Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. Just mister Green Jeans and
Speaker 2: Zipper Face and Madam Lucks all here together bring you stuff.
Speaker 3: You should Who do I get to beat this week?
Speaker 2: You get to pick?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'll be Zipper Base of course.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I was gonna be Zipper Face, but okay,
Speaker 2: I'll be mister green Jeans all right? From what was
Speaker 2: that from Captain Kangaroo.
Speaker 1: The only one I recognize is mister green Jeans. I've
Speaker 1: never heard of the other two.
Speaker 2: I made them up. Oh okay, perfect, you just heard
Speaker 2: of them just now.
Speaker 3: I'm not losing my mind.
Speaker 2: No, you're with it. You're with it man, So Chuck,
Speaker 2: I'm really kind of excited about this one. Today we're
Speaker 2: doing Wikipedia, and as longtime listeners of Stuff you Should
Speaker 2: Know are already aware, we have a standing ban for
Speaker 2: our writers on using Wikipedia as a source. Don't even
Speaker 2: peek at it. Maybe maybe to confirm a date or
Speaker 2: something like that, but just leave Wikipedia out of it.
Speaker 2: And it's really twofold. There's two reasons. One, it's long
Speaker 2: been notoriously unreliable because anybody can edit any page or
Speaker 2: write whatever they want on a Wikipedia page, so that
Speaker 2: inherently makes it unreliable by nature. And number two, we
Speaker 2: would never want to be accused of using Wikipedia as
Speaker 2: like our source article. And when you read how some
Speaker 2: topic works, it's really difficult for that not to infect
Speaker 2: the way that you interpret it and report it later on,
Speaker 2: meaning that you could accidentally kind of copy the structure
Speaker 2: of a Wikipedia article. We never want to do that.
Speaker 2: So those two reasons we've always kind of banned Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean we don't use ourselves except for,
Speaker 1: like you said, you know, confirmation of the odd thing.
Speaker 1: Occasionally I will use it as a I will go
Speaker 1: to the and we've talked about this too, the links
Speaker 1: to the original articles and write papers and studies and
Speaker 1: things like that. It could be handy, and it's handy
Speaker 1: in my everyday life, but we've never used it. And
Speaker 1: that's why it's even though it shouldn't bother me, it
Speaker 1: still gets under my skin when and I don't read
Speaker 1: reviews that much, but when people say like.
Speaker 3: Well these go do a suit down read Wikipedia articles
Speaker 3: to you.
Speaker 2: Right, right, Because people say that they do say that,
Speaker 2: and we want them to be able to be wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Speaker 2: The thing is, I have to say this. I haven't.
Speaker 2: I haven't decided we need to alter our editorial policies
Speaker 2: or anything like that. But after researching Wikipedia, I have
Speaker 2: come to have a slightly different, actually a radically different
Speaker 2: opinion of Wikipedia as a whole, collectively put together, and
Speaker 2: just what it is, what it stands for, and just
Speaker 2: how reliable it is. Turns out like our view was
Speaker 2: maybe a little rooted in pre twenty thirteen, twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: and it may be time to just kind of evolve,
Speaker 2: but still again not touch our editorial policy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I've always You've always been the one who
Speaker 1: was a little more grudgey.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought that was both of us. I thought
Speaker 2: we'd agreed on that. Huh.
Speaker 1: No, I mean I don't think we should use it
Speaker 1: for a reference, But I've always enjoyed the site, and
Speaker 1: I think you've always been a little more had your
Speaker 1: nose turned up a little more, which I totally respect.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I would characterize it as nose
Speaker 2: turned up. I'm not sure what it is, but I
Speaker 2: don't know is it nose turned up? Is that what
Speaker 2: I've been doing all these years.
Speaker 1: Maybe, but hey, you're in a you're an educated.
Speaker 2: Smart toast about town dude.
Speaker 1: No, and I think you've always just been a little
Speaker 1: bit like that's just not for me, which I get.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, then I'm here to say I renounced
Speaker 2: that elitist view and I am a lot more accepting
Speaker 2: of Wikipedia and what it is and what it does.
Speaker 3: All right, Okay, great, I guess.
Speaker 2: Call me Saul from now on. Oh wait, Paul, you
Speaker 2: better I head it backwards, didn't.
Speaker 3: I are you speaking biblicaly? Yeah, biblicy, bibugy, bibby. I
Speaker 3: don't know. Let's not get into that.
Speaker 1: We should quickly just go through a what it is,
Speaker 1: and Dave helped us out with this and just a
Speaker 1: few sort of fun stats at the beginning. But Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: of course, is an online encyclopedia created or you know,
Speaker 1: maintained by wikipedians who are users, just everyday people.
Speaker 3: So that's what it is.
Speaker 1: But what it really is is the large's reference work ever,
Speaker 1: created ninety times larger than the one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: volume encyclop Encyclopedia Britannica.
Speaker 2: That's IMPRESSIB sixty two.
Speaker 1: Million articles, three hundred plus languages, four billion plus visitors
Speaker 1: a month, edging up towards three hundred thousand Wikipedians or
Speaker 1: Wikipedia editors.
Speaker 3: And that's all I got.
Speaker 1: But actually I got one more I did see And
Speaker 1: this is in two thousand and eight, so this is
Speaker 1: a long time ago. There was one computer scientist who
Speaker 1: estimated that up to that point there were one hundred
Speaker 1: million hours spent developing and getting Wikipedia up to that point.
Speaker 2: Wow. Did you mention how many edits are made every second?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, I didn't think you did, And I'm glad you
Speaker 2: didn't because this one's my favorite.
Speaker 3: You like it.
Speaker 2: This is a I think a twenty twenty two estimate.
Speaker 2: Five point two Wikipedia edits are made every second. Wow,
Speaker 2: And each month fourteen million edits are made. And you
Speaker 2: as we kind of talk about how Wikipedia actually works,
Speaker 2: that will become more and more significant as we go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So, I mean that's sort of the overview of some
Speaker 1: stats and how it's defined, but what it really is,
Speaker 1: and they've kind of nailed it on the head as
Speaker 1: far as their ethos. It's kind of a utopian idea
Speaker 1: and an experiment that people can get on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and not justly insults, but they can get on the
Speaker 1: Internet and create an important volume of knowledge for people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw a great quote that said, it's a
Speaker 2: good thing that Wikipedia works in practice, because it certainly
Speaker 2: doