WEBVTT - TechStuff Tackles Wikipedia 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:07.360 Get in touch with technology with tex Stuff from how Stuff, 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:17.000 What's dot com either everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff. 0:00:17.040 --> 0:00:19.960 I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren Vocoma. And today we 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.360 wanted to talk a bit about a subject that's kind 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:29.720 of a sore subject among among writers, teachers, teachers especially, 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:34.280 I would say, yeah, sometimes librarians, uh, anyone involved in 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:38.840 heavy research. Yeah. And and it's a matter of some 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.519 debate among lots and lots of people online, and there 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:44.000 are good points and bad points. We're going to cover 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.960 them all. We are, of course talking about Wikipedia. And 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:51.599 you guys who are longtime listeners of tech stuff might 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:54.560 remember that Chris and I did an episode about wikis 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:58.040 and we touched upon Wikipedia a little bit. But that 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.320 was many years ago. Other stuff has happened, as things 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:03.920 are wont to do on the course of time, and 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:07.080 we decided we wanted to really look at what made 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.840 Wikipedia what it was and what it is, and how 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:13.480 has it changed over the time that it's existed, and 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.520 and some of the reasons why Wikipedia is a very 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:21.640 useful tool and some reasons why people either maybe maybe 0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:24.200 not dismiss it, but but but in some ways that 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:27.320 it could perhaps be improved. Yeah, and and reasons why 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:31.920 some people, uh suggest extreme caution before relying too heavily 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:37.000 upon it. Um and and before we get really into 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:39.040 this at all, you know, I used to write for 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:42.520 how Stuff Works dot Com a lot. I occasionally still do, 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.399 but I mostly do podcasts now and things like that. 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:49.640 Blogs are about about the writing level juncture, right, But 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:51.559 but I used to write these these a long articles. 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:55.040 And one of the policies and How Stuff Works, UH, 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:57.600 is that you do not use Wikipedia as a source. 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:00.760 And uh, I used to be an editor before I 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:03.120 was a podcaster in social media person. And yes, that 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:05.680 was one of the things that we very firmly enforced 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.119 are still do. And and really the reason for that 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.600 has nothing to do with whether or not the infant well, 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:14.240 it has something to do with whether or not the 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.399 information you find on Wikipedia is reliable. But more importantly, 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:21.400 Wikipedia is a dynamic thing, right. It can be written 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:24.960 and edited by anybody at any time. And so when 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:27.840 you sit there and cite something from Wikipedia, it maybe 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:32.680 the next time someone visits that particular entry, the the 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:36.760 information has changed, and it may be that the information 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:39.239 now is more accurate than it was, or maybe less 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.400 accurate at any rate. The things that make Wikipedia a 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:45.720 useful tool in day to day I need to get 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:47.960 this information are the same things that make it a 0:02:48.040 --> 0:02:50.560 dangerous tool if you are writing in any sort of 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:56.040 academic or professional capacity. Apacity. Yeah, thank you editor for 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.200 giving me the word that I don't have. But but really, 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:01.200 before we get into all the pros and cons that 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:04.480 I've already just touched on, uh, let's talk about the history. 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:08.240 So before there was a Wikipedia, back when there was 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.639 just barely a web. Yeah, yeah, it was more more 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:15.280 local networks of computers and some of them could you know, 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:18.079 key into other local networks. Yeah, we we did have 0:03:18.120 --> 0:03:20.680 an internet. Uh, and the web was a thing, but 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:24.600 it was very young. But back in so you know, 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:30.360 the web essentially is introduced, right, so web has not 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.200 been around for very long. Rick Gates comes up with 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:36.600 this idea. He says, Uh, you know what would be 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:40.600 really super awesome if if we were to build an 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:45.600 encyclopedia that lived on the Internet, and if you made 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:49.080 that encyclopedia something that anyone could contribute to, so that 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.880 way you could tap into the world's knowledge and people 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:56.280 who are really experts in whatever field that they're in 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:58.880 they can go in and share that knowledge, right, and 0:03:58.880 --> 0:04:01.280 and then you have the hitcharch Guide to the Galaxy, right, 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.200 except it's really the Hitchicker's Guide to Earth. Uh. So 0:04:04.280 --> 0:04:06.680 it would be more than mostly harmless Earth in a 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:09.920 small amount of the surrounding galaxy. Sure. Yeah, But essentially 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:13.200 the sum total of what human knowledge is could go 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:15.920 on the Internet and be in a database that you 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:21.640 could search, and it would be the world's most complete encyclopedia. Uh. 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:25.159 A fellow by the name of R. L. Samuel came 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:28.920 up with an idea to call it Interpedia, and it 0:04:28.960 --> 0:04:31.240 was kind of this interesting point of discussion, but it 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:34.159 never went beyond that. It was just one of those Hey, 0:04:34.240 --> 0:04:37.279 any cool, Yeah exactly. Maybe if someone who has more 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.440 time and resources could do this, it would be awesome. Uh. 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:45.520 And then in a very important development happened. And I 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.719 was amazed that it happened this early because this was 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:52.200 the development of the Wicki platform, and the fact that 0:04:52.200 --> 0:04:55.159 it happened in ninety four amazes me because I was 0:04:55.360 --> 0:05:00.360 largely unaware of wikis until Wikipedia came along. Yeah as well, So, 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:02.359 I mean I had been on the web since the 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.880 early nineties, but I just didn't know about wikis for 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.200 many years, I mean almost a decade. Uh, and it 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.400 was and when I finally did start to learn about wikis, 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:15.880 they were strange and unusual to me because it was 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:20.279 a different experience than your average website. Right. Yeah, Usually 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.679 most websites and most books are based on this idea 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:25.440 that there is one expert who is who is this 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.160 terrific expert and is talking to you about this thing. Yeah, 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:31.039 and that's and that's where it starts and stops. You know, 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.520 no one's arguing with them, particularly, right. There might be 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:39.280 some form of comment ability on a site where people 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.800 can contribute into the discussion, but in general, the content 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:46.080 of the site itself is created by a person or 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:49.920 an organization, but no one else. It's not like, you know, 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:52.880 Bob can just log in and put in Bob's section, 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:54.960 and then Joe over here logs in and puts in 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:59.359 Joe's section. It's Bob and Joe can't do anything because 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:01.200 they can just go and view the site. Well, the 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:03.800 wiki was based on a completely different idea, and it 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:06.640 was designed by a guy named Ward Cunningham and his 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.520 first one was First Software Developers. Yeah, yeah, he was. 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:12.760 He worked for a software consulting company that he was 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.120 a partner in. It was Cunningham and Cunningham also known 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.680 as C two dot com, and he was developing this, 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:24.640 uh this platform for Portland Pattern Repository and he called 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:28.320 it wiki wiki web right, based on the Hawaiian word 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.800 wiki or wiki wiki, which means um, quick quick, Yeah. 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:35.560 There's a the wiki wiki Shuttle in Honolulu, which is 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:39.200 an airport shuttle. I've been on the shuttle and I 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.520 remember my wife being really amused every time she saw 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.760 the wiki wiki shuttle. She just loved wiki wiki. Obviously 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:51.240 I've married the right woman. So, uh so, Ward Cunningham 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:53.320 comes up with this idea for the wiki and essentially 0:06:53.320 --> 0:06:56.520 what a wiki is is it's a website that has 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:01.240 collaborative editing tools built into the side itself. So you 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:04.760 you navigate to the site through a browser, and within 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.560 the browser you can make changes to the site collaboratively. 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:12.920 So depending upon the level of administrative power you have, 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.400 you can you can edit things, you can add things, 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.480 you can delete things. And it's since it's all within 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.280 the web browser, you're using a basic markup language or 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:26.520 maybe some sort of rich text editor, and it'll let 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:30.600 people collaborate on projects, even if they had different machines. Right, 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.840 So if Lauren's using a Mac and I'm using a PC, 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:35.920 not only do we hate each other, but often we 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.720 can't work on the same thing because our platforms are 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.760 so different. But this is web based, so all we 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:45.960 have to do is use whichever browsers and then we 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.280 navigate there and we can make these changes and build 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:52.080 our collaborative I hate you website together and other people 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:54.520 can join in and explain why they hate everybody too. 