Wikipedia's Quest for a Trustworthy Internet

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2:38Jimmy Wales is founder of Wikipedia. He has a new book out, The Seven Rules of Trust, a blueprint for building things that last. That book out tomorrow. And lucky for us, he joins us right here in studio. Welcome, welcome. Nice to have you here with us.

2:51Jimmy Wales:Yeah, thanks for having me. It's like a spaceship in here. It's amazing. Some call it the fishbowl. We call it home. This book about trust, when did you start writing it? It was a couple years ago. I had had some ideas around this and, yeah, just started. And it's obviously turned out to be quite timely as we have a lot of issues around trust in society. And, you know, I want to encourage people to let's get back to a society of trust. You know, it's funny. I mean, Carol and I spent a lot of time talking about this ahead of the interview because Wikipedia sort of seems and look, it's had its challenges.

3:28Of course. It's had its controversies. But for things that are online, it's kind of this weird utopia in the sense that. It's kind of remarkable. Yeah, it's really remarkable. I mean, we know anonymous people online oftentimes are full of vitriol and hate. We can see that even when people use their names on social media platforms. We lock our doors when we leave the house. Why does trust work on Wikipedia but kind of seems like nowhere else right now?

3:57Jimmy Wales:Yeah, I mean, I think for me, you know, one of the seven rules of trust that is most meaningful in that regard is purpose. Like Wikipedia has a very simple purpose, which is to build an encyclopedia. And we make all our decisions around that and the rules about participation and so forth. And that's very different from social media where there isn't a clear purpose other than free speech and openness. and therefore that toxicity really creeps in quite a lot in social media. People say outrageous things because they get rewarded for it. They get more followers. They get more engagement and the algorithms love that.

4:35We talk about clickbait all the time.

4:36Jimmy Wales:Clickbait all the time. And that's very different from the world of Wikipedia where, I mean, thank goodness our headlines are so boring. There's no clickbait. It's like the article on Thomas Jefferson is called Thomas Jefferson. But it does what it says on the tin. Boy, that's a very British expression, I'm afraid. But yeah, I mean, I do think that having a simple purpose is a part of what keeps us focused and keeps our community focused. How do you describe facts? How do you determine facts? And I am amazed. I mean, I've been doing this a few years. And I felt like when I started, it was very clear, fact versus fiction in terms of reporting and doing stories.

5:17and I feel like there's a lot of gray area and I just feel like a fact is a fact. So how do you guys determine what's a fact in an entry?

5:24Jimmy Wales:Yeah, I mean, we're really old-fashioned. Like what we look for are reliable sources. So we want, you know, sort of academic research or quality newspapers, quality magazines, quality books. Really old-fashioned. And, you know, the idea that we should treat, you know, know the new england journal of medicine as the same as uh social media influence online is obviously just wrong like you you really want facts and that's what people want from wikipedia they don't want um sources matter sources really matter like having a good quality source is what it's all about but why don't sources matter to everybody and other people will say okay i believe this source is reliable so like you know what i mean like we're living in like different worlds.

6:15Jimmy Wales:I think, I think, and I think that's a huge problem. I mean, I do think, you know, it's really important. I mean, one of the problems that we've seen is that a lot of the media in response to the changing and very difficult financial model for journalism, they've chased after really partisan audiences. And so, you know, sometimes you read something and you're like, yeah, that was, that was interesting. That was good. But I'm not sure I got both sides of the story there. I live in the UK and we have a, just an example, two quality newspapers, The Guardian and The Telegraph, left-leaning, right-leaning.

6:49Jimmy Wales:They're both great newspapers, but I often read one and I'm like, oh, but, and then I go read the other and I'm like, yeah, you probably should have been somewhere in the middle, both of you. And it would have been, I think, a better story had you said, well, you know, we got one side of the story, but we actually had to go out and find somebody to tell us a little bit of the other side. You know, you can't be, Two, like, the moon is made of rocks, or is it cheese? Who knows? I don't mean that. Hopefully cheese. Seriously. Hopefully cheese. But, you know, like, seriously thinking about, like, who are we talking to, and are we getting to the bottom of this?

7:23With trust in media here in the United States declining and having declined over the last few years, in your view, is there something that we can do better, that the media can do better, that it can borrow from what has worked at Wikipedia, what has worked with the methods of trust that you've studied that can make us build trust again with our audiences.

7:41Jimmy Wales:Yeah. I mean, well, the good news is that the financial press like Bloomberg is still among the most trusted. And I think that's because by the mandate of what you're trying to do, informing business people and investors, you kind of have to be like ruthlessly objective. You're not chasing after partisan audiences and things like that. But I do think that's a big big data. Data is important. Transparency. I think, you know, realistically, you know, one of the things that Wikipedia does that's kind of odd is we'll have a, you know, at the top of a page, the neutrality of this article has been disputed.

8:14Jimmy Wales:We've all seen it. Yeah, we've all seen it. And I always say, you know, I kind of wish sometimes the New York Times would put a banner up just saying, you know, we had a big fight in the newsroom. We weren't quite sure. So like more of how the sausage is made type of thing. Yeah, yeah. But here's a little bit of their inside thinking. Like we did want to report this. We're not sure we've got the full story yet. because that pretending to be perfection all the time, people see through that and they know, of course, and I think they're willing to say, yeah, like actually journalism is quite hard, you know, so a little more transparency is always good.

8:43Do you get pressure a lot from companies, politicians, individuals to like change an entry?

8:50Jimmy Wales:No, not really. I mean, people, you know, I meet a lot of people and people often are like, well, you know, my Wikipedia entry, what about this, what about that? And I'm just like, yeah, send us an email. Like, you know, we'll have somebody look at that. That's all fine. And in general, no, and actually we're very. But you really just say, just send him an email and I'm not going to do anything about it. Kind of. Yeah. Okay. But no, sometimes people have a legitimate point. They're like, oh, well, I, you know, I did this thing and it was in the press and, you know, it's like, oh, okay, well maybe we just overlooked it and that's, that's great.

9:15Jimmy Wales:But, you know, at a deeper level, one of the things that's really important is, you know, we aren't funded by governments. We aren't funded by sort of major donors. We're funded by people giving their$20. and that makes a big difference for our intellectual independence. We're not worried like, oh, if we've got something negative about whatever, then we might lose our donation. How is the fundraising going? Because I feel like I've gotten a lot of messages from you throughout the years. Throughout the years. Please, from Jimmy Wills on Wikipedia. We've all seen it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've all seen it.

9:47Is it going okay? Is funding going okay?

9:48Jimmy Wales:It's okay, yeah. We've been, you know, we're stable. We're very cautious with money, so we always try to build our reserves and so on. And then, you know, recently, I don't know, Elon tweeted defund Wikipedia. I think he gave up$5 million that day. So you can text Elon. I know you guys have been in touch. You can text him and say, tweet about us again when it gets to the end of the year. Have a while. Well, you have had some conversation. It's time to raise money.

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