort of thing is quite entering and I'm also interest then you know: can you imagine where you you feed in a wikipedia entry and all the sword, This is an you say. I help me. In anything in the article that is not accurately reflecting what's in the sources and that doesn't have to be perfect, it only has to be good enough to be useful to the community. So if, if it scans view of an article and all the sources- and you say- oh, it came back with ten suggestions and seven of them were decent and three of them. It just didn't understand

well, actually, that's probably worth my time to do, and it can help us. You know really more quickly get good people to serve review, obscure entries and things like that. So just as a small aside on that and will probably talk about language model, not a bit or a lot more. But the articles, one the headpieces pieces about me now, the journalists actually was, very straightforward and honest. about having used jpg right part of the article which was and then finding that it made an error and apologize for the air that you pity for generated, which, as this kind of interesting loop without the articles are used to write wikipedia pages. Have you believe strain or on wikipedia and others like this interesting, loop, where we are working in the nuances, can get lost or can profit

even though there not ground in reality, as somehow the generation of the language model. New truths can be created in linger here there's a famous web comic. That's titled psycho genesis, which is about half something and errors in Wikipedia and there's no source for the lazy journalist reads it and writes the source and then some helpful, wikipedia and spot that has a source, finds a source and adds it to Wikipedia. And while I magic this happened to me, wanted it to like nearly happened and that there was this happened. It was really

if I went back and researched like this, is really odd, so biography magazine, which is a magazine published by the biography tv channel and how to press a profile of me in it said, ah, in his spare time, I'm not quoting exactly have been many years, but in his spare time he enjoys playing chess with friends. I thought wow. That sounds great like I would like to be that guy, but actually I mean I play chess with my kids sometimes, but no, I are not it's not a hobby of mine and ah, Did they get that and I contacted the magazine submit that comfortably within Wikipedia that I'd looked in the history there had been vandalism of wikipedia which was not it's not damaging. It's just false, so and it ordered been removed. But then I thought oh gosh, for a better mention this to people, because otherwise its somebody's gonna be there and they got out of the train, is gonna. Take a life of its own and then Sometimes I wonder if it has, because I've been. I was invited a few years ago to do the same

one. Your first move in the world chess championship, and I thought I wonder if they think I'm a really big chess enthusiast, because they read this biography magazine articles though, but that that when we think about large language models and the ability of quickly generate very plausible, but not true content, I think so. that there's gonna be a lot of shake out a lot of implications of that What would be hilarious is because of the social pressure wikipedia. and the momentum, you would actually start playing a lot more chess adjusted an early articles are written based on, pity about your own life trajectory changes because more convenient aspire to aspire to europe what aspirations are and what? If we just talk about that before we come back to some other interesting topics on wikipedia Let's talk about you pity for now large language models,

so they are in part trained on wikipedia content death. What are the pros and cons of these language model? What thoughts your so I mean there's a lot of stuff going on how I see the technologies move very quickly in the last six months and looks poised to do so for some time to come. So first things. First, I mean part of our philosophy. Is the open licensing, the free licensing, the idea that you know, This is what we're here for we, we are a volunteer community and we write this an encyclopedia. We give it to the world to do what you like with you, can modify it redistribute it redistribute modified versions commercially non commercially. This is this is the licensing so in that sense, of course, is completely fine. Now we do worry a bit about attribution and because it is a creative commons,

Bhushan share alike license, so attributes is important not just because of our licensing model and things like that. But it's just proper attribution is just good intellectual practice and so and that's a really hard complicated question. Do you know if, if I were to write something about my visit here, I might say in a blog post, you know I was in austin, which is a city in texas, I'm not going to put a source for awesome as a city in texas. That's just general knowledge. I learned it somewhere. I can't tell you where, so you don't have to cite and reference every single thing, but you know if I actually did research and I use something- we're heavily- it's just proper, morally proper to give your sources

We would like to see that and obviously you know they call it grounding, or so particular people at Google are really keen on figuring out, grounding technical terms of grant well, as any taxes generated trying to grow did to the wikipedia Although source source by means of a clear decision cut a standard of what a water source means that will competing uses. The same kind there's a phone call generate yet, but you gotta some kind of thing and of course one of the biggest flaws in charge of pity right now is that it just literally will make things just to be Amy I think its programme to be very hopeful and amiable and causing really know or care about the truth and give it boy into can. Can we convince if you took this well but like this morning, I was out at the story was selling earlier about comparing football player to a lumber guinea

I thought is that really racial? I don't know I'm just I'm mulling it over and if I'm going to go to chubby t, so I said to chat djibouti, for I said you know this. This happened in Wikipedia. Can you think of examples where a white athlete has been compared to a fast car inanimate object, and it comes back with a very plausible essay where it tells you know why these analogies are common in sport model. As I know, no, I really out. Could you give me some specific example so it gives me three specific examples, very plausible, correct names of athletes and contemporaries and all that could have been through Google

We single quote, and none of them existed at all, I'm like! Well, that's really, not good. Like I, I wanted to explore a thought process. How was an author? I thought? First, I thought: how do I google and then, when it's kind of a hard thing to go, because unless somebody has written about this specific topic, it's in a buffer, how it's language model it can process all this data can probably piece that together will, but it just can't yet so I think I hope that Tat you pity five, six, seven, you know three to five years, I'm hoping will see a much higher level of accuracy where, when you ask a question like that, I think, instead of being quite so eager to please by giving you a, plausible will answer is to say don't know, or maybe I'd display the, how much bullshit, maybe this generated tat,

am really would like to make you happy right now, but I'm really stretched thin with his general. Well, it's it's one of the things I I've said for a long time, so in in Wikipedia one of the great things we do, may not be great for our reputation, except in a deeper sense for the long term. I think it is but you know, will laugh be a notice that says the neutrality of this section has been disputed or the following section doesn't cite any sources, and I always joke you know. Sometimes I wish the new york times would rather a banner saying the neutrality of this has been disputed. That could give us that we had a big fight in the newsroom as to whether to run this or not. But we thought it's important enough to bring it to boot, but just be aware that not all the journalists are on board with. Oh, that's actually interesting and that's fine. I trust them more. For that level, transparency. So, yes, Emily tragedy should say yeah. Eighty seven percent bullshit, for the new one is really interesting. Is that basically summary of the discuss that are going on underneath they'll be amazing? If,

We should be honest. I don't look at the top page. Often it would be nice somehow if those it's kind of us marie in the in this banner way of like this lots of wars have been fought on this here land. If, for this here paragraph, it's really interesting yeah, I hadn't thought that, because we want a things, I do spend a lot of something about these days and People have found it we're moving slowly, but you know we are moving thinking about. Ok, these tools exist are their ways that this stuff can be useful to our community. Have because a part of it as we do pros things in a non commercial way in a really deep sense, a site. It's it's been great, that what he believes become very popular but really were just were a community whose hobbes writing the cyclopaedia that's first and if its popular gray, if it's not ok, we might have trouble paying from more servers by

it'll be fine. So how do we help the community use these tools? What are the ways that these workers working when one example? I never thought about? I'm gonna start playing with it. You know feeding the article of feeding the talk page and say: can you suggest some warnings in the article based on the conversations the talk page? I think my might be good at that it might get it wrong, sometimes but again, if it's reasonably successful at doing that- and you can say- oh actually yeah, it does suggest you know. The neutrality of this has been disputed on a section that has a seven page discussion in the back. That might be useful to know where to play with I mean some more color, not neutrality, but also. The amount of emotion leading in the exploration of this particular near the top ere it might. It might actually help you look at more controversial pay.

It just all again, you know a page on the war in ukraine or a page on Israel and palestine. There could be parts that everyone agrees on in those parts there Jes. I tough tough, the harp cohesion be nice to when looking at those beautiful long. Articles to know like I let me just taken some stuff wherever you go on give an example that I haven't looked at long time, but I was really pleased with what I saw at the time so that the discussion was that their building, something in israel and for their own political reasons, one side causing a war coming back to the berlin wall, apartheid either causing the security fence. So we can understand quite quickly if we give

moment's thought like okay. I understand why people would have this this grappling over the language like okay, you want to highlight the negative aspects of this and you want to highlight the positive aspects so you're going to try and choose a different name, and so there was this really fantastic, wikipedia discussion on the talk page. How do we word that paragraph to talk about the different naming? It's called this by israelis called this by palestinians and that how you explain that to people could be quite charge right. You can easily explain out, there's this difference and this because this sides good in the sun's battlements one there's a difference or you could say. Actually, let's go let's try and really stay as neutral as we can and try to explain the reasons. So you may come away from it with with a concept, ok. I understand what this debate is about now

and just the term Israel, palestine conflict is still the title of a page of Wikipedia. the word conflict is something that is a charged word, of course yeah, because, ah from the palestinian side or from ah certain sides, the war conflict doesn't actually describe the situation. Because if you see it as a genocide, one way genocide does not a conflict because to the two two people that are discuss the arm that challenge the word conflict they see. No conflict is one there's two equally powerful cycle riding yeah. You know it's it's hard and you know, and in a number of cases, so this is actually speaks to a slightly broader phenomenon, which is their number cases where There is no one word that can get consensus and in the body of an article

that's, usually, ok, because we can explain the whole thing you can come away with them. Standing of white side wants to use a certain word, but there are some aspects of it. Like the pages have a title, so you know there's that same thing with such certain things like photos, you know it's like well there's. different photos which one's best lot of different views on that. But at the end of the day you need the lead photo because there's one slot for a lead photo categories is another one, and so one point. I have no idea it's in there today, but I don't think so. I was listed in our current american entrepreneurs by american atheists, and I said I don't that doesn't feel right to me like just personally it's true, I mean I wouldn't wouldn't disagree with the objective fact of it, but when you click the

category and you see sort of a lot of people who are, you might say, american atheist activist cause. That's their big issue, so madeline marie O'Hare or various famous people who have richard Dawkins, who make it a big part of their public argument and persona. But that's not true of me as just like my private personal belief. It doesn't really it's not something I campaign about, so it felt weird to put me in the category but like what category would you put you know, and and do you need that in this case I was, I argued that doesn't need that catholic? That's not! I don't speak about it publicly, except incidentally, from time to time. I don't campaign about it. So it's weird to put me with this group of people that argument here that I hope not just because it was me, but but categories can be like that, where you know you're either in the category or you're not, and sometimes it's a lot more complicated than that, and is it again we go back to is an undue wait. You know if firm

Someone who is now prominent in public life and generally considered to be a good person was convicted of thing. Let's say: do you I when they were young, normally a normal sort of discourse. We don't think, oh, this person should be in the category of american criminals because you think are criminal. Yet, technically speaking, it's against the law to drive under the influence of alcohol and you were arrested and you spend the money. In prison or whatever? But it's odd to say, that's a criminal, so she says and like example in the series, are mark wahlberg, Marky mark, that's what I was thinking. The mask was that was his first sort of famous name who wouldn't think should be listed as in the category american criminal, even though he did, he was convicted of quiet crime when he was a young person, but we don't think of him as a criminal. Should the entry talk about

that yeah, it's actually that's actually an important part of his life story. You know he had a very rough use and he could have you're, gonna, really dark path, and he turned his life around this actually interesting. So categories are tricky, especially with people. Because we liked assign labels to people and ideas somehow and those levels, yeah and there's certain words that have a lot of power like criminal, like political left, right center e, an anarchist objectivist or what other philosophies are there, marxists, communists, social democrats, democratic lists socialist, and they give you add that as a category also like oh boy, you're that guy now here dunno. If you wanted some definitely some really charged ones are like alt right, I think, is quite a quiet, complicated and tough.