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:57.680 And I don't know why I'm so negative today, but 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:00.600 apparently that's how this is gonna work. I think Cunningham 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:05.120 develops this wiki technology, which is what makes Wikipedia possible. 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:08.120 But we're not at Wikipedia yet now, right, because yeah, 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.280 well go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, that's 0:08:11.320 --> 0:08:14.840 when we start talking about Jimmy Wales, who is kind 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:17.720 of the face of Wikipedia, right right, Yeah, I was 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.520 gonna say that. At the same time around was when 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.280 Jimmy Wales had dropped out of college. He he had 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:28.320 started um started a couple months or for a finance 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:31.640 PhD from Indiana University and wound up instead of doing that, 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:34.880 going to Chicago to be a futures an options trader 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:40.199 and supposedly much like Elon Musk, who we have previously profiled, 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:44.480 Jimmy Wales noticed that, you know, Netscape went public and 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.720 and what quadrupled in value overnight? Netscape did well, yes, 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:52.240 they did good. Um, and and took note of that 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.760 and said, hey, this internet thing that I've been kind 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:56.480 of playing around with for a few years, I think 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:58.120 that this could be a thing. Yeah, this this might 0:08:58.200 --> 0:09:01.240 go places. And of course from this is all before 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:05.320 the dot com bubble burst too, so back then it 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:08.520 was all opportunity and wild west and no one was 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:11.800 really sure and bright shining dreams. Yeah it was. It 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:15.559 was interesting. Uh. You know, the the roads weren't paved 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:18.600 with gold, but they were paved with stock options. Uh. 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:24.480 Jimmy Wales has this thought while he's working for a well, 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:28.120 he's part owner of a company called Bomus dot com, 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:30.880 which is a search engine. Yeah, and he owned that 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:35.079 with two other joint owners, Tim Shell and Michael Davis. 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.439 Comes up with his version, his idea for a free 0:09:40.600 --> 0:09:45.240 collaborative encyclopedia, and he taps a guy named Larry Sanger 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.600 to be the project lead for this new encyclopedia. Now 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.440 he knew Sanger from mailing lists, because this isn't that 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.400 long after the fact that people were just using things 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:59.439 like Usenet and mailing lists instead of the Web. And 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:02.440 uh so he got in touch with saner and and 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:08.120 convinced Singer to head up a project, this this collaborative encyclopedia, 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:10.760 which at that point did not have a name, right right, Yeah, 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:13.200 and you know that they've been thinking, I've read about 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:16.920 open source software and and how open source culture could 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:19.679 also be a thing and and and a beautiful thing 0:10:20.040 --> 0:10:22.880 and so and yeah, and that was kind of when 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:25.520 you look back at Tim berners Lee, who's the guy 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.280 who essentially created what we know of as the Web. 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:31.520 That was sort of his approach to He thought that 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.600 open was the right way to go, that the open 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:38.320 collaborative way would mean that the Internet becomes the world's tool, 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:43.800 not any one company or government's tool. And so, uh 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:46.080 this was sort of the idea of of let's make 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:50.479 an encyclopedia that follows those same kind of philosophies. Yeah, 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:53.520 and so, so Wales and Sanger and a few others 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.280 start to form a project that they call new PDA 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.120 in U p E. D I A. And this is 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.200 a peer reviewed encyclopedia that they were going to put online. 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:05.200 And you know, because they wanted that they wanted that 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.040 expert opinion to come in, and they wanted everything to 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:11.760 be as as factual and reliable as possible. Exactly in 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.440 fact Singer that was he was passionate about this. He 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.840 said that, you know, you could create an online encyclopedia 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:20.120 where everyone just contributes, but if you wanted to be 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:24.199 a reliable resource, you need that peer review step in there. 