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Jimmy Wales: Challenging How Knowledge is Created.
By Nick Hodge | April 27, 2007
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The following is a blog-best-effort transcript of Jimmy Wales in Melbourne on the 27th April 2007. This is not a verbatim transcript.
This blog post, and Flickr images are licensed under the Creative Commons License:
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Garry Putland: welcome. Apple might get Podcast from Adelaide up today. Didn't they invent the technology? Garry happy as he got a photo with the Chaser guys for his kids. Lucky! About 200 attendees.
Auntie Joy: welcome from original land owners and custodians.
Garry: educationau.edu.au Challenging How Knowledge is created. Ms danah boyd coming in September; digital generation focus. must remember to come. Microsoft must get involved with these guys, especially as they map out the future of learning in the r/w digital native culture.
Katrina Reynen: Assistant General Manager, Innovation Branch, Vic DET. Listing companies here. Lots. How Victoria takes IT forward. Exciting challenge: how young people connect and learn. Most wired and global of generations. Teachers integrate technology: critical/reflective thinking. Moving beyond textbook/blackboard roles. Teachers are now advisers and learners themselves.
Students: nonlinear; links, not narrative. Images > text. Networks greater than local
eg: Andrew Douch: Wanganui Park Secondary School:, Victoria podcasting @ school. Study on the bus. Kids thinks its cool as other think they are listening to music. Kids also creating podcasts and are publishing.
Letting go as teachers: kids are beyond us.
ICT transformed learning; connection across the globe. enthusiasm for ipods, games, web2 services, enormous potential
Use tech -- new ways of learning; collaborative tech eg: wikipedia. Victoria ICT is integral into schools, ICT helps students create.
Kahoots; podcasts, tv+radio programs today . Mashup machinima; Kahoots + bluescreen with kids acting in from of kahoots created 3D world.. Must mix media, and uses all sides of the brain.
editorial note: ICT > geeks cutting code Microsoft people! Get Web2 or get out.
Learning in a new mode, learning @ the centre. Vic Gov't AU$130m. to ICT. Notebook to teachers and students. 1:1 learning?
Garry: Jiimmy's visit: all humans have access to all knowledge. Skills: networker, connections are important where knowledge is rapidly growing in large networks. Has attracted media attention.
Jimmy Wales:
Australia is really big! Perth Adelaide Perth Sydney Melbourne.
Melbunn as spelling of Melbourne 
Cost of textbooks to zero, software towards zero, cost of computers down
Learning impact has been going on from 10 years
Digital divide is going to reduce due to above (ref: Microsoft US$3)
Charles van Doren, encyclopedia should be radical (subversive)
Wikipedia: free access to sum of all human knowledge.
Melbunn beat Sydney in % of people editing wikipedia entry.
Greater percentage of the board from outside US
Wikimedia is a tiny non-profit org. US$1m last year, US$2m last year. Traditional spending on bandwidth and servers (mostly servers) Supported by small donations as it is a charity. Donations from 50 different countries.
Wikia: new organisation (Jimmy is Chairman), book, work or community people might want to build. GPL - wikipedia model nonprofit education and research communities. GFDL for documentation. Plus (cc) licenses.
Encyclopedia >> Library: Wikia, travel guides vs. encyclopedia entries. Opensource knowledge. Muppetswiki eg: 300 wikipedia entries; Wiki site 12,000 articles about the Muppets.
Itzhak Perlman: wikipedia; fails to mention he was on Muppets show. Spin/angle. Everything in the world from a Muppet perspective
Mode of production, new style of cultural work. Only way to publish in this way, and this volume
2500 communities in 66 languages; Klingon is not a language. LOL
Explosion of creative.
Open serving: free software, free content, people keep ad revenue. No clue as to business model yet; like day of OS software; skepticism. Hugh amount that can be done. Software packages text, images. As cost of bandwidth drops.
Wikipedia bill lower in December 2006, vs December 2005 as bandwidth cost because less.
Jimmy: Google's worst nightmare. Jimmy's mom like Fast Company
Search engines are not democratic, not transparent. Not a good state of affairs. Protocols of internet are open; view / time; OS community to create search engine software to challenge big guys. Search.wikia.com. Community design on the site. Clone basic idea of search engine, get links back. Expect public launch end of CY2007. Media not at launch of wikipedia (so start wrong) - so, work in background before launch. Expect low quality whilst software is in development.