I mean it's not completely meaningless label but boy. I think you really have to pause before you actually put that label on someone, partly because now you're putting them in a group of people, some of whom are quite you, wouldn't want to be grouped with So it's here, let's go into some of you mentioned the hot water of the poor. They were both had been at all. When do you think we're? Peter has a left, leaning political bias, which is something that is sometimes accused of yeah. So I don't think so not broadly, and- and you know, I think you can always point to specific entries and talk about specific biases, but that's part of the process of Wikipedia anyone can comment, challenge and enter to go on about that. But you know I see fairly often on twitter. You know some herb, you know, took quite extreme accusations of bias and I think you know actually I just I don't see it. I don't buy that and if you ask people for an example,

they normally struggle and depending on who they are and what it's about so It certainly true that some people who have quite fringe viewpoints and who knows the fool. Rush of history and five hundred years, they might be considered to be pat breaking geniuses bought at the moment quite friendly views, It is on happy that we keep hearing, it doesn't report on their friend views as being mainstream and that by the way, goes across all kinds of fields I mean I was once a cost it on the street, the outside the two, the conference in vancouver by a guy who's. A homeopathic

very upset that wikipedia entry on homeopathy basically says it's pseudoscience and he felt that was biased. I said I can't really help you, because you know it sites, we say good quality sources to talk about the scientific status and it's not very good, so you know it depends. And ah you know, I think it's something that we it should always be vigilant about, and but it's a you know in general. I think we're pretty good and I think any time you go to any serious or political controversy, we should have a pretty balance perspective on who saying what? What these are and so forth. I would actually argue that they think the areas where we are more likely to have by us that persist for a long period of time or actually fairly obscure things or maybe fairly non political things. Ivy skiff is kind of a humorous example, but it's

this meaningful, if you read, are entries about japanese anime They tend to be very, very positive and very favourable, because almost no one knows about japanese anna makes up for france, and so the people com is in their days riding japanese anime articles. They love it kind of have an inherent love for the whole area and, of course, being human being other internal debates and disputes about what's better alone, but in general they're. There quite possibly has nobody actually cares on anything that people are quite passionate about then, hopefully you know there's like quite a lot of interesting stuff, so I'll give an example, a contemporary example, where I think we've done a good job of my most recent sort of look at it, and that is that the question about the efficacy of masks during the covered pandemic, and that's an area where I would say the public authorities really kind of jerked us all around bet. You know

very first day. They said whatever you do, don't rush out a by masks Their concern was the shortages in hospitals. Okay, fair enough later, everybody's gotta wear a mask everywhere: it's it really works really well in its. You know then now I think it's the evidence is mixed massing to help, in my personal view, massing to help their no huge burden You know you might as well america, where a mask in any environment, where you're with a giant crowd of people and so forth, but its very politicized that one as very politicized where certainly in the you ass, you know much more I mean I live in the uk of unleaded I've. Never seen on the streets, sort of kind of thing that I there's a lot of reports of people,

actively angry, because someone else's wearing a mask that sort of thing in public and so because it became very politicized. Then clearly, if, if Wikipedia Latona, if you go to Wikipedia new research, this topic, I think you'll find more or less what I've just certainly young, actually efforts. All you know to this point in history its mixed evidence like massing to help, but maybe not as much as some of the authority certain and here we are and that's kind of it, an example where I think okay, we've done a good job, but I suspect there are people on both sides of that very emotional debate who think this is ridiculous. Hopefully we've got quality sources. So then, hopefully those people who read this can say. Oh actually, you know it is complicated. You know if you can get to the point of saying okay: this is, I have my view by understand other views, and do you think it's a complicated question great now hour, a little bit more mature as a society without one is an interesting one, because I feel like. I hope that that article also count

the matter conversation about the pool the decision of that topic. You enemies almost more interesting then the masks war cannot, as at this point, is like wide became. Masks, became a symbol of the oppression of a centralized government, if you were them, you're, a sheep that follows the man control mass hysteria over terry regime, and if you don't a mask than you a size, higher anti vaccine, a alt right, probably a nazi exactly and that that whole politicization of society is just so damaging, and I dont no, they brought her in the broader were like. How do we start to fix that? That's a really hard question,

every moment because you mention mainstream infringe and there seems to be attention here, and I wonder where your philosophy is on it, because this maize, from my ideas, fringe ideas. You look at lab leak theory for for this virus. That could be other things we can discuss where There is a mainstream narrative. Well, if you just look at the percent of the population or the population with platforms, what they say and then what is it more percentage in opposition to that, and what is Wikipedia is responsibility too. Actually represent both the mainstream. The french do you think. While I mean I think we we have to try to do our best to to recognize both, but also to appropriately contextualize, and so this can be quite hard critically when emotions are high. That's just a fact about human,

things. I I'll give a simpler example, because there's not a lot of emotion around it. Our entry on the moon doesn't say some say the moons made of rocks some say cheese. You know who knows that kind of force. Neutrality is not what we want to get too like that, doesn't make any sense, but that means easy, like we all understand I think there is a will be the entry called something like the moon is made of cheese where it talks about is the common sort of joke word before the children say or that people tell to chill? or whatever you know, it's just the thing. It's everybody's heard moves made of cheese, but nobody thinks like wikipedia is so one sided, doesn't even acknowledged the cheese theory. I say the same thing about flat earth. again I I go, what I'm looking up enough Harry little controversy

and we will have an entry about flat earth theory, theorizing flat earth people, and my personal view is most of the people who claim to be flat. Earthers are just having a laugh, trolling and more power to them have some fun, but let's not be, ridiculous, but force for most of human history. People believe that the earth is flat, so the art I am looking at is actually kind of focusing on this history flat earth is an archaic incentive, could disproven conception of their shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to flat earth cosmos graphy with pretty cool pictures of wolf. it would look like with dragon. Z dragged no angels on the on the edge there's a lot of controversy about that. What is it the edge Is it the wall as in angels and dragons? Is there a dome and how can you fly from ah but of africa to perth, because on a flat earth views That's really too far for any plan to make it one another spread out

What I want to knows, what's, on the other side, jimmy with the other side as what all of us want to know, yeah and so there's some, I presume, there's probably a small section about the conspiracy theory of a earth I think, there's a sizeable play the population who at least will say they believe in a fighter earth yeah I think it is a movement. that. Just says that the mainstream narrative to have distrust, this is shown by the mainstream narrative which, to a very small timorese, probably very productive thing to do- is part of the scientific process by get a little silly and ridiculous with it yeah I mean yeah it it it's exactly right, and so I you know I, I find on on many many cases, and of course I like anybody else might quibble about this- is that any wikipedia article but in general I think there is a pretty good sort of willingness, and indeed

you're, not to say, let's less fairly represent all of the meaningfully important size so that there is still a lot unpacking that right so meaningfully important. So you know people who are raising questions about the efficacy of masks. Ok, that's actually, a reasonable, to have a discussion about, and hopefully we should treat that as a as a fair calmer. patient to have actually address which authorities have said what and so on and so forth. And then you know there are other cases where it's not meaningful proposition. You know, like you just wouldn't say. If he I mean I I doubt if the main article moon it may mention cheese, but probably not even because it credible is not even meant to be serious by anyone or the article on the earth.

Certainly won't have a paragraph says: well, most scientists think its round, but certain people think flat, like us silly thing to put in that article. You would want a sort of address. You know, that's an interesting cultural phenomenon. Europe put it somewhere So this this the end of this goes into all kinds of things about politics. You wanna be really careful, really thoughtful about not getting caught up in the anger of our times and really recognize theirs. I I always thought I remember being really proud of the? U s at the time when it was Mccain, was running against obama has her. I've got plenty of disagreements with both of them, but they both seem like thoughtful, eventually p. hu, I would have different disagreements with, but I always felt like, like that. That's good now we can have a debate that we can open it: I think debate and it isn't just sort of people slam each other personal attacks and so forth.

and you're saying Wikipedia has also represented that out so yeah and I think so in in the main. Obviously, you can always find a debate that went horribly wrong because there's humans involved, but speaking of those humans I would venture to guess I dunno if the data may beaten, let me know, but the perks. no political leanings of the group of people who eta Wikipedia probably liese, left, I would guess to jimmy the questioners I mean the same- is true for so called valley. The task for so called values to create platform- they're, not political bias, even though there is a biased the engineers who created- and I think I believe it's possible to do that at you know, there's kind of a conspiracy theories that it somehow is impossible and there's this whole conspiracy.

the latter is controlling sought. I think I think engineers for the most part went to create pie, forms that are opening unbiased that are the creed, all kinds of prospective costs that super citing to have all kinds of perspectives battle. It out, but yet still is there is there a degree to which the personal political vice of the editors my? She been in silly ways in a big way. Silly ways could be. I think, wholesale correct in saying this. but the right we'll call it the democratic party and the left, who called the democratic party, the subtle, with that. I had always case my ear. We're like a wee children here I wouldn't like, were literally taking words and like just jabbing into each other like arrogant. give a capital as a thing in a certain way, or I can like just just take a word- a mess of them if necessary We have high his words, but you can also in or have a

a big away about, ah about beliefs, about various perspectives and political events and ah hunter Biden's laptop on how big of a story that is or not have been, censorship of their stories are not now kind of, and then there's these camps. To take very strong points any construct, big narratives around that any emmy, it's very sizeable per of the population, believes two narratives that compete with each other loom. Yeah, I mean it's, it's really interesting and it feels by its hard to judge the the sweep of history within your own lifetime, but it feels like it's gotten much worse that this idea, as to parallel universes, where people can agree on certain basic facts or feels worse than it used to be, and I'm not sure if that's true or if it just feels that way, but also am not or what the causes are. I think I would lay a lot of the blame in

in recent years. On social media, algorithms and wit, Three click made headlines which reward tweets there Go viral and they go viral because their cute and clever I mean my most successful tweet ever five fairly wide margin, some reporter treated it elon musk because he was come about wikipedia or something you should by wikipedia am I just wrote not for sale, and you know Ninety zillion retweets and people liked it, and it was all very good, but I'm like you know what it's cute line right and it's a good like mic drop and all that- and I I was pleased with myself mike- is really discourse right. It's not really sort of that. What I like to do, but it's what social media really rewards, which is kind of a lets. You and him have a fight. That's worth.

It is it's funny because at the time I was I was texting with elon, who is very pleasant to me and all is tat. He might have been a little bit shitty the reporter mobility, but shitty by EU, fed into the shady less knocking funnier response through not for sale, like. Where do you I? What so that's a fireman? exchange and you could probably, after that, laugh it off and on like that kind of mechanism that rewards the snark yeah, I can go into viciousness yeah yeah, we'll limp, and we certainly I see it online. You know I like a a a series of tweets. You know sort of a a a a a tweet thread of fifteen It's that assesses the quality evidence for masks, pros and cons and sort of where this has not gonna go viral. You know, but you know a smack down for a famous politician who is famous,

in favor of mask who also went to a dinner. Didn't wear a mask, that's going to go viral and you know that that's partly human nature and you know people loved, call out hypocrisy and and all that, but it's partly what these systems elevate automatically. I talk about this with respect to facebook. Also. I think facebook has done a pretty good job, others taken longer than it should in some cases. But you know if you have a. A very large following and you're, really spouting hatred or or misinformation. Disinformation theyve kick people off, they ve done some reasonable things yeah, but actually the deeper issue is of this. This sum, the anger we're talking about of the the contentiousness of everything,

I make of a family example with two great stereotypes. So one day the the crackpot racist uncle and one the sweet grandma- and I always want to point out, but all of my uncles and my family were wonderful people, so I didn't have a track, but reza everybody knows the stereotype was a grandma She just posts like sweet comments on the kids pictures and congratulates people on their wedding anniversary and crackpot uncles. Posting is nonsense. And normally sort of at christmas day everybody roles her eyes, only uncle frank, serious public, gonna say some races comment and we're not. When to shut up, or you know, maybe less non inviting this year. The normal human drama he's got his three mates down at the pub who listen to him and and all of that, but now grandma's got. You know. Fifty four followers on facebook, which is

intimate family and racist uncle has seven her fourteenth he's. Not a massive influence or whatever, but how did this happen as the algorithm notices. Oh, when when she posts nothing happens, he posts, and then everybody jumps in a golf cart shut up uncle frank- and I like that's outrageous and it's like oh there's, engagement, there's. users adds right an and those algorithms. I think they're working to improve that, but it's really hard for them. It's hard to improve that. If that actually is working, if the people who are saying things that get engagement, if it's not too awful, but it's just like maybe it's not a racist like over, maybe cynically pose a lot about what an idiot Biden is right which isn't necessarily an offensive or block of or banipal thing, and it shouldn't be. But if that's the discourse thickets elevated because

it, gets a rise out of people, then suddenly in a society, it's like. Oh this is we get more of what we reward. So I, I think that's a piece of what's gone on. Well, if we could just take that tangent, I'm having a conversation with mark Zuckerberg a second time there's something in common on how to decrease toxicity and that particular platform. Facebook. You also have worked on creating a social network that is less toxic yourself. You can we just talk about the different ideas. That these already big social network can do and what you have no right to do so. A piece of it is it's hard, so I dont that the problem with making a recommendation to facebook is there I actually believe their business model mix it really hard for them and I'm not anti capital I'm not gonna great somebody's business there making money. That's not that's not where I come from,

but certain business models mean you are going to prioritize things that maybe aren't that long term healthful, and so that's a big piece of it. So certainly for facebook, you could say you know, with vast resources, start to prioritize content. That's higher quality! That's healing! That's kind of try not to prioritize content. That seems to be just getting a rise if people mothers are vague human descriptions right, but I do believe good machine running algorithms. You can't optimizing slightly different ways, but to do that you may have to say actually were not necessarily gunnar increase pay to to the maximum extent. Right now- and I said this to people at at facebook- it's like you know if, if your actions are

you a convincing people that you're breaking western civilization, that's a really bad for business in the long run. Certainly these days I say twitter is it's on people's minds as being more upsetting at the moment, but I think it's true, and so one of the things that really interesting about facebook compared to a lot of companies is that more cars. the unprecedented amount of power, his ability to new members of the board to his control of the company is, is pretty hard to break, even if financial results are as good as they could be, because he's taken a step back from the perfect optimization to say actually for the long term health in the next fifty years, of this organisation. We need to rein in some of the things that are working for us in making money because there actually giving us a bad reputation. So one of the rare

conditions I would say is- and this is not to do with the algorithms all that, but you know about system a moratorium on all political advertising. I don't think it's their most profit, segment, but it's given rise to a lot of deep hard questions about dark money about you know adds that are run by questionable people, a push, false nurses or in other class. It kind of thing. Is you run? I thought I saw story about breaks it in the uk where we were not about there were, adds run too animal rights activists saying finally murmur out from under europe, the uk can pass proper animal rights. Legislation were not constrained by the european process. Similarly, for people who are

advocates of fox hunting to say finally, murat of Europe. We can we can it reemployment, so you telling people what they want to hear and in some cases it's really hard for journalists to see that so it used to be I think that for political advertising, you really needed to find some kind of mainstream nerve, and this is still true to an extent, mainstream narrative that sixty percent of people can say. Oh I can buy into that which meant it pushed you to the center. It pushed you to sort of try and find some nuanced balance. But if your main method of recruiting people is an a tiny, no one on one conversation with them, because you're able to target using targeted teasing. Suddenly you don't need consistent using a really good targeting operation, really good. Cambridge,