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.040 So and it turned it turned out to be extremely 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.080 slow to to a get people to submit anything at all, 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.080 because it was it was intimidating and and be to 0:11:33.080 --> 0:11:35.840 to you know, find the correct expert to to look 0:11:35.880 --> 0:11:39.959 it over. And also, yeah, the review process was, as 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:45.120 Singer would describe later, laborious. Um so two thousand is 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:48.360 when nupedia starts, and it starts in the middle of 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:52.520 two thousand or so, and uh, they had an advisory 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:55.120 board of a sort of a peer review board made 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.280 up of PhD volunteers. So these are people who are 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.440 not even being paid, theirvolunteering their expertise to review papers 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:05.920 to make sure that they are they're ready for publications. 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.080 So this is like if you were to submit a 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.680 paper to an academic journal or a scientific journal. You know, 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.000 it's something that it's not just automatically going to get published. 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:17.559 It has to be reviewed and pass review. There might 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:21.520 be a lengthy revision process before we'll ever be published. 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.839 So there were seven steps in this review process for 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:28.200 new Pedia, and they did. They didn't think that that 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.160 it would work. I read somewhere that that Wales really 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:33.600 thought that, you know, it had been in conversations with 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:35.760 people on the internet and had realized that if it's 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:38.240 something that they feel passionate about, that they're usually really 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:40.800 willing to engage in that conversation and to help. Yeah. 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:42.840 So the idea was that, you know, you get people 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:45.560 who are really smart. A lot of really smart people 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:49.720 enjoy spreading knowledge. Not that we would know anything about 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:52.240 wanting to show off knowledge. Yeah, I mean, I'm not 0:12:52.320 --> 0:12:54.760 really smart, but I still like to do it. So, 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:56.960 I mean that's why I played trivia is really just 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.360 to show off how smart I am. But I know 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.440 that ppared to these people, I was and still am stupid. 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:09.120 But anyway, so or at least okay, anyway, thank you, 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:14.160 Everyone's special and nobody is um. So yeah, the seventh 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:17.839 step process to publish to review before you would publish 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.120 an article. It turned out that this was a bit 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:24.560 of a bottleneck um and the very first Newpedia article 0:13:24.679 --> 0:13:27.720 that was ever published was written by Kristoff Hust and 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:30.560 it was about a tonality and it was published in 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.160 the summer of two thousands, so it was early two 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:37.240 thousand when they started working on new Pedia. At that time, 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:41.800 the entire submission and review process was all through mailing lists. 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.720 It was. There wasn't a web based version yet, and 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:48.280 so the fairst article publishes in the summer of two thousand, 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:51.240 it was either June or July. According to Sanger, who 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:55.160 wrote about this I found it on slash Dot. He 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:58.720 wrote a two part piece that was essentially about the 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:04.080 whole beginning of Wikipedia, which started with this new Pedia thing. Well, 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:08.680 in January two Sanger and Wales meet up with a 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:13.600 guy named Ben COVID's at the infamous Taco stand meeting. 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.320 Taco stand meeting. Yeah, they were in California and they 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.120 were at a taco stand. They started talking and COVID's 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.720 told Whales and Sanger about Cunningham's wiki Wiki web platform 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.480 and they thought about this as being a tool that 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.560 would allow for collaborative work and make it much easier 0:14:30.920 --> 0:14:34.160 to get articles. And and Sandor was still thinking about 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:36.960 this peer review process, right, right, But they were thinking 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:38.840 that in order to get more submissions, in order to 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:41.160 make it a little bit less intimidating for people to, 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.120 you know, to to submit an article to this crazy 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:46.800 peer review thing, yeah, to say, like, don't worry so 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.920 much about the quality, just submit stuff. Because it turned 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.440 out that, uh, you know that one of the things 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:54.960 they were worried about was that they needed to have content. 