Wikipedia is global. 1.750m articles in English, <33% of the total. 128 languages = 1000 articles. 5-10 regular users. Group has formed genuine community. How to reach out to communities outside the wikipedia group in their language.
Free access to sum of all knowledge. Stallman/GNU. Free as in Speech. Freedom to copy, freedom to modify, freedom to distribute, free do distribute non-commercially. Contributing into the commons.
Sum of all human knowledge: wikipedia, encylopedia: not a data dump; summary of human knowledge.
250,000 articles in every language spoken natively by at least 1,000,000 people - goal. 347 languages that fit this description. Currently only 6 languages meet this goal.
Reusable, distributable over the world: (Truth in Numbers) visit squatter city in New Delhi. Illegal settlement. No schools, infrastructure. (Sangamvihar sp?) Parents creating private schools. Better education for this kids (this is universal) - no internet access. 400 students. 2 computers. 6th grade class can touch computers. All the students in uniform. Unlicensed school, cannot film, Gov't could shut down! Something broken in a policy that can shutdown schools and not provide replacement.
Wikipedia supplied on CD; no library; where there are few computers and no connection. High challenge ahead. 250,000 articles to english speakers with access: different in developing countries.
Wikipedia: only 7 fulltime people; wikipedia 9th most popular website (6th in Germany) (ref: Alexa). Like David Hasselhof of the internet in germany. 12th most popular in Iran. Persian language editor turned into police twice. Large blogging population in Iran. Crazy people call the police, and the police ignore them. Freedom of speech, worried in Iran. Make a big noise if he is arrested otherwise you might just dissappear in Iran.
CNN.com 2.3% of the internet. wikipedia.com 6.2%. Journos call Jimmy and ask "what does the internet think?" old skool media
cnn.com is not growing, wikipedia is growing. people are getting their information from different sources. Press coverage (error in Wikipedia, who know?) -- oldmedia got wind of it (John Seganthaler) in one para. Corrected in wikipedia within 10 minutes. USToday a month later: wikipedia is a dangerious thing. Almost killed wikipedia (LOL: boost ratings)
How good is wikipedia. Only academic look, Dec06. Nature magazine. Scientific Journal. cf: Wikipedia, Britannica. Peer review from Nature. Look for major/minor errors. 50 articles. Avg 3/article in Britannica. 4/article in Wikipedia. Not that bad, but doesn't show improvement in quality over time. Pick 10-100, look at history and see the changes over time. Self-correcting behavior of the content. Wikipedia striving to be better. Its a shock that Britannica is so bad :-), and not self correcting.
Perfection is not possible as an absolute; it will take time. It's a goal.
Good job of Neutrality, bedrock principle. Widely divergent view points can collaborate. Even presenting the disagreement. Thoughtful toleration are important, where we can disagree safely. Mono-cultures are dangerous. Healthy discussion, all have same goal. Keep the central goal in mind. Entire project is one of love.
How do we foster these styles of communities. Principles of software design. Thought exercise. Imagine a restaurant design. Steak/knives/killers/cages -- bad design, bad society. Software for social interaction, same in education. Think about the bad things first (then design so they don't do the bad things)
In real world, don't assume badness. Design, think about cleaning up afterwards. Mostly, accept trade off of open society - believe in goodness of other people. Assume do bad, top-down approach, bad. Hostile mindset, not trusting. Nuture communities, not top down. Bring people together, not technology. Successful online community same as offline. Respect for individuals, respect for others, love. Tech conferences, its about love. Fundamental benevolence. Strangers are people you haven't met yet.
How should teachers use Wikipedia?
Use wikipedia as initial source, but not he only source! Just like an encyclopedia. Don't cite wikipedia. Go deeper into the information. wikipedia is edited live.
danah boyd: "encyclopedia citations are rearely my problem, but wikipedia as cliffnotes is."
cliffnotes: read the summary rather going to the real sources.
Always follow the second sources at the bottom of the wikipedia page.
cf: Battle of Iwo Jima: wikipedia to get context, then movie, then read novel. Context, summary. Not as the final source.
teacher: I told the kids not to look at wikipedia: jimmy: I can tell you not to listen to rock and roll, too. They are doing it.