political style, machine learning, algorithm data to convince people, and that just feels really problematic. So I mean until they can think about how to solve that problem, or just say you know what it's going to cost us x amount, but it's gonna be worth it to try to say you know what we actually think our political advertising policy hasn't really helped contribute to dot discourse and dialogue and finding reasoned a middle ground and compromise solution, so let's just not do that for a while until we figure that out, that's, maybe a piece of advice and end bored with. As you were saying recommendation, As for the news feed in another context, that dog, always optimize engagement, but optimize the long term So, while being imbalance and growth of a human being yeah, it's very difficult problem is faced with a difficult problem. Yeah- and you know so in in with a deputy, social, wikitree, social,

we're launching in a few months time a completely new system domain name, new new lots of things, but the idea is to say: let's, let's focus on trust people can rate each other as trustworthy rate, continous trustworthy. You have to start from somewhere. So we'll start with a core base of our tiny community. Who, I think are sensible. Thoughtful people want to recruit more, but to say you know an actual. Let's have that as a pretty strong element I say, let's not optimize, based on what gets the most page views in this session. Let's optimize on what sort of the feedback people is this is meaningfully enhancing my life, so part of that is, and probably not a good business model, but part of that is that ok, we're not going to pursue an advertising business model, but a dinner membership model where you can you have to be a member, but you can pay to be a member. You maybe get some benefit from

but in general to say actually the problem with ever and I actually the the division I would say, is and that the analogy I would give is broadcast television funded by advertising gives you a different result than paying four hbo paying for netflix paying for whatever and the reason is you know if you think about it. If what what your incentive as a tv producer countries? comedy for abc network. In the. U s, we basically say I want something that almost everybody will lie. I can listen to sweat, tends to be a little blander. You know family friendly whatever, whereas if you say oh actually, I'm going to use the h b, o example in an old example

you say you know what sopranos isn't for everybody: sex and the city isn't for everybody, but between the two shows, we've got something for everybody that they're willing to pay for, so you can get edgier higher quality. In my view, content rather saying it's gotta, not offend. Anybody in the world is gotta before every body, which is really hard. The same thing you know here in a social network of your business was avatar and it's to drive you in one direction. It your business model, It's membership. I think it drives you in a different direction. I actually- and I said this to elon and about twitter blue, which I think wasn't rolled out well and so forth, but like the piece of that that I, like is to say, look actually, if there's a model where your revenue is coming from people who are willing to pay for the service, even if it's only part of your revenue. If it's a substantial part that does change your broader incentive to say actually are people going to be willing to pay for something? That's actually just toxicity in there.

Wives, and now, I'm not sure it's been rolled out. Well, I'm not sure how it's going and maybe I'm wrong about that as a has a plausible business model, but I do think it's interesting to think about just in in in broad terms, business model drives outcomes, sometimes surprising ways unless you really paused to think about it so begin we linger on twitter any on before I would love Thought you bought the underlying business model, Wikipedia, which is this brilliant, bold move. the very beginning, but let's, since you mentioned twitter, what do you think works? What you think is broken about twitter wears a long conversation, but

two to start with one of the things that I always says, it's a really hard problem, so I can see that right up front. I said this about. You know the old ownership of twitter and new ownership of twitter, because, unlike wikipedia- and this is true actually for for all social media, there's a box and the box basically says what do you think? What's on your mind, we can write whatever the hell you want in right. That's a true. By the way, even for for youtube, I mean the boxes upload, a video, but again it's just like an open, ended invitation to express yourself and what makes that hard, as some people have real

The toxic really bad. You know some people are very aggressive, they're, actually stalking, they're. Actually, you know abusive and suddenly you deal with a lot of problems, whereas at Wikipedia there is no boxer says. What's on your mind, there's a box that says this is an entry about the moon. Please be neutral, please let your facts then there's a talk page, which is not coming rant about donald trump. If you go on the talk page of the donald trump entry and you just start ranting about donald

some people will say what are you doing like stop doing that, like we're not here to discuss like there's a whole world of the internet out there for you to go and rant about. Donald trump is just not fun to do on Wikipedia, as somehow has fun on twitter, while also on Wikipedia people are going to say, stop and actually are you here to tell us are like how can we improve the article or are you just here to rant about trump cause? That's not actually interesting, so because the the goal is different, so that's just admitting and hinted at saying upfront. This is a hard problem, certainly, and I'm I'm right in the book on trust herm, so the ideas are in on the last twenty years. We've lost trust, you know in all kinds of institutions and politics. You know that the edelman trust barometer surveys been done for a long time and trust in politicians, trust in journalism. It's it's come declined substantially and I think in many cases deservedly. So how do we restore trust? And how do we think about that? I entered this.

Also include trust in the idea of truth. Trust, any idea of truth that even the concept of facts and truth is really really important and they and the idea of uncomfortable truths. This is really important now, so it when we, when we look at twitter night- and we say we can see okay, this is really hard. So here here's my my story about twitter, it's two part story and, and it's all pre elon musk ownership. So many years back, somebody accused me of horrible crimes on on twitter, and I you know like anybody, would I thought you know I'm in the public eye people say bad things. I don't really know. I brush it off whatever I'm like. This is actually really bad like accusing me

of pedophilia like this is not okay. So far, I'm going to report this, so I click report, the report, the tweet, there's five, others in a report and go through the process, and then I get an email that says you know whatever couple of hours later saying a thank you for your report, we're looking into this grey, okay, good, then several hours further, I got an email back saying. Sorry, we don't see anything here to violate our terms of use like okay saw, email, jack and shr come on like this is ridiculous and he emails back roughly saying yet sorry jimmy, don't worry, we'll we'll sort, esops, and I just thought to myself. You know what that's not the point where I'm Jimmy wales, I know Jack dorsey, I can email jack dorsey, IL listen to me. Cause he's, got an email from me and sorts it out for me. What about the teenager who's being bullied ah and is getting abuse.

I am getting accusations that aren't true. Are they getting the same kind of like really poor result in that case, so fast forward, a few years same thing happens and that the exact quarterly, as I please me. I'm only ten years old and jimmy wells raped me last week. So come on fuck off, like that's ridiculous, so I report them. I'm like this time. I'm reporting, but I'm thinking but we'll see what happens this one gets even worse. Because then I get the same result. Email back saying We orbitals any problems as our raise it with other members of the board, who I know and jack and like this is really ridiculous. Like this is outrageous and some of the board members, friends of mine, sympathetic and some good for them, but actually got an email back then from the general council had of trust a safety saying

there's nothing in the street. The violates are terms of service. We don't regard and then gave reference to the need to move. If we didn't allow accusations me to move, it is an important thing and I was like one shilling. If someone says I'm ten years old and someone raped me last week, I think the advice should be here's. The phone number of the police, like you need to get the police of of twitter not the place for that accusation. So even back then, by the way they did delete those tweets, but I mean the rationale they gave as spammy behavior right so completely separate from abusing me. It was just like, oh well, they were re tweeting too often, okay, whatever so, like. That's just broken, like that's a system that it's not working for people in the public eye. I'm sure it's not working

for private people who get abuse really horrible abuse can happen. So how is that today will hasn't happened to me since elon took over, but I don't see why it couldn't- and I suspect now, if I send a report and email, someone, there's no one there to email me back because he's gotten rid of a lot of the trust, the safety staff. So I says That problem is still really hard. Just content, moderation at huge scale at huge scales, is really It's like, and I don't know the full answer to this. I mean a piece of it could be, and you know to say, actually making specific allegations of crimes, or this isn't the place to do that. You know. We've got a huge database if you've got an accusation of crime. Here's hoosier call the police, the fbi, whatever it is, it's not to be done in public, and then you do face really complicated questions about me, too movement and people coming forward in

and all of that, but its again is like probably you should talk to a journalist right. Probably there are better avenues, then just tweeting from an account there was created ten days ago, obviously set up to abuse someone. So I think they could do a lot better, but I also admit it's a hard problem and there's also ways to indirectly or more humorously or more mocking way to make the same kinds of accusations. In fact accusations you mentioned. If I were to guess, don't go that viral cause, they're, not funny enough or cutting enough, but if you make a witty and cutting and and it somehow gayer, sometimes actually, indirectly, a short making it These issues directly accusation, I didn't go viral and they can destroy reputations, and you know you had got to watch yourself. Just talk at the narratives takes take hold. You know I mean I remember another case. They didn't bother. Mix it wasn't of that nature, but somebody was saying you know

I'm sure you you're you're, making millions of wikipedia I'm like now I don't even work. There have no salary, and they're, like you're lying, I'm going to check your nine ninety form, which is the us formed for tax reporting for charities, you're, lucky here's, the link go, go, read it and you'll see I'm listed as a board member and my salary is listed as zero. So I you know so that you know things like that. It's like, okay, that one that feels like you're wrong, but I can take that and I can. We can have that debate quite quickly and again it didn't go viral because it was kind of silly and if, if anything would have gone viral, it was me bonding, but that's one, whereas I actually I'm happy to respond because a lot of people don't know that I dont work there and that don't make me

It's I'm not a billion while they they must have that, because it's in most the news media about me, but the other one I didn't respond to publicly, because it's like Barbra streisand effect. You know it's like sometimes calling attention to someone is abusing you who basically has no followers, and so on is just a waste and everything you describing now just something that all of us have to come to. Learn as ever. It is in the public eye hanging out. You have just two always get boy by one of the followers its heart. Just as much as you have a large number of your situation, I think, is echoed in the city. Tens of millions of other species, teenagers and kids it's on yeah. I mean it's actually and an example. So We don't need generally use my picture in the banners anymore on Wikipedia, but we did and then

didn't experiment one year where we tried other people's picture. So one of our developers- and you know what a lovely, very sweet guy, he doesn't look like you're, immediate thought, hey, nerdy silicon valley developer. He looks like a heavy metal dude, because he's got a hand so suddenly. Here he is with long hair and tattoos and and there's there's his sort of say, here's what your money goes for. Here's my my letter ask him where he got massive abuse from media like calling him creepy like really matter and is still being shown, to eighty million people a day are his picture. Not the abuse read the abuse was elsewhere on the internet and he he he was bothered by it, and I thought you know what there is a difference. I actually am in the public eye near. I get huge benefits from being in the public eye. I go around and make public speeches of any random thing. I think of I can write and get published in the new york times and have this interesting life.

He's not a public figure, and so actually he wasn't mad at us ass. He was a man. It was just like yeah. Actually, Suddenly being thrust in the public eye and you get suddenly lots of abuse, which normally think you know if you're a teenager and somebody in your classes abusing you is not going to go viral, so you're only gonna, it's going to be hurtful because it's local and it's your classmates or whatever, but when, when sort of ordinary people go viral, in some abusive way is really really quite tragic and an eye and are even at a small scale. It feels viral my window fibres evenly right, yet five people, your school and there's a room. This feeling, like your surrounded in but he ended the feeling of loneliness. I think what would your speaking too, when you don't have a plot when you ve at least feel like an eye of platform to defend yourself and then this powerlessness?

I think a lot of teenagers definitely feel and a lot of people think you're right and that I think you would just like to people make up stuff about you or lie by you always say mean things by your belief that can feel a crowd, but he didn't flat innocent. turning to whatever that is in our genetics and our biology norm. The way A brain works such as can be a terrifying experience and somehow to correct that I mean, I think, because everybody feels the pain of that everybody say. As the pen, I think, will be forced to except as a decided to figure out a way around me. I think it's really hard to fix, because I don't think that problem isn't necessarily knew. You know someone in high school who writes graffiti this as back. He has a slot and spreads a rumour about what that

I did last weekend, that's always been damaging, has always been hurtful and that's really hard those kinds of attacks they're as old as time itself, the dlc the internet. Now, what do you think about this technology that feels Wikipedia like what community notes and twitter. Do you like it yet I pros and cons: do you scale I do like it. I don't know enough about specifically how it's implemented to really have a very deep view, but I do think it's quite it's the uses I've seen of it I've I found quite good and in some cases I changed my mind. You know it's like I see something and, of course you know that the sort of human tendency is ah to read tweet, something that you hope is true or it that you are afraid is true bore. You know it's like that kind of quick mental act,

and then you know, I saw something that I liked and agreed with, and then a community note under it. That made me think o actually, This is a more nuanced issue. I like that. I think that's really important the house's specifically lamented is a scandal that I don't really know how they ve done it. So I can't really comment on that, but in general I do think it's when you, when you're only mechanisms on twitter and europe, twitter user. You know we know the platform and you got plenty followers in all of that the only mechanisms are re, tweeting or replying blocking, and it's a pretty limited scope and it's kind of good if there's a way to elevate a specific, thoughtful response and it kind of goes to again. Like does the

the rhythm just pick the retweet, or that I mean retreating, not even the algorithm that makes it viral. Like you know, if a palo quello very famous author Alan Scott, like I dunno I haven't, looked lately, he used an eight million twitter followers. I think I looked he's got sixteen million hour whatever or if he retweets something is going to get seen a lot or elon musk. If he retweets something is going to get seen a lot, that's not an algorithm. It's the way the platform works, so it is kind of nice if you have something else and how that something else is design, that's obviously complicated question. What is this interesting thing

what I think twitter's dubai know. Facebook is doing for sure, which is really interesting. So you have what are the signals that a human can provide at scale like in twitter's retweet yup in facebook, as he can share? I figured this basic interactions. You can have comment and so on yet, but there's also a facebook and youtube has this to his arm. Would you like to see more of this? would you like to see less of the posts that sometimes and the thing that the the neural net that's learning from that has to figure out is the intent. Behind you saying I wanna see lots of this. Did you see too much of this content? Already you like it, but you don't want to see so much of it. Are you already figured it out great great, or does this continent I'll make? You feel good this? So me, interpretations are like decision, or this

what, if you get that kind of signal, this actually can create a really and powerfully curated I'll list of content that is fed to you every day that doesn't that doesn't create an echo chamber or silo it. Actually just makes you feel good you're in the group in the good way, which is like it challenges you, but it doesn't exhaust you yet make you kind of this that the physicists, weird animal I've been saying for a long time. If,

on facebook one morning and they said oh we're, protesting a new option rather than showing you things we think you're going to like. We want to show you some things that we think you will disagree with, but which we have some signals that suggests of quality like now. That sounds interesting yeah that sounds really hot. I wanna see something where you know like. Oh I don't. I don't agree with so Larry Lessig as good friend of mine, founder of creative commons and he's moved on to doing stuff about corruption in politics is on, and I don't always agree with Larry, but I always grapple with Larry, because he's so interesting and he's so thoughtful that even when we one degree I'm like. Actually, I want to hear him out right because I'm going to learn from it, and that doesn't mean I always come around to agree with him, but I'm going to understand a perspective on it and that's really crate feeling yeah there's this interesting thing on social media, where people kind of accuse

Others have saying, will you wanna hear opinions? They disagree with their ideas. You disagree with. I think this something that's thrown at me all the time here. The reality is, there's literally almost nothing. I enjoy more than an odd thing to accuse you of cause if you have quite a wide range of long conversations with a very diverse bunch of people, but that there is a very that there is like a a very harsh drop off, because what I like is high quality agreement there really meet them. Think and at a certain point, there's a threshold is a kind of a grey area when the quality, the disagreement is just sounds like mark. Not really interested in a deep understanding of the topic or you yourself, don't seem to carry deep understanding of the topic. I got there's something called intelligence, squared debates, you're the main one, is that the british version, with a british accent ever that everything always sounds better and the breadth seemed to argue more intensely like there are invigorated they're energized by the debate, those people

I often disagree with. Basically everybody involved and it's so fun. I learned something: that's high quality, if I could do that, if there's some way for me to click a button that says I filter out lower quality. Just today, it sometimes showed me the fuckers I want to be able to today and I'm just not in the mood swath of the mockery, yeah just high quality stuff, even cause even flatter. I want. I want to get high quality arguments for the flat earth. It would make me feel good because I was oh, that's, really interesting guy. I never really thought in my mind to challenge them mainstream narrative of awe of general relativity right over others. Of physics, maybe all of reality, maybe of all of space times an illusion. That's really

Interesting. I never really thought about. Let me consider therefore gave us the evidence. How do you tell that? What is one of the our turn us? How would you be able to houses? systems perception of a physical reality. If it's all of it is an illusion, always seem to share the same kind of perception of reality like like that,

kind of stuff I love, but not like the mockery of it. You know that that cheap, that it seems that social media can kind of inspire yeah. I I I talk sometimes about how people assume that, like the big debates in Wikipedia the the sort of arguments are between the party of the left and the party of the right, when I say no, it's actually the party of the kind and thoughtful in the party of the jerks is really is really hit. I mean left and right, like yep, bring me somebody. I disagree with politically as long as they're thoughtful kind, we're going to have a you know a real discussion. I I give an example of an article on abortion, so

you know if you can bring together a kind and thoughtful catholic priest and a kind and thoughtful planned parenthood activist, and they are going to work together on the oracle on abortion. Ah, that can be a really great thing if they're, both kind and thoughtful like that, the important part they're. Never going to agree on the topic, but they will understand. Okay, like wikipedia is not gonna, take a side, but Wikipedia is going to explain what the debate is about, I'm going to try to characterize it fairly and it turns out like you're kind and thoughtful people Well, even if they're quite ideological, like a catholic priest, is generally going to be quite ideological on the subject of abortion, but they can grapple with ideas and they can discuss and they they may feel very proud of the entry the end of the day, not because they suppress the other side's views, but because they think the cases

I stated very well that other people can come to understand it and, if you're highly ideological, you assume, I think, naturally, if people understood as much about this, as I do they'll probably agree with me- you may be wrong about that, but that's often the case out. So that's where you know that's what I think we need to encourage more of in society generally is, is grappling with ideas and are really in a thoughtful way. So is it possible if the majority of volunteers editors

Wikipedia really dislike donald trump. Are they still able to write an article that empathizes, with the perspective of a time at least a very large percentage of the united states? There were supporters of donald trump and to have a full broad representation of him as a human being him as a political leader him as a set of policies promised and implemented all that kind of stuff yeah. I think so, and I think, if you are the article it's pretty good and I think a piece of that is within our community if people have the the self awareness to understand so I put

I certainly wouldn't go and edit the entry on donald trump. I get emotional about it and I'm like I'm, not good at this, and if I tried to do it I would fail. I wouldn't be a good wikipedia, so it's better if I just step back and let people who are more dispassionate on this topic, edit it. Whereas there are other topics that are incredibly emotional, some people where I can. I can actually do quite well like I'm going to be okay, maybe we were discussing earlier. The efficacy of masks like oh, I think that's an interesting problem and I don't know the answer, but I can help kind of catalogue. What's the best evidence, I'm not gonna get upset we're going to get angry, I'm unable to be a good wikipedia, and so I think that's important, and I do think, though, in in a related framework that the composition of the community is really important or not, because wikipedia is or should

a battleground, but because blind spots like maybe even realise what biased, if I'm fine, practically a certain point of view and never thought much about it. So one of the things we we focused on a lot the wikipedia volunteers are, we don't know the exact number, but let's say eighty per cent plus male and they're of a certain demographic. They tend to be college, educated, heavier on tech geeks than not you know, etc, etc, so it it there. If the demographic to the community, that's pretty much global, I mean somebody said to me once: why is it only white men who edit Wikipedia I said, we've obviously not met the japanese wikipedia community, it's kind of a joke, because the broader principle still stands, who edits: japanese wikipedia a bunch of geeky men right

and women as well. So we do have women in the communion, that's very important, but we do think. Ok, you know what that does lead to some problems. It leads to some content issues simply because people write more about what they know and what they're interested in and, though, tend to be dismissive of things as being unimportant. If it's not something that they personally have an interest in, and I you know, I like the an example, as a parent, I would say, are entries on early childhood development probably aren't as good as they should be because a lot of the wikipedia volunteers and actually we're getting older, the wikipedia so that that demographic changed a bit bytes by you know it's like if you've, if you've got a bunch of twenty five year old tech, geek dudes, who don't have kids they're, just not going to be interested in early childhood development, and if they tried to write about it, they probably wouldn't do a good job cause. They don't know anything about it and

somebody did a a look at our entries on our novelists. Who've won a major literary prize and they looked at the male novelists versus the female, and the male novelists had longer and higher quality entries. And why is that? While it's not because cause, I know hundreds of wikipedia is not because these are a bunch of biased. Sexist men who are like books by women are not important. It's like no actually there is a gender kind of breakdown of readership. There are books card science fiction, a classic example heart science fiction, mostly read by men, other types of novels, more red by women, and if we don't have,

in the community than these award winning. Clearly important novelists may have less coverage and not because anybody consciously thinks we don't like what about by my angelou like who cares she's poet, leaden, that's not interesting. No, but just because people write what they know. They write with their interest in it. So we I do think diversity in the community is really important and that's one area where I do think it's really clear, but I can also say you know what actually. That also applies in the political sphere like to say. Actually, we do want kind and thoughtful of catholic priests, kind and thoughtful conservatives, crime and thoughtful libertarians kind and thoughtful marxists in him to come in. But the key is the kind and thoughtful piece so when people sometimes come to wikipedia outraged by some, you know dramatic thing that happened.

on twitter. They come to Wikipedia with a chip on the shoulder ready to do battle, and it just doesn't work out very well. You know and there's the tribes in general, where I think there's responsibility on the larger group to be even kinder and more welcoming to the smaller group yeah. We think that's really important, and so you know oftentimes people come in and you know there's a lot rule will not talk about community health. One of the aspects of that that we do think about a lot. The I think about a lot is no. about politics this just like how are we treating newcomers to the community, and so I can tell you what our ideals are, what our philosophy is, but do we live up to that? Oh, you know the ideal. Is you come to Wikipedia? We have rules like one of our fundamental rules is ignore all rules which is partly written that way because it peaks peoples.

intentionally all the the, how can a rule is that you know but basically says, look, don't get nervous and depressed about a bunch of you know. What's the formatting of your footnote right, so you shouldn't come to Wikipedia, add a link and then get banned or yelled at because it's not the right format. Instead, somebody should go. Oh hey, yeah, thanks for crapping, but You know here's the link to how to format you know if you wanna, keep going. You might want to or not a format footnote an end to be friendly and to be open. say: oh right, oh you're new and you clearly don't know everything about wikipedia and you know sometimes in any community that can be quite hard, so people come in and they've got a great big idea and they're going to propose this to the wikipedia community and they have no idea. That's basically a perennial discussion. We've had seven thousand times before, and so then, ideally you would say to the person. Oh yeah, great thanks, like a lot of people have and here's where we are.

two and here's the new conversation we ve heard about that in the past. I think you'll find interesting and some people are decided. Got another one. You know come in with this idea, which doesn't work, and they don't understand why impatience, but he shouldn't and that's kind of human. You know, but I think it just does require really thinking you know or in a in a self aware manner of like. Oh, I was once a newbie I shall we do have we have great. I just did an interview with the The Emily temple were too wide. She was wikipedia of the year she's, just like a great well known, Wikipedia and- and I interviewed her for my book and

She told me something I never knew. Apparently it's not secret, like she didn't reveal it to me, but is that when she started at Wikipedia she was a vandal to cape and vandalized wikipedia and then basically what happened was she'd done some sort of vandalized a couple of articles and then somebody popped up on her heart petersen, hey like. Why are you doing this like we're we're trying to make an encyclopedia here, and this was a very kind and she felt so bad she's like oh right? I didn't really think of it. That way, she just was coming in as she was like thirteen years old, a combative, and you know like having fun and trolling a bit and then she's like. Oh actually, I see your point and became a great wikipedia, so that's the ideal really is that you don't just go through a block fuck off

there, you go hey. You know like what what gives you know, which is, I think, of the way we tend to treat things in real life. You know if you ve got somebody who's doing something. Obnoxious in your friend group. Be probably go hey like really. I don't know if you ve noticed, but I think this person is actually quite her that keep making that joke about them, and then they usually go. Oh, you know what I didn't. I thought it was okay, I didn't and then they stop or they keep it up. And then everybody goes that while you're the asshole Why do I mean they're? Just an example: it gives me facing humanity that that with a wall capable and wanting to be kind, each other? And in general this? The fact that there is a small group of volunteers there are able to contribute so much

to the organization, the collection of the the discussion of all of human knowledge is so it makes you so grateful to be out of this whole human. object I'll, that's one of the reasons I love wikipedia gives me faith in me. I know I once was at. Wiki main is our annual conference and people come from all around the world. The really active volunteers I was at the dinner were in egypt at wikimedia in alexandria, at the sorta closing dinner or whatever, and a friend of mine came inside at the time. But she's sort of been in the movement. More broadly, creative commons not really Wikipedia she come, the conference crises and creative commons and all that. So we have and it just turn. Now I sat down at the table with most of the members of the

english language, arbitration committee and there are a bunch of very sweet, geeky wikipedians and as we left the table, I said to her. It's really like I. I still find this kind of sense of amazement, like we just had dinner with some of the most powerful people in english, which media, because they are the people who are like the final court of appeal in english wikipedia and thank goodness, not media moguls right there, just a bunch of geeks who are just like well in the community cause they're kind and thoughtful, and they really, you know, sort of think about things as like as his great love. Yet the media is at a degree that geeks run the best aspect of human civilization. Brings me joy in all aspects in this. This tramp programming like linux, there are like programmers, are all in all cut like people that kind of specialize in a thing and they don't

really get caught up in into the mess of the bickering af of our society. They just kind of do their thing and they value the craftsmanship of it, yeah the competence of it. If, if you, if you've, never heard of this or looked into it, you'll enjoy it I read something recently that I didn't even know about, but like the the fundamental like time zones and and they changed from sometime time- you know sometimes a country pass. Daylight savings, their move it by a week, whatever there's a file there's some all yes or of unique space computers and basically, all computers and end up using this far. It's the official timezone file, but why is it official is just this one guy like this guy and a group, a community around him and basic something something weird happen and it broke something because he was hung vacation and I'm just like. Isn't it?

at wild rate that you would think. I mean. First of all, most people never even think about like how the computers know about time zones and well, they know cause they just use this fire which tells all the time zones and and which dates they change. In all of that, but there was this one guy and he doesn't get paid for it. It's just he's, like you know, with all the billions of people on the planet, he sort of put his hand up and goes yo I'll take The times are not and allow a lot programmers, listen to this right now with ptsd about time zones and then their are on top of this one guy this other. where the different programming languages that help manage the timescales for you, but still there just within those this, it's amazing just the package's the libraries a few people though, though, yeah out of their own love for building for creating for community and all of that yeah it's. Ah, I honestly don't want to interfere with the natural habitat of the