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:58.480 And part of the philosophy was that if we can 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.400 fix content, if the content it's not perfect, we can 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.720 still edit it once we get it. But if we 0:15:03.800 --> 0:15:06.960 never get any content, there's no encyclopedia, right, because I 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.760 think at the time they had they had maybe twenty articles, 0:15:09.760 --> 0:15:12.280 I mean something, you know, a very low number. Yeah, 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:16.760 it wasn't it was. It was twenty five articles by 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.240 the winter of two thousand one. So summer two thousand 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:24.080 their first article publishes. More than a year later, they 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.120 have twenty articles on new media, which is more articles 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:29.200 than I write in a year. But I mean, there 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:32.080 was fewer than what I wrote in a year. In 0:15:32.080 --> 0:15:34.200 a year, I would write around a hundred articles. So 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:36.720 it's it's it's kind of you know, but that's that 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:39.920 shows you there was this bottleneck process and and you know, 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:44.200 you find out that a volunteer might love their field 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.360 of expertise, but they're still a volunteer, so there's still 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:49.200 they're still limited by the fact that they have to 0:15:49.240 --> 0:15:52.000 do other things, most of them, unless they're independently wealthy, 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:56.400 they have other responsibilities they have to attend to. But 0:15:57.320 --> 0:15:59.720 while they were thinking about this, they decided to launch 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:04.800 a wiki for Newpedia. And they launched that wiki on 0:16:04.920 --> 0:16:08.880 January two thousand one. So newpedia is still a thing, 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.320 but they launch a wiki for it with the idea 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:15.760 of making it this faster way to contribute articles. And 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:18.800 I think it actually goes live on January. If any 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:21.280 of you know about Wikipedia Day and are going like 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:23.960 that wasn't on the tenth, well that's the here's why 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.560 the wiki goes live on the tenth. The advisory board says, 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.040 I don't want anything to do with that. Like essentially 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:31.640 what happened was the peer review board looked at the 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:34.920 wiki and said, look, we have these other backlog of 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:39.000 articles that we're still reviewing. We cannot deal with this nonsense. 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.840 So what happened was the new Pedia Wiki split from 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:47.800 Newpedia and became its own thing, and on January fifteenth, 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:52.960 that became Wikipedia. So Wikipedia began as a branch of 0:16:53.000 --> 0:16:55.680 new Pedia where it was all going to be puer reviewed, 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:57.960 but then became its own thing where the peer review 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:00.520 kind of went away. The idea was that the community 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.240 would review, and so it wouldn't be peer reviewed in 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:07.640 the sense of an official board of experts. It would 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:11.600 be the community of Wikipedia collectively would be able to 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:15.600 review and edit the content that was being uploaded. And 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.199 and that that kind of spread of the workload was 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:20.680 really important, because they had a hundred and fifty entries 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:25.000 by the end of February. Yeah, it was, and it 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:29.160 went really pretty crazy. The according to Sanger, he said 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:31.800 by the end of January two thousand one, there were 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:37.199 six hundred articles on Wikipedia. But that's Singer this and 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:39.560 that was from memory, So you gotta keep in mind 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:42.359 this is Saner writing in two thousand five about what 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:45.879 happened in two thousand one. So Sanger says that by 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.480 the end of two thousand one there were six hundred articles, 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:51.280 and by March or by end of January two there 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:56.520 was six hundred articles by marchd by April and by Madred. 0:17:56.600 --> 0:17:59.639 So not only were more articles coming online, but it 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:03.439 would growth rate was increasing over time, not exponentially, but 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:08.080 pretty pretty regularly. So it was very quickly becoming popular. 0:18:08.240 --> 0:18:11.160 And uh uh. And April two thousand one, that's when 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:14.720 Jimmy Wales decided to to to post a thing where 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:18.680 he defined that the Wikipedia voice was to be one 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:22.000 of neutral point of view or n p o V 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:26.400 and uh. Sancer actually objected to this as well. Not 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:29.080 that he objected to the idea of neutrality, he thought 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:31.560 that was important. He objected to the phrase point of 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:34.159 view because he said that it still means that the 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.040 article has a point of view, and it shouldn't Sander 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:39.240 in some of his points. I was reading in this 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:43.160 stuff I saw and slash dot, I was thinking, this 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:46.040 is getting to be a little bit about semantics. Weird, 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:50.520 and yeah, a little bit. I respect a lot of 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:52.639 what he was saying, but I think it's something and 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:55.720 I think that that you know, pedantic has its place 0:18:56.040 --> 0:19:01.040 on the Internet, absolutely does. Whenever I'm in a comment, uh, 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:06.040 it's my first weapon of choice. Um. Anyway, So by 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:10.520 the winter of two thousand one, that's when only articles 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:13.280 had published on Newpedia, and the approval process moves so 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:16.720 slowly that even when the tools to review and approve 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.119 articles moved from email to web based clients, it just 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.200 wasn't doing very well. And because it was such a 0:19:23.240 --> 0:19:26.840 slow process, more and more of the people involved in 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:29.520 it began to neglect it and drop off of it. 