All source materials have flaws; wikipedia has policy that by no means perfect, but nor are anywhere.
Free culture: groundswell. CC licensing. Jimmy on board of CC. Millions of objects on the internet with CC licensing.
Taking the OS software culture to content. Youtube: get off your butt and add CC licensing !
Go CC licensing. yeah. base layer of rich cultural materials. Base exchange of cultural experience.
Power of decentralisation. let's do it. (cc)
Q&A
Charles Sturt University: strengths, group important in knowledge. academic exercise: closer to the truth. What is the editing process.
Link: edit this page, wiki-code is a little geeky. Any change you like. its live immediately. Keep history of article. Truly delete in legal/privacy issue. See the revisions/history and see what's gone before. One click and it reverts to previous version. Another thing, History - all past revisions and compare any two revisions. Paragraphs changes, words changed (yellow/red respectively).
Can also see who so can be blocked, many schools (parliaments LOL) get blocked for QA.
Articles on watch list for editing.
Can see full history of contribution for a person, can see accountability (rather than gatekeeping). Assume good work, once you start doing bad things, we'll notice. Community self-polices
State Library Victoria: cost of text books, learning to zero
Same reason as for encyclopedia, Britannica is expensive in book form. Britannica is furniture. Expense craftsmanship of the books. General, cost go to zero (or close to)
Internet, projects freely licensed text books. Wikibooks (textbooks). Wild and wooly wiki
Org called Connections from Rice University for freely licensed; traditional authorship model.
Textbook @ Economic 101 (US speak) ; 2-3 text books that are popular; authors make a hit. Samuelson text as eg; superstar economist. Handful of authors make a pure living out of books. New method of productions, 1000 economics professors can create text. OS release early and often. Profs testing in classroom to improve quality.
Free software dominate in Unix world (cf; Apache) mode of production vs. Microsoft spending billions on servers like IIS. Why? Open source model. Firefox > 50%, wants to avoid Microsoft as much as possible (editorial: there goes my chance for a photo with Jimmy)
General public, taxpayer money - available to the general public. Research results academic journals and software generated by Gov't open source. Trends are strong and inevitable.
(editorial note: Nick feels like he is going to be shunned and stoned by those around him, as I am wearing a Microsoft shirt)
Quality of Knowledge, vs. Volume of Knowledge. Most great theologians have born and died.
Jimmy 5 years ago a guy in PJs on the internet. Ain't no guru. LOL
Volume of info is great: wikipedia is about the assistance of assisting with knowledge overload. cf. search for sydney in google vs. go to wikipedia.
PRC China: no wikipedia access. Banned? Connection issue?
Mainland China, all languages of wikipedia is blocked. (editor: so much for free access)
Jimmy will not censor, and working with censors is morally wrong. Jimmy to go to China at high level as possible to open up.
Position of wikipedia: block of wikipedia is an error. Vast majority of knowledge in wikipedia is not subversive. Controlling is not assisting the IT industry and depriving the Chinese people of a voice.
Using Skype to get around the firewall of China
Norway: drumming competition, old traditional 150 years. Big deal locally, known outside Norway. Put article into Norway; also translated into English. Similar festival somewhere in China, we've never heard of -- cannot contribute this outside. China gov't thinks they are misunderstood - makes no sense to block content as wikipedia is important to get their own voice out to the world.
Engineering Company: 5000 people, online community, young people within from older people. Setup own wiki. Challenges, getting people to contribute as its voluntary.
Wiki, low barrier to entry as possible, takes time to build. Momentum; process of learning how to learn the social learning; edit others work, conversations productive.
Inside companies different; wikipedia, newpedia failed prior - but had a community. Humanitarian excitement.
Internal, fervour not as great. Caution: culture, hierarchical and top-down, will have trouble as lower level don't want to subvert this hierarchy. Big boss writes , all bow down on the excellent prose - wiki will fail. These organisations will fail in the collaborative world.
What seems to work, someone is an evangelist for the wiki, and tasked to make it go. Beloved person, great social skills not the unfriendly ubergeek.
Categories, taxonomies, some are maintenance function. Can true categories extracted from maintenance categories.
Lot of talk on folksonomy; taxonomy created by the people. Tagging in an emergent tagging system. eg; Flickr tags, from the overall community - array of things appear. Tagging can get a lot of noise. eg: seminar series tagged with jimmywales not of jimmywales.