I think that when you spotted, while you just want to be a real careful here, that if that big night rest in America many years ago and lovely really sweet guy and he is running a bot on english wikipedia the I thought. Wow, that's actually super clever. What he had done. His his bot was like spell checking, but rather than simple spell checking. What he had done is create a database of words that are commonly mistaken. For other words, they're spelled wrong, so I can even give an example, and so the word is people often spell it wrong, but no spoke checker catches it because it is another word and so what he did is he wrote a bot that looks for these words and then checks the sentence around it for

in keywords so in in some context or may this isn't correct, but buoy and boy people sometimes type b, o y when they mean b, o? U y. So if he sees the word, it'd be a y in an article. He would look in the context and see. Is this a nautical reference? And if it was, he didn't autocorrect, he just would flag it up to himself to go. Oh check this one out and that's not a great example, but he had thousands of examples and was like that's amazing like I would have never thought to do that, and I'm glad that we didn't that's also part of the openness of the system and also, I think, being a charity being you. this idea of like. Actually, this is a gift to the world that make someone go up well, I'll, put my hand up. I see a little piece of things I can make better

cause I'm a good programmer, and I can write this script to do this thing and I'll find it fun. Amazing. Will I get asked about this big, bold decision at the very beginning to not do advertisements on the website and just in general, the philosophy of the business model wikipedia what will air and behind the ear? So I think most people know this, but where a charity, so in the? U s dinner registered as a charity, and we don't have any ads on the site and the vast majority. The money is from donations, but the vast majority from small donors, so people giving twenty five boxer. Whenever, if you listen, to this go donate hotel. I don't they now about bucks dies so many times, and we have you millions of donors every year, but it's like a small percentage of people outside in the early days. A big part of it was a static almost as much as anything else

it was this like. I just think I don't really want ads on Wikipedia like. I just think it would be there's a lot of reasons. Why might not be good and even back, then I didn't think as much as I have since about a business model contend to drive you in a certain place and really thinking that through in advance, is really important because you might say, yeah, we're, really really keen on community control and neutrality. But if we had an advertising based business model, probably that would begin to erode. Even if I believe in a very strongly

Positions tend to follow the money in the dna in the long run, and so things like meme. It's easy to think about some of the immediate problems so like if you go ah to read about, and I dunno a nissan car company and if you saw an ad for the new nissan at the top of the page, you might be like. Did they pay for this or like that? Like do the advertisers have influence over the content, because you kind of wonder about that for all kinds of media that undermines trust undermines trust, ripe, but also things like you know. We don't have clickbait headlines, Wikipedia you've, never seen you know, Wikipedia entries with all this kind of refer listicles I know sort of the ten ten funniest cat pictures number several make you cry. You know none of that kind of stuff cause. There's no incentive. No reason to do that. Also, you know, there's no reason to have an algorithm to say. Actually

we're. Gonna use our algorithm to drive you to stay on the website. Wonder we need the algorithm to drive. You too. you know it's like oh you're reading about queen Victoria there's nothing to sell you when reading about queen Victoria, let's move you on to las vegas cause. Actually, the ad revenue around hotels in LAS vegas is quite good, so we don't have that sort of there's no incentive for the organization to Oh, oh, let's, let's move people around to things that have better ad revenue. Instead, it's just like oh well, what's most interesting to the community just to to make those links so that I decision or just seemed obvious to me, but as I say it was, it's less of a business decision and more of an aesthetic, because, like oh that, this is how I I like wikipedia doesn't have ads. Don't really want. One

these early days, like a lot of the ads that that was well before the era of really quality ad targeting and all that so got a lot of banners. Banners punch the monkey ads and all that kind of nonsense, and so you know, but there was no, guarantee it was no. It was not really clear. How could we fund this, you know like it was pretty cheap- is still is quite cheap compared to me most We don't have a hundred thousand employees and all of that, but would we be able to raise money through donation And so I remember the the first time that we did and like really did have a donation campaign was on a christmas day. Ah in two thousand three, I think it was there was. Ah we had three servers. Database servers and two front end servers and they were all

the same size or whatever, and two of them crashed they broke, like I don't even know. Remember now, like the hard drive there was like christmas day, so I scrambled on christmas day to sort of go into the database server, which fortunately survived and have it become a front end server as well The site was really slow and it wasn't working very well and was of its time when we need to do a fundraiser, and so I was hoping to raise twenty, thousand dollars in a month's time. But we raised nearly thirty thousand within two three weeks time. So that was the first proof point of like a like. We put a banner up and people will donate like we just explain. we need the money and people are like already. We were very small back then the people I owe you like. I love this. I want to control and over the years we ve become more sophisticated about the fund, raising campaigns and we ve tested a lot of different messaging and so forth. What we use,

I think you know I remember one year we really went went heavy with. We have great ambitions to you know the the the the idea wikipedia is a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet. So what about the languages? sub saharan africa. So I thought you were trying to raise money. We need to talk about that because it is really important and near and dear to my heart and just instinctively, knowing nothing about charity fund. Raising you see it all round is like oh charities, always mention like the poor people, their helping. So let's talk about that. Didn't really work as well. the the pitch that I think this is very vague and varies with profit. The pitch that works than any other in general? Is a fairness pitch of like you use it all the time we should probably

then I must be like yeah. You know what my life would suck without Wikipedia. I use it constantly and whatever I should chip in like it just seemed like the right thing to do and that and there's many variants on that. Obviously a minute: it's really it works and like people are like oh yeah, like Wikipedia I love wikipedia and- I shouldn't have so sometimes people say here: why are you always begging for money on the website and your eyes that often it's not that much, but it does happen. there. I wanted you just get, google and facebook and microsoft or they pay for it and I think that

Really the right answer: emphasis starts to creep in influence starts to creep in, and questions start to creep in, like the best funding for wikipedia is the small donors. We also have major donors right. We have high net worth people who donate abbott. We always are very careful about that sort of thing to say: wow, that's really great and really important, but we can't let that become influence, because that would just be really quite quite yeah, not good for wikipedia. I would love to know how many times I've visited wikipedia, how much time I spent on it as I have a general sense that is the most useful site I've ever used competing. Maybe google search yeah, which ultimately, whence you hey I, but If I was just reminded of hay, remember all those times your life was my fellow because I think may be much more like yeah Why did I wasted money on site x Y, see when I could be

like I should be giving a lot here here will need. The guardian newspaper has a similar model which this they have adds, but they also there's no pay wall, but they just encourage people to donate and they do that lake. I've sometimes seen a batter saying this is your hundred and thirty. Fourth, I call you've read this year. Would you like to donate and I think that's I think it's effective. I mean they're testing, but also, I wonder it just for some people if they just don't feel like guilty and then think I'll. I shouldn't bother them so much. I don't know that it's a good question. I don't know the answer. I guess that's. The thing I could also an ox make me have, I feel, like legitimate, there's some sites and speak our social media discussion. Wikipedia unquestioned he makes me feel better about myself if I spend time on it like they're, so websites where like, if I spent on twitter, sometimes online. I regret

sir. I think you're talks about this minimizing number regretted minutes here, My number regretted minutes wikipedia is ike zero. I don't remember a time of justice, This up start finest grandma page depth of wikipedia how you there like crazy, I'm happy because there's no wikipedia page that I gave her media contribute the year award. This shit cause she so great in depth of wikipedia so fun. That's all I ask so that's that's! That's the kind of interesting points they are even know. If there's a competitor there may be the sort of programming stack overflow type of websites, but everything else. There is always a trade off there's a It is probably because the ad driven model, because there's an incentive to pull you and have clickbait, yeah and Wikipedia, has no click beer, it's all about the quality of the knowledge and the wisdom and yeah thats right, and I

I also like sec over. Although I wonder I wonder what you think of this I've, so I only programme for funds as a hobby and then I'll have enough time to by due and I'm not very good at it. So therefore, I and upon stack overflow quite a lot trying to figure out what's gone wrong and I have real the transition to using a chubby t ye much more for that, because I can often find the answer clearly explained and it just it works better than sifting through threads, and I kind of feel bad about that. As I do, love stack overflow in their community. I mean I'm assuming I haven't, read anything about the news about I'm assuming they keenly aware of this and their thinking about. How can we sort of use this chunk of now, now that we ve got here and provide a new type of interface, where you can carry it with question and actually get an answer, that's base.

On the answers that we ve had? I don't know, I think our stack overflow curly has policies against using jpg like there contentious kind of tension borders, the idea but they're trying to figure that out I'll answer. We are similar in that regard, like, obviously, all the things I ve talked about, like tragedy, makes the falcon and mix up references Our committee has already put in place some policies about it, but the roughly speaking, there's always more nuanced, but roughly speaking it sort of like you, the human are responsible for what you put into Wikipedia. So if he's chat should be too, if you better check it, one of great use cases of you know like oh well, I'm I'm not a native speaker of german by kind, I'm pretty good, I'm not talking about myself a hypothetical meet, it's pretty good. and I can't just want to run my at it through judge bt german to go

from a grammars. Ok, that's actually call does make. You said that people might use increasingly use chat. You pity for something where they would previously used with appears so basically use it to answer basic questions about life, how're. You know the worthy answer really comes at the source of it from Wikipedia but they're using this as an interface. Yet no, no that's, it'll we find mean part of it is our ethos has always been here's a gift to the world make something of if The knowledge is more accessible to people, even if you're not coming through us. That's fine. Now, obviously we do have certain business model concerns right like if and when we've talked where we've had more conversation about this. This old dpt thing is new things like. If you ask alexa- and you know what what is the eiffel tower- and she reads you the first two centers

as from wikipedia doesn't sites from Wikipedia and they recently started citing Wikipedia, then we worry- I like. Oh, if people don't know they're getting the knowledge from us, are they gonna donate money? or they just think, oh what's wikipedia for I can just ask Alexa it's like well lex, only knows anything cause she read wikipedia, so we do think about that. But it doesn't bother me in the sense of like oh. I want people always come to Wikipedia first, but we're also, you know, had a great demo.

Literally just hacked together over, we can buy our had a machine learning where he did this little thing to say, and you could ask any question and he was just knocking it together, so used to the open a eyes, a p. I just to make a demo ask the question: why do ducks fly south for winter? Just kind of thing you think? Oh, I I I might just google for that. I might start looking in Wikipedia I dunno and so what he does. He asked chubby waterson wikipedia entries that might answer this. Then he grabbed those wikipedia entries said. Here's some wikipedia entries answer this question. Based only on the information in this, he had pretty good results in it kind of prevented the making stuff up. Not it's just a he hacked together. We can, but

but it made me think about was okay. So now we ve got this huge body of knowledge that in many cases you like- oh, I am really I want to know about queen Victoria underway, Read the wikipedia entry and it's gonna take me through her life and and so forth, but other times you the specific question, and maybe we could have a better search experience where you can come to Wikipedia. Ask your specific question. Get your specific answer. That's from Wikipedia, including links to the articles you might want to read next and that's just a step for, like that's just using a new type of technology to make the extraction of information from this body of text into my brain faster and easier? So I think that's kind of cool and I would love to see a charge you pity grounding into websites like wikipedia and the other comparable,

said to me will be like wolfram alpha for me, a mathematical knowledge that kind of stuff the grounding like taking you to a page that is really crafted posted the mommy style actually taking you to like journalist websites like whose websites studied more a here. You know it all I could have. You you're now no land that has a strong incentive right. The pudding and you need somebody to have filtered through that sort of tried to not half the rough edges. Ya know is very, I think that's exactly right and I think you know I think that kind.

Of grounding, is, I think, they're working really hard on it. I think that's really important and that actually, when I sophie, if you asked me to step back and be like very businesslike about our business model and where's, it going to go for us and are we going to lose half our donations, because everybody's just gonna stop repeating the tragedy. I think we're grounding will help a lot because, frankly, most questions people have if they provide proper links, were going to be at the top of that. Just like we are in Google, so we're still going to get tons of recognition and tons of of traffic just from even if it's just the moral and proper ness of saying here's, my source, and so I think, I think we're going to be right in that in that year, in the close partnership of if the, if the model is fine tune, is constantly retrained, that wikipedia is one of the primary places where, if you want to change what the model knows on the things you should do is contribute to a wikipedia. Clarify, Wikipedia yeah, that's or laboured expand. All that comes here.

you mentioned, always have controversies. I have to ask defined. Controversy whether you are the sole founder set for the co founder of media ironic absurd, interesting, important, what are your comments, I would say are important. the interesting I mean one of the things that people are sometimes surprised to hear me say is actually think Larry singer doesn't get enough credit for his early work. Wikipedia, even though I think cofounders not the right title for that. So you know like he had a lot of impact and a lot of great work, and I disagreement but a lot of things sense and all that and that's fine, so yeah. No to me, that's like it, these things, that the media love a falling out storing them, so they want to make a big deal out of it and I'm just like you,

So there's a lot of interesting engineer contributions in their early days. Like your saying, there's debates about restructuring had what what the ep the thing that were doing and there's an ordinary people. I can Would it definitely also he also? He said you had some disagreements, Larry sang said that nobody should trust, will and there will be a seems to assume if there's only one legitimate, defensible version of the truth on any controversial question, that's not how wikipedia used to be. I presume you disagree with that analysis, or just straight up and his career. He like go and read any wikipedia entry on a controversial topic and what you'll see is a really diligent effort to explain all the relevant sides. So yeah just disagree, so uncontroversial questions you think prospects. The jolly represented there good. It has to do with a kind of attention to gender mainstreaming. Non nation or talking but yeah, no, I mean for sure, like to take

this area of discussion, seriously used to say yeah, you know what actually tat s a big part of what wikipedia keep spend their time grappling with. is to say you know how do we figure out whether a less popular view is pseudoscience. Is it just a less popular view that gaining acceptance in the mainstream? Is it fringe, verses, crackpot, etc, etc? And that debate is what you gotta. Do, there's no choice about having that debate of grappling with something, and I think we do- and I think that's really important, and I think if anybody said to the wikipedia commute e g should stop minos, recovering minority viewpoints on this issue. I think they would say

and understand why you would say that, like we have to sort of grapple with minority viewpoints in science and politics, and so on, it's an end like this is one of the reasons why there is no magic, simple answer to all these things. It's Really contractual its case by case is like you know. You've got to really say. Ok. What is the context here? How you do and and you've always got to be open to correction, to change and then sort of challenge and always be sort of is about that and then what happens again with social media is when, when there is that grappling process and Wikipedia and a decision is made to remove a paragraph or to remove a thing to say you gonna notice of the one one direction of the oscillation of the grappling and not yet correction. and you are going to highlight that and say how did how come this person yeah? I don't know-

I want it maybe legitimacy of elections. That's the thing that comes up, thou trump may be progressing and give a really good example witches. There was this sort of dust up about the definition of recession in wikipedia so The accusation was: an accusation was often quite ridiculous and extreme, which is under pressure from the Biden administration Wikipedia changed the definition of recession to make Biden, look good bore. We did it not under pressure because we're a bunch of lunatic left us and so on, and then you know when I see something like that, the press him, why, oh dear like what's happened here,

How do we do that? Because I was just accept things for five seconds version and then I go and I look at a might. You know what that's literally completely now what happened? What happened was one editor for the article needed restructure the oracle, as I said so that the traditional loose definition of recession is two quarters of negative growth, but there's always been within the economics within, important agencies in different countries around the world, a lot of nuance around that and there's other like factors that go into it. It's over. Then it's just a interesting, complicated topic and so The article is always had the definition of two quarters, only thing that really changed was moving. From the lead from the top paragraph two further down, and then new stories appeared saying I wikipedia chase definition of recession, and then we got a huge rush of trolls coming in, so the article was temporarily protected. I think only semi protected and people were told, go to the talk page to discuss. So it was an that dust up that was

when you look at it as a wikipedia new light up like this is a really route. in kind of editorial debate. Another example which unfortunately are friend ilan fell, for I would say, is that the twitter files, and so there was an article called the twitter fires which about these files that were released once ilan took control of twitter only released internal documents, and see what happened was somebody nominated for deletion, but even the nomination said this is actually This is mainly about the hunter bide laptop controversy, shouldn't information, be there instead, so anyone can like it exactly one human being anywhere on the planet, to propose something for deletion and that triggers a process where people discuss it, which, within a few hours, it was what we call snowball closed. I e this doesn't have a snowball chances

well of of passing, so an admin goes yup wrong and close the debate, and that was it. That was the whole thing that happened and, and so nobody proposed suppressing the information nobody's pros. It wasn't important. It was just like editorially boring internal questions and it s a somebody's people read stuff like that, and the like, you see, look at these left us they're, trying to suppress the truth again recycling. slow down a second and come and look like literally it's not what happened. Yes, I think the right is more sensitive to censorship and so yeah, a well more likely a highlight. There's more vitality to highlighting something that looks like censorship and any walks of life. And this in paragraph one place to another, removing it saw in spite of the regular Grappling Wikipedia can

mega hell of a good article, although he could video yeah yeah yeah. It sounds really enticing and an intriguing and surprising to most people, because they're, like a man reading Wikipedia, doesn't seem like a crackpot. Leftist website seems pretty kind of dull really in it's own geeky way: that makes a good story is as oh am I being misled because there's a shadowy cabal of Jimmy wales. You know, I generally read political stuff, as I mentioned to you them and traveling, to have some very difficult station high profile figures, both in the wine, ukraine and in israel and palestine, and you are right, but the wikipedia articles around that and now also read books on the conflict in the history of those different regions. I find wikipedia articles to be very balanced and many perspectives being represented.

Then I ask myself why my one of them leftist crackpots. They can't see that I mean it's something I asked myself all the time forget the left as described by the way I am. I am I just being a sheep in accepting. I think that's an important question to always ask, but not yet too much yeah. I agree completely bit not too much. No, I think we always have to challenge ourselves of like what. What do I potentially have wrong- what you mention the pressure from government, you, you ve, criticise, twitter, he for the allowing giving in to turkey's government censorship, there's also conspiracy, theory, These are accusations of wikipedia being open to pressure. government, a government organizations have b I and This kind of stuff is the right. What is the philosophy? Buzz pressure from governments? Incense show so we're super hard core of this. We ve never,

bowed down to government pressure anywhere in the world and we never will and we I stand that we're hardcore, and actually there is a bit of nuance about how different companies respond to this, but our response has always been just to say no and if they threatened to block will knock yourself out, you can lose wikipedia and that's been very successful for us as a strategy and because governments know that it just casually threatened to block wikipedia or blockers for two days and we're going to cave in immediately to get back into the market and that's what a lot of companies have done, and I don't think that's good that we can go one level deeper and say I'm actually quite sympathetic like if you have staff members in a certain country and they are at physical risk. You ve gotta put that into your equation, so I understand that, like, if you feel on said, actually got

one hundred staff members on the ground in such a such a country, and if we don't comply, somebody's going to get arrested and it could be quite serious. Okay, that's a tough one right. That's that's actually really hard. But yeah no and then the f b, I one. No, no. We like the current criticism. I saw a kind of prepare for this because I saw people responding to your request for questions and I was like somebody's like Well, don't you think it was really bad that you gotta raw and will actually be started stuff, and can you just make sure got my facts right and the answer is we received zero requests of any kind from the fbi or any of other government agencies for any changes to content and wikipedia and had we received those request at the level of the media foundation. We would have said it's not our. Like we can't do anything because Speedy is written by the community. So the we foundation can't change the content of wikipedia.

without causing any god I'll be a massive controversy in imagine what we did do, and this is what I've done I've been to china and met with the minister of propaganda with had discussions, if governments all around the world not because we want to do their bidding, but because we don't want to do their bidding, but we also don't want to be blocked and we think actually having these conversations are really putting out there's no threat of being blocked in the? U s, like that's just It happened. There is the first amendment, but in other countries around the world is like a k. What are you upset about? Let's have the conversation like, let's understand and a dialogue about it, so that you can understand where we come from. What we're doing and why and then you know some. Sometimes it's like t like if somebody complains that something's bad in wikipedia whoever they are don't care who they are to be, you could be, the government could be the pope. I don't care who they are so ok or our responsibility,

videos to go oh hold on less jack bray. Is that right or wrong? Is there something that we've got wrong in wikipedia not because you're threatening to block us, but because we want wikipedia to be correct? So we do have these dialogues with people, and you know a big part of Like what was going on with you might call it pressure on social media companies or dialogue with, depending on you know, as we talked earlier grapple with the language, depending on what your view is, and in our case it was really just about ok right. They would have a dialogue about not covered information misinformation. Weird this enormous source of information which the world depends on we're gonna have that conversation right we're to say hears you know if they say how do you know that wikipedia is not gonna, be pushing some crazy, anti facts? Narrative first, I mean, I think, is somewhat inappropriate for a guy

to be asking pointed questions in a way that implies possible penalties, not sure that ever happened, because we would just go. I dunno the chinese blocked us, and so so it goes right. We're not going to cave in to any kind of government pressure, but whatever the approach witness of what they were doing? I think there is a role for government in just saying: let's understand the information ecosystem, let's think about the problem of misinformation, disinformation in society particular around election security and all these kinds of things. So you know, I think it would be irresponsible of us to get a call from a government agency and say yeah. Why don't you just fuck off you're the government? Ah, but it will it'd be irresponsible. Go! Oh dear yeah, the government is just not happy, let's fix wikipedia, so the f b. I love the salient when you say you want to have discussions with the chinese government or with organisers,

Could I see the that we show it's too thoroughly understand what the mainstream narrative is, so that it can be probably represent. but not drive with articles are well. It's actually importance. I like whatever the wikimedia foundation thinks he has no impact on. What's in wikipedia So it's more about saying to them right understand, you're the world health organization or your whoever and part of your job is to sort of public health is about negations. You want to understand the world so more about open. Let's explained how wikipedia works says more about. Saying how wikipedia work. So, my hey, it's the volunteers, yeah yeah, it's only a battle of ideas in years. How miss the sources are used, what are the legitimate sources and one not a legitimate sources? Yeah exactly I mean as as opposed there's some battle about what is a legitimate source there could be

stablemate the made the cdc I mean like the theirs. Government organizations. in general, have saw themselves to be the place where you go for expertise and some of that has been a small degree raised in question more the response to the pen. I think in many cases- and this goes back to my topic of trust, so there were definitely cases of public affairs old public organisations, where I felt like they lost the trust of the public, because they didn't trust the public, and so the ideas like we really need people to take this seriously and take actions. Therefore, we're going to put out some overblown claims, because it's going to scare people into behaving correctly,

you know what that might work for a little while, but doesn't work in the long run, because suddenly people go from a default stance of like the centers for disease control, very well, respected scientific organization. Sort of I dunno they've got a fault in atlanta with the last file more box or whatever it is that people think about them and to go right. These are scientists. We should actually take seriously and listen. Two and they're, not politicized and they're. You know it's like okay and if you put out statements, I don't if the cdc there but world health organization, whoever that are provably, false and also provably, you kind of knew they were false, but you did it to scare people, because you wanted them to do the right thing,

it's like. No, you know what that's not going to work in the long run like you're, going to lose people, and now you've got a bigger problem, which is a lack of trust in science, a lack of trust in authorities who are you know by and large they're, like quite boring government bureaucrats, scientists who just trying to help the world while I I've, been criticised and I've been torn on. This have been criticised for criticising if they thought you too hard. The degree to which I criticized him is because he's a leader And I'm just observing the effect in the loss of trust in the solutions at an age that work Firstly, no there's a lot of incredible scientists doing incredible work, yet an the blame, the leaders for the effects on the distrust and the scientific work that they're doing because

of what I perceive as basic human flaws of communication of arrogance, of ego of politics, all those kinds of things now you could say you're being too harsh possible, but I think that's the whole point of free speech. As you can criticize the lead people who led leaders, unfortunately, are fortunate are responsible for the effects on society to me at any faulty or whoever in sight. Position or on the pandemic, had an opportunity to have after a moment or two get away together, inspire about the power of science to rapidly develop a vaccine that saves us from this pandemic and future pandemic. That can threaten the wellbeing of human civilization. This was epic, an awesome and sexy and to me when I'm few people by signs his aiming but sexy in terms of other virology biology development because he's been politicized its inky.

People just don't wanna like I don't talk to me about the vaccine. I understand, and I got vaccinated, does just that topics the surface area, melissa drinkers EL. I live in the uk and I think its will These things are a little less politicized. There and I haven't, played close enough attention to faulty to have a really strong view. I'm sure I disagree with some things. I definitely I remember hearing at the beginning of a pandemic as unwrapping my amazon package with this masks. I bought it because I heard there's a pandemic and I just like. I want some in ninety five mass place and they were saying, don't buy, mask and the motivation was because they want their be shortages and hospitals, fine, but they were also statements of mass school there not effective in. They will help you and then the complete about face to you're a ridiculous if you're not wearing em, you know is the site now like that that about

face just lost people from day one, the distress in the in the intelligence of the public to deal with nuance to jail within the services yeah. This is exactly what you know. I think this is where the Wikipedia neutral point of view is an and should be an ideal, and obviously every article and everything we could you. You know me now. You know how I am about these things but, like ideally, is to say, look we're happy to show you all the perspectives. This is planned parent, its view- and this is catholic church view and going explain that I will try to be thoughtful and and put in the best arguments from all sides, because I trust you like you. I read that and you're going to be more educated and you're going to begin to make a dessert mean I can just talk it in the uk. The government thought when we found out in the uk that very high

level government officials were not following the rules they had put on everyone else. Yeah I moved from. I had just become a a uk citizen, just a little while, before the pandemic, I know it's kind of emotional that you get a passport in a new country and you feel quite good and I did my oath to the queen and then they drag the poor old lady out, to tell us all to be good, and I was like were british and we're going to do the right things and- and you know it's going to be tough, but we're going to you know. So you have that kind of dunkirk spirit moment And you're like following the rules to a t and then suddenly it's like well they're, not following the rules. So suddenly I shifted personally from I'm going to follow the rules, even if I don't completely agree with them as to follow, because I think we've got also been together to like you know what I'm going to make wise and thoughtful decisions for my son my family, and that generally is gonna, be following the rules, but it's basically you know when their veto at certain mom,

it's a time like you're not allowed to be in an outside space unless you're exercising. I like, I think I can sit in a park and read a book like it's going to be fine like that irrational rule which I would have been following just personally. I am just going to do. The right thing, yeah and the loss of trust that he could scale was probably harmful to science, and I to me The scientific method and the scientific communities is one of the biggest hopes, at least to me, for survival in the thriving of human civilization are absolutely, and I you know, I think you see some of the ramifications of this. There has always been like pretty anti science anti vax people because that's always been a thing, but I feel like it's bigger now or simply because of that lowering of trust so

a lot of people yeah, maybe it's like you say a lot of people are like yeah I got vaccinated. I really don't want to talk about this because it's so toxic, you know and that's unfortunate, because I think people should say what what an amazing thing any of them. There is also a whole range of discourse around. If this were, a disease, primarily that was primarily killing babies. think people's emotions about it would have been very different right or wrong. The fact that when you really looked at the sort of death rate of getting covered, how it's really dramatically different if you're, if you're late in life, this was a route

elite, dangerous and, if you're, twenty three years old yeah. Well, it's not great like an long cove, it's a thing and all of that, but- and I think some of the public communications again were failing to properly contextualize, not all of the you know it's a complicated matter, but yeah. Let me I read your reddit comment that received two likes and two whole people was yeah. Two people liked it And I don't know, maybe you can commoner whether their true to a budget. I just found interesting I've been doing a lot of research on over to recently. So this is about hitler over the years is a long at the long statement. I was there when a big push was made to fight bias. Wikipedia our target became getting the hitler article two b with

featured article. The idea was that the voting body only wanted to articles. There were good pr and especially articles about socially liberal topics, so the hitler article had to be two to three times better and more academically research to be the competition. This biased seems to hold today, for example, the current list of political feature. Articles at a glance seems to have only two books, one Anarchism and one on Karl Marx, surely were not going to say they have only ever been to articles about political, non, biography, books worth being featured, especially compared to two hundred plus video games? That's the only topics with with good books are socialism and anarchy. I would have any interesting comments on this kind of feature yeah how the feature to selected may be hitler because he has a special. Ah is a special figure. You know, and I love the olive that no I I love the comparison to how many video games