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:31.959 And Wikipedia, but at that same time, was getting more 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:36.800 and more popular. So yeah, so Sander's responsibilities were starting 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.040 to shift more towards Wikipedia than Newpedia, simply because that's 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:43.280 where all the action was. So by two thousand one 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:46.679 and into two thousand two, Newpedia activity had slowed dramatically 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:50.720 and uh and also the the bubble. By then, the 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.480 dot com bubble had burst, which really kind of wiped 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:57.040 out a lot of the folks who were contributing in 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:01.320 some way. So that kind of all uh made the 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:04.800 funding kind of dry up for Newpedia. Wikipedia, by the way, 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:07.719 was existing at that time and still is to this 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:13.880 day on donations. UM. So the Newpedia was trying really 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.160 hard to redefine the rules that were needed to review 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:20.920 submissions so that they could streamline the process. But by 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:23.360 that time it was it was too little, too late. 0:20:23.960 --> 0:20:26.400 Uh and and it gets really sad in another year. 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:30.600 But when I get there, I'll mention it. So um. 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:34.800 Even at this early stage of Wikipedia, Sanger was really saying, 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:38.360 let's pay attention to what experts have to say. Let's 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:42.199 give them special attention and respect, and make sure that 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:46.560 their voices are the ones we pay the most attention to. 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:50.159 Not that we won't accept submissions from the general public, 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:54.199 but that we should pay more attention to things that 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:58.080 are coming from people who are recognized. Because again, this 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:00.640 is this is Sander saying that in order to be 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:04.440 a credible resource for people, you have to have some 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:08.159 form of review or or you know, you have to 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:11.239 have some way of of saying the information here is 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.960 from right right, the same way that scientific journals won't 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:16.840 just you know, accept accept research that has not been 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.479 checked over by a peer review system because least it's 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:23.680 ideally ideally if you ever hear. In fact, this is 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:27.160 just a little side note. Uh, this is important if 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:29.640 you're reading something on Wikipedia and you look at the references. 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.560 It's something that Lauren and I do a lot. Uh, 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:35.600 It's important also to pay to what the references are 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:38.920 because there are scientific quote unquote scientific papers out there 0:21:39.240 --> 0:21:42.760 that are actually blogs that aren't scientific papers. So then 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:45.600 you will quote unquote have a paper published in a 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:49.280 scientific journal, but it's not a peer reviewed scientific journal. Correct. 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:52.040 I see this with a lot of free energy papers, 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:54.359 where free energy is one of those things where like, 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:56.120 well it was published in such and such, like, yeah, 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:59.080 I check that out. That's that guy's personal blog. He 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:01.560 called it the Journal of Nuclear Physics, but it's just 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:05.840 live journal. Yeah. Yeah, we we just did an episode 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:09.359 about about nuclear power, not fusion power, and yeah there 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:11.000 was cold fusion and cold fusion and there was a 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:13.719 lot of that, so that that that's stuck in my head. Yes, exactly. 0:22:13.760 --> 0:22:16.480 If you do research on cold fusion, you'll find quote 0:22:16.560 --> 0:22:20.479 unquote papers, but they are posted on online resources that 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:23.560 turn out to be not an actual scientific journal. That 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.399 doesn't necessarily mean that the research is unreliable. It just 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.359 means that you don't have that peer review to really 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.320 be sure that it's past muster. And and also before 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:35.240 I was an editor here, I was actually an editor 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:39.479