Community monitors the quality, some have hobby discuss and debate the taxonomy.
Jimmy consulting @ BBC a few years ago, search engine for general search. Couple of staff members to hierarchy of concepts. They were gobsmacked, or dear, the wikipedia categories: soccer players: Wikipedia subcategories by teams, country of origin by the community; vs. BBC do it internally.
Under freelicense, some have extracted the taxonomy for other uses.
Wikipedia, category via topic. Use same topic for internal functional reasons.
Inside/outside the Wiki for people's own sites?
Recognise: two separate organisation: wikimedia, wikipedia.
Wikia: other areas. Wikia support wikimedia as much as possible. Muppets is a wikia site. Wikipedia is neutral. nobias. Don't push an agenda.
Wikia, no rule as to neutrality. Sustainapedia (sp), how sustainable world, certainly not neutral.
So, if your site is not neutral (advocacy, etc) wikia.
Don't come into wikipedia, its an encyclopedia: not a data dump.
Peter Jackson, ABD RN Online: Top-down editorial process driven, how do large orgs chill out (excellent idea)
Went to ABC yesterday to talk about this, Jimmy quote: I think the world should relax a notch or two (editorial agree!)
Consulting for the BBC, similar issue as to ABC. BBC:everyone loves the BBC, especially the BBC
Moderation policy: looser policy now, only react when someone complains in their message boards.
Think about: reactive moderation in forum, more openness - but also for the community for self control. Wiki, flame wars are moderated by the community, and the policy is set before. If there are flames, they are self deleted. Forum software doesn't give the community an ability to throw out the troublemakers.
Don't pick the hardest possible topic to do a wiki about: something easy, friendly. Successful experience.
Knowledge how to do a successful wiki, call Jimmy at Wikia. It has nothing to do with the software, its about managing the community. Don't just block the troublemakers: you must have a tolerance for trolls and be a soft target so they get tired and just go away.
Garry: says Melbourne was best show (woohoo, chose the right one. Except I missed the Chaser guys)
Press conference, master of answering questions!
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Topics: eduausem2007, education, jimmywales, wikipedia |
May 27th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
[...] heard Jimmy Wales talk about Biographies on Wikipedia, especially of living people, I am now seeing it in [...]
June 9th, 2007 at 4:09 am
Up to 9 months ago we financially contributed funds to Wikipedia but no more, for we thought that it was a good idea and where its thinking was in unison with our own at that time - using knowledge for the good of humankind. When we as novices tried to place our Swiss charity within Wikipedia we were absolutely savaged by the editors. They in fact blocked our right of reply, which is documented by themselves.
Thereafter we even sent our registration documents via email to the then executive director of Wikimedia, the holding organization, to prove that our international group was registered as a Swiss charity. He did nothing at all. A few months later he resigned with another top Wikimedia executive, 'Jimbo's second in command. The greatest problem with Wikipedia that we now find is that they are highly selective in who should place information and where therefore they will never really have a web-based encyclopaedia that is unbiased and totally factual. It is ultimately at the whims of the few enlightened ones who control what should be a great reference. Unfortunately we now see that it is not.
For anyone interested further on how Wikipedia editors work, the full account including all emails will be part of our next web newsletter 'Scientific Discovery'. It will be on-line by the end of July 2007. Overall, it is time we feel that Wikipedia looked internally at itself and that they concluded that they have major problems with the way they treat new entrants. This analysis should especially be directed towards the attitude of their editors, who remove the right of reply and delete super-quick for reasons not based on evidence but only hearsay. By the way also, the Wikipedian Editor Zoe who first blocked us and the initial instigator of all the basic trouble, fell out with 'Jimbo' and where she as well left a few months later. Apparently she had made a vendetta against a certain professor according to 'Jimbo's' opinion. Thereafter she took her bat and ball home and has never been seen since. I believe she also threatened the embattled professor at the time - the web link is http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:dUfUXyA24wwJ:www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Zoe+zoe+wikipedia+professor+change+wikipedia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk.
Dr. David Hill
Chief Executive
World Innovation Foundation Charity (reg. no. CH-035.7.035.277-9 - 11th July 2005)
Bern, Switzerland