I'm not definitely speaks to my earlier as like. If you ve got a lot of young geeky men who really like video games that doesn't necessarily give you get you the right place in every way. backed certainly but yeah. So here's a funny story, I woke up one morning to a bunch of journalists in germany trying to get in touch with me, because german language wikipedia chose to have, as the featured article of the day, swastika and people crazy about it and some people were saying It's illegal has german wikipedia been taken over by nazi sympathisers and so on, and it turned out. It's not illegal lake, discussing the swastika using the swastika, has a political

campaign and using in certain ways is illegal in germany in a way that it wouldn't be in the? U s because of first amendment, but in this case it was like. Actually part of the point is the swastika symbol is from other cultures as well and, and they just thought it was initially. I did joked to the community- please don't put the swastika on the front page without warning me cause I'm going to get a locker. Now it wouldn't be me, it's the foundation, I'm not that much on the front lines, so I would say that to put hitler on the front page of Wikipedia it is a special topic and you would want to say yeah, let's be really careful that it's really really good before we do that, because if we put it on the front

agent has got, and it's not good enough. That can be a problem. There's no inherent reason like clearly world war. Two is a very popular topic in Wikipedia. Like turn on the history channel, like people is a fascinating period of history that people are very interested in and then on the other piece like anarchism and karl marx kernel. Ok, there are yeah, I mean that's interesting. I'm surprised to hear that not more political. books or topics have made it to the front page now we're taking this read a comment I mean as as faithful as lately as I am, but I'm trusting. So I think that's probably is right. They probably did have the list up now. I think it's a. I think that piece the is about how many of those featured articles have been video games and if its citizens fortunate. I think we should the community should go actually what's gone like that, doesn't seem quite right.

You know you can imagine that big you're looking for an article two b on the front page of Wikipedia you, you wanna have a bit of diversity in it. You want it be not always something that's really popular that week. So, like I love the last couple of weeks may be succession. The big finale of succession might lead you think, or less but succession on the front page, that's going to be popular. In other cases, you get kind of want pick something super obscure and quirky, because people also on that interesting in fun, so yeah donor, but you don't have to be video games most of the time. That sounds quite bad wont. Let me ask you just for as somebody who has seen the whole thing that the developed of the millions of articles, big impossible question. What's your favorite article, my favorite article? Well,

an amusing answer, which is possibly also true theirs an article on Wikipedia called inherently funny words, One of the reasons I love it is when it was created early in in the history of wikipedia a kind of became like a dumping ground, he would combine ryan any word that they thought sounded funny, and then it was nominated for deletion, because somebody's like this is just a dumping ground like people are putting all kinds of nonsense in and in that deletion debate. Somebody came forward and said essentially wait. A second hold on this is actually a legitimate concept in the theory of humor and comedy and a lot of famous comedians and humorous of written about it. And it's you know: it's actually lodge in the topic. So then they went through and they meticulously referenced. Every word that was in there and threw out a bunch that weren't, and so it becomes this really interesting up my biggest disappointment and it's the right decision to make

and because there was no source, but it was a picture of a cow, but there was a rope around it's head tying on some horns onto the cow, so it was kind of a funny. Looking picture looked like you know, like a ball, you know with horns, but it's just like a normal milk cow and below it. The caption said, according to some cow, is an inherently funny word.

Which is just hilarious to me, partly because the according to som sounds a lot like wikipedia, but there was no source, so it went away, and I feel very sad about that. But I've always liked that and I actually the the reason depths of wikipedia amuses me so greatly is because it does like highlight really interesting, obscure staff and you're like wow. I can't believe somebody wrote about that in Wikipedia. Is quite amusing and sometimes there's a bit of wry humor in Wikipedia there's, always a struggle you're not trying to be funny, but occasionally a little. I'd humor can be quite healthy and apparently words with the letter k funny it does does a lot of really well researched stuff on this page is yes its view that the attic side- and I should mention four- does the wikipedia, its run by any.

raw wardha, that's right, annie and does it misread off some of the pages topless and after lantern, oh yeah? That was Two separate non human underwater settlements built by the gloomy octopuses in jervis bay, east australia. The first element named octopus by biologists, was found in two thousand and nine. The individual structures in octopus consist of borrows around a piece of human detritus, believed to be scrap metal, and it goes on in this way. Ah, the fray, a satiric, misspelling least concern species. Humans were formerly assessed,

the species of these concern in into the hallucinate vigour. Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy would slightly disagree, however, it unless one, let me just say french a paradox- is the phenomena first observed by the sociologist scott felt in eighteen, eighty, one that on average and individuals, friends have more friends individual. Oh, that's right! I'm lonely! Isn't I'm an act as a kind of thing that makes you wanna like it sounds implausible at first cause shouldn't everybody have on average about the same number friends as other friends. Do you really want to dig into the matter? That really are. Why would that be true, and one way, feel more lonely in a method, the rigorous way, We also read it asks. I would love to hear some war stories from behind the scenes. something that we have mentioned that was particularly difficult in this entire join you you're on will work with Wikipedia

it's hard to say I mean so part of what I always say about myself. Is that I'm a pathological optimist, so I always think everything is fine and so things that other people might find a struggle. I'm just like! Oh well. This is the thing we're doing today. So that's kind of about me and it's actually I'm aware of this about myself. So I do like to have a few pessimistic people around I need to keep me a bit on balance and yeah. I mean I would say some of the some of the hard things I mean there were. There were hard moments like when two out of three servers crashed on christmas day and then we needed to do a fundraiser and no idea what was going to happen, and I would say as well the like in in that the period of time, the growth of the website, the traffic the website was phenomenal and great. growth of the community and, in fact, the healthy growth. The committee was fine.

Then the wikimedia foundation, the nonprofit I set up to own and operate wikipedia as a small. organization, it had a lot of growing pains, and you know that was it was like that was the peace. Just like many companies, are many organizations that are in a fast growth. It's like you, ve got the wrong people or there's. This conflict has arisen and nobody's got experience to do this and all that so no specific stories. oh, but you know, like I would say growing. The organization was harder than growing the can the growing the website, which is interesting. While yes, gunnar, miraculous uninspiring that a community can emerge and be stable and that death has so much kind of productive, positive output. Economists, you think any is one of those things you don't. I always to watch his eye If you're mess with a beautiful thing, but it gives me faith in communities, yeah yeah- I know that that they can

another domains as well yeah. I think that's exactly right and you know at find em my for profit. We company, where you know it's like while these committees about pop culture, mainly a sort of entertainment, gaming itself, there's a lot of small communities, and so I went last year to our community connect conference and just met some people. Unlike you know, here's one of the leaders of the star wars wiki, which is called wikipedia- which I think is great, and you know, telling me about his community and all that- and I'm like oh right here- I love this like. So it's not it's not the same purposes, wikipedia of a neutral high,

It is a pity it by a lot of the same values of like of like how people should be nice to each other as like when people get upset. It's like just remember on the star wars wiki together, like there's. No reason to get to outraged and just kind people just think geeky people with a hobby. Where do you see wikipedia in ten years, one hundred years and one thousand twenty two and turn right? So ten years, I would say pretty much the same like we're not gonna have when I can become tik tok with entertainment. Deal scroll by video, humor and blubber and blah or an encyclopedia. I think in ten years we probably will have a lot more ay supporting tools like I've talked about, and probably your search experience would be, You can ask a question and get the answer rather than you know, from our body of work, so far

in discovery. A little bit improved yeah face some of the hole that I always say, one of the things that people most people won't notice and because already they don't notice it is. The growth of wikipedia in the languages of the developing world, so you probably don't speak swahili, so you're, probably not checking out that swahili wikipedia is doing very well and- and it is doing very well- and I think that kind of growth is actually super. Important is super interesting, but most people won't notice that if we can just link net if a good deal,

Think, there's so much incredible. Translation work is being done with with a sigh will language models. Do you think that can now excel rate here? What look appear? So you start with the basic draft of the translation of articles in here that so so, what I used to say is like machine translation for many years. Wasn't much use to the community. Just wasn't good enough as it's gotten better. It's tended to be a lot better,

or in what we might call economically important languages. That's because the corporate that they train on and all of that so to translate from english to spanish if you've tried google translate recently. Spanish english is what I would do. It's pretty good thinking. It's actually not bad. It used to be half a joke and then for a while, it was kind of like why you can get the gist of something, and now it's like. Actually it's pretty good. However, we've got a huge spanish community who write in native spanish, so they are able to use it and they find it useful, but are writing, but if you tried to do english to zulu and where there's not that much investment like there's loads of reason, to invest in english spanish said both huge, economically important languages, zulu, not so much so for those smaller languages, it was just

so terrible. My understanding is its improved dramatically and also because the new methods of training don't necessarily involve identical porpoises to try to match things up, but rather reading an understanding with tone in large language models and then reading an understanding, and then you get a much richer. Apparently it's quite improves. I think that now it is quite Well, that these smaller language communities are gonna say our. Finally, I can put something in an english and I can go while zulu that I can that I feel comfortable sharing with my community, because it's actually good enough or I can edit it a bit here and there. So I think, that's huge. So I do think that's going to happen a lot and that's going to

alaric right again, what will remain too must be limited, visible trend, but that's the growth in all these other languages. So then, move on to a hundred years, starting stoning is scary, while the only thing I say about a hundred years is like we ve built the wicked the foundation and we run it in a quite cautious and financially conservative and careful way. So every year We build our reserves. Every year we put aside a little bit more money. We also have the endowment fund, which we just passed: one hundred million that's a completely separate fun and with a separate board, so that it's not just like a big fat bank account for some future profligate ceo to blow through that you know the foundation will have to get the approval of a second order board to be able to access that.

And that more can make other grants through the community in things like that. So the point of all that is, I hope and believe that we are building. You know in a financially stable

way that we can weather various storms along the way so that, hopefully we we're not we're not taking the kind of risks and by the way, we're not taking too few risks either. That's always hard, I think, will the wikimedia foundation, we believe, will exist in one hundred years. If anybody exists in one hundred years, it will be there. You think the internet just looks unpredictably different they're, just the the web. Do I do I mean I think, right now, this sort of enormous step forward, we've seen it has become public in the last year of the large language models and really is something else records relating and you- and I have both talked today about the flaws and the limitations, but still it's as if someone has been around technology for a long time. I it's sort of that feeling of the first time I saw web browser

the first time I saw the iphone like the first on. The internet was like really usable and a phone, and it's like. While that's that's a step, change difference, others, a few other. You know, maybe a google search. I serve not really the on research, because I'm never out a vista was kind of cool for a while. Then got more and more useless cause it. The algorithm, wasn't good and it's. I o google search now like the internet works again, yeah and and so large language, while it feels looked at me like oh wow. This is this is something new and like really pretty remarkable, and it's going to have some downsides. Like you know the negative use case. I'm you know, people in the area who experts to giving lot of warnings, and I dont know enough to I'm not that worried, but from a pathological optimist.

But I do see some like really low hanging fruit, bad things that can happen. So my example is about some highly customized spam, where they, the email that receive, isn't just like misspelled words and like trying to get through Filters, but actually is a targeted e mail to you than knows something about you. By reading your leg, in profile and writes a plausible email that will get through the filters and it's like. Suddenly, oh hmm, that's that's a new problem. That's going to be interesting and is there are just on the wikipedia editing side. Does it make the job of the volunteer the editor more difficult. If, in a world where larger and larger percentage of the internet is written by now alone, so one of my predictions and we'll see you know ass making in five years how this panned out is that.

In a way this will strengthen the value and importance of some traditional brands so, I see a a new story and its from the wall street journal from the new york times from fox news, I know what I'm getting and I trust it. To what extent am I have in trust for distrust in any of those, and if I see a brand new website that looks, plausible, but I've never heard of it, and it could be machine generated content. that may be full of errors, I think I'll be more cautious having a moorish was, and we can also do what this around photographic evidence. So, There will be scandals where major me or physicians get fooled by fake further. However, if I see a photo of the reason was that the pope wearing an expensive puffer jacket, I'm gonna go yeah, that's it,

Raising that affect like that can be generated by my immediate thought is not so the pope's bring into the money a partly because this particular pope doesn't seem like he'd, be the type my fair. It is a success, if pictures of Joe Biden and donald trump are hanging out having fun together, brilliant, and so I think I think people will care about the provenance of a photo and if, if you show me a photo- and you say yeah, this, this photo is from a fox news, even though I don't necessarily think that's the highest. But I'm like it's news organization and they're, going to have journalists and are going to made sure the photo is what it purports to be. Ah, that's very different from a put photo randomly circulating on twitter, whereas I say, fifteen years ago a photo randomly circulating on twitter. In most cases, the the worst you could do,

and this did happen- is misrepresent the battlefield. So, like. Oh here's, a bunch of injured children, look what israel's done, but actually it wasn't israel. It was another case ten years ago that has happened that has always been around, but now we can have much more specifically constructed plausible. in photos that, if I just see them certainly on twitter, I'm gonna go the stone, not sure like like make that in five minutes. So I also hope that It is kind of like what you're writing about in your book that we could also have citizen journalists that have a stable, verifiable trust that builds up yet it doesn't have to be in york times

position that you could be in an organization of one as long as it's stable and cares through time and it builds up or nelson. I I agree, but the one thing I've I've said in the past, and this this depends on who that person is and what they're doing. But it's like, I think, my credibility, my general credibly in the world should be the equal of a new york times reporter. So if something happens and I witness it and I write about it, people are going to go well to me, well set it that just like. If a new york times reporter said like it, I'm an attend to think he didn't just make it up to this. Nothing interesting ever happens around me and I'm gonna war zones. I don't got a big press conference, I dont interview, Putin and the linsky writing so just to an extent he s, whereas I do

think for other people, those those traditional models of credibility and are really really important, and then there there is this sort of citizen journalism one. I dunno, if you think, of what you do as journalism, a kind of think it is. But you do interviews, you do long form interviews and I think people you know like if you come in, you say right. Here's my tape, but you wouldn't hand out a tape like I just gesture to you as if I'm handing you a cassette tape, but if you put it into your podcast, here's my interview with so linsky and people are gonna go yeah. How do we know that could be a deep fake, like you could effect that cause people like? Well, Now, like europe, well known podcast her and you do interview interesting people, and yet it like. You wouldn't think that so that your brand becomes really important, whereas if suddenly and I've seen this all I've seen sort of video with subtitle in english and apparently they ukrainian was the same end of the list

saying something really outrageous and I'm like yeah, don't believe that, like I don't think he said that in a meeting with you know whatever I think, that's russian propaganda. or probably just trolls in and then billing platforms and mechanisms are how that trust can be verified in us. The thing appears in the Wikipedia page. That means something if something appears on like say my twitter account. I mean something them yes, your I, this particular human have signed off on it yeah and then, and then you, the the the the the trust you have in this particular human or transfers to the piece of content and then a egypt, hopefully there's millions of people with different metrics of trust, and then you could see that there's a certain kind of bias in the set of conversations you're having so maybe, okay I trust this person have this kind of bias and I'll go to saw. The person of this other guy buys that I can integrate them and yes kind of way. Just like you said with fox news and whatever

wall street times like they ve all got there like where they said you have built Well, I would say one of if not the most impactful website in the history of human civilization. So let me ask for you to give advice to young people how to have impact on this world high schoolers college students wanting to have a big positive impact. Yeah great. If you want to be successful, do something you're really passionate about, rather than some kind of cold calculation of what can make you the most money, because if you go and try to do something in your life, I'm not that interested, but I'm going to make a lot of money doing it. You're, probably not going to.

Is that good at it, and so that that is a big piece of it and I I also like you know so for startups. I give this advice so young, and this is a career starter up. Many kind of like young person, just starting out is, like you know, be persistent right, there'll be moments when it's not working and you can just give up too easily you ve gotta persists through some hard times may be to service crash on sunday, and you ve got us a scramble to figure it out, but persists through that. and then also be prepared to pay? That's a newer word new for me, but when I pivoted from new pdf to wikipedia is like this isn't working, I've got a completely change, so be willing to completely change direction when something is not working now the problem with these two wonderful pieces of advice is which situation of my in today right? Is this

but when I need to just power through and persist, because I'm gonna find a way to make this work her system but where I needed to go actually, this is totally not working in the need to change direction, but also, I think for me that always gives me a framework of like ok, let's, okay, here's a problem, do we need to change direction what do we need to kind of power through it and just knowing like those are the choices and not always the only choices, but that does it was, I think, can be helpful to say I am I am I am. I am I checking in I don't like cause I'm having a little bump and I'm feeling an emotional I'm just going to give up too soon. Okay, ask yourself that question and also is like. Am I being pig headed and trying to do something that actually doesn't make sense or casters of that question too, even though they're contradictory questions and sometimes there'll, be one sometimes will other, and you got a really think it through. I think persisting with the business model behind wikipedia is such an inspiring.

story, because on eleven and a capitalist world. What will happen in a scary world? I think for an internet business as yeah and so like. To do things differently than a lot of websites doing I quite wikipedia has lived through this. Of explosion of many websites that are basically address in google is address facebook, twitter, all these websites are driven in an annex to see them succeed, become these like incredibly rich powerful companies that, if I could the money you would think, as as somebody writing Wikipedia could do so much positive, stuff, right and so to persist through that, as I think, is from my perspective now monday or monday night quarterback, whatever is the right decision, but boy is that a tough decision hm but seemed easy at the time so

and I guess it's kind of stay with it is that they were working so now when you chose persistent yeah. Well, yes, I mean I always like to give an example of my space cause. I just think it's an amusing story, so my space was poised. I would say to be facebook bright. It was huge. It was viral. It was lots of things kind of foreshadowed, a bit of maybe even tick tock, because it was like a lot of entertainment, content, casual and and then rupert murdoch bought it and it collapsed within a few years, and part of that, I think, was because they were really really heavy on ads and less heavy on the customer. Express our member to accept a friend request was like three clicks resource three ads and on facebook, except the fringe requested in him and leave the page just like that. Just accepted

but was it fixed? I used to give this example of, like our rupert murdoch, really screwed out that one up and innocence may be. Maybe did somebody said you know what actually he bought it, or I don't remember the numbers he bought it for eight hundred million and it was very profitable through its decline. They actually made his money back and more so it wasn't like from a financial point of view. It was a bad investment in the sense of, could have been facebook, but I'm sort of more mundane metrics, a slight actually worked on. Ok for all matters, I defy success. It does but that is also advice to young people. One of the things I I would say like We have our mental models of success as an entrepreneur, for example, an Your examples in your mind are bill gates, mark Zuckerberg, so people who, at a very young age- had one really great idea that just went straight to the moon and became one of the richest people in the world that is

really unusual, like really really rare and for most entrepreneurs that has not alive lifepath are gonna, take well. He can reboot you can learn from what you failed at you're, going to try something different, and that is really important, because if you, if your standard of successes well, I feel sad because I'm not as rich as elon musk. It's like well so should almost everyone, possibly everyone except below musk, is not as rich as elon musk and so that you know like realistically you cancer. A standard of success, even even in a really now says what I don't recommend of thinking about. Your financial success was like, if you measure your financial success by thinking about billion. There's like that's, that's heavy like that's, probably not good, I don't recommend it where

like I personally, I you know like for me when people when journalists say oh, how does it feel to not be a billionaire? I usually say I'm no how's, it feel to you. Is there not, but also I'm? Unlike I live in london, the number of bankers that no one's ever heard of live and learn who make more money than I ever will is quite a large number wouldn't trade, my life for theirs at all bright, because I'd minus so interesting, like oh right, Jimmy. We need you to go and we meet the chinese propaganda minister. Ok, that super enter It's like yeah jimmy. You know like here's. The situation like you can go to this country and I am while you're there and the president has asked to see you like got that super interesting, Jimmy you're going to this place and there's a local. idiot who said, do you want to stay with me and my family and I'm like yeah, like that's really cool like I would like to do that. That's really interesting. I don't do that. All the time

I've done it and its great so like for me, that's all arranging your life, so that you have interesting experiences is just great well. This is more. The question of what wikipedia looks like in a thousand years woody is the meaning of this whole thing. Why are we here? He was civilization was the meaning of life. I don't think there is external answer to that question, and I should mention that there is a very good look appear page on the different philosophies and the meaning of life. Oh interesting, I have to read that I think it's likely it's neutral and gives a wide votes of really good reference to a lot of different philosophies about meaning of the twentieth century for Spain, general from from nature, to dig existentialist at all this is some were all of them have an idea of meaning they really struggle the systematic very rigorously in that's what the page and

see a shot out till the hitchhiker's guide and all that you know, as I do I think, there's no external answer that I think its internal. We decide what meaning we will have in our lives and what we're going to do with ourselves and- and so when I think you know, if we're talking about thousand years and millions of years and you, re milner wrote a book he's a big internet investor guy. He wrote a book advocating quite strongly for humans, exploring the universe and getting off the planet. And he funds projects to like sin like using lasers, to send little cameras and interesting stuff, and he talks a lot in the book about meaning is like his thing is: you is that the purpose of the human species is broadly surviving get off the planet. Well, I don't. Everything he has to say cause. I

that's not a meaning that can motivate most people in their own lives. Dislike ok, great, like the distances space. Silly enormous. So I don't know what it shall we build generation ships to start flying places I can't do that and I'm not even if I could even have on elon musk affected, devote all my wealth to bill I'll be dead on the ship on the way. So is that really meaning? But I think it's really interesting to think about and greeting his little book is quite a short little book reading his book it may me it did make me think about While this is big like this is not what you think about. In your day to day life is like: where is the human species going to be in ten million years, and that does make you sort of turned back to earth and say gee? Let's not destroy the planet like we cannot we're stuck here,

for least awhile, and therefore we should really think about sustainability, and I mean. one million years sustainability. And we don't have all the answer. We have nothing close to the answers. I'm actually excited about ai in this regard, while also bracketing yeah. I understand there's a recent people are terrified away. I actually think it is quite interesting this moment in time that we may have in the next fifty. Here's to really really solve some really long term human problems, for example in health, like the the progress that's being made in cancer treatment, because we are able to at scale, you know a model molecules and and genetics, and things like this, it gets huge, is really exciting.

You know. So, if you know, if we can hang on for a little while- and you know certain problem, Seem completely intractable today, like climate change may end up being actually not that hard and we might just might be able to alleviate the full diversity of human suffering, a sure, yeah andrea in so doing now help increase a chance. They can propagate the flame of human consciousness. Out into

towards the stars and adding another important one. If we fail to do that for me is propagating and maintaining the the full diversity and richness and complexity and expansiveness of human knowledge. So if we destroy ourselves, he would, it would make me feel a little bit. Ok yeah you just if the human knowledge triggered me to say something really interesting, which is when we talked to earlier about translating and using machines to translate. We mostly talked about- small languages and translating into english, but I always like to tell the story of a something inconsequential consequential really, but there's was in norway in bergen norway. For every year they ve got this annual festival called gooey core, which is young. Groups drumming and ever drumming competition, the seventeen sectors of the city, and it would have been doing it for upon her years or whatever,

they wrote about it in the three light just of norway and then from there it was translated into english and german, etc, etc, and so what what I love about that story is what it reminds me is like this machine translation goes both ways and like when you talk about the richness and broadening of human culture, we already seeing some really great pieces of this, so like korean soap operas really popular, not with me, but with people and the ability to imagine taking a very famous, very popular, very well known korean drama and now I mean I literally me now we're just about their technologically the, where we use a machine to redoubled in English. In an automated way, including digitally

editing the faces, so it doesn't look dubbed as so. Suddenly you say. Oh while I hears here's a piece of you know it's it's the korean equivalent of maybe its friends as a comedy, or maybe it's succession just to be very contemporary is something that really impact a lot of people and they really loved it, and we have literally no idea what it's about near and suddenly like wow. You know like music street music from where ever in the world can suddenly become accessible to us all in new ways. It so cool. It's really exciting to get access to the richness of culture in china in the many different subcultures of africa, south america. What am I unsuccessful arguments with the chinese government is, but blocking wikipedia

yeah right, you aren't just stopping people in china from reading chinese wikipedia and other language versions of wikipedia you're, also preventing the chinese people from telling their story. So is there a small festival in a small town in china like boo, a corp. I don't know, but by the way the people who live in that village that small town of fifty thousand they can't put that in Wikipedia and get it translated into other places, they can't share their culture and their knowledge, and I think for china should be a somewhat influential argument, because china does feel misunderstood in the world. This, like ok, others way if you want to help people understand putting wikipedia that's, people go to when they want to understand and give the amazed incredible people of china, voice exactly jerry, I'd think so much you're sitting here a fan of everything you ve done that eating ass, your Lydia reggie bleak deeply deeply deeply grateful for computer. I love it brings me joy,

I donate need all the time you should donate to a huge. talk with you insist. This is amazing. Thank you so much for that. I thank for having me thanks for listening to his conversation with Jimmy wales, support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description, and now they believe you as the words from the world historian Daniel Boorstin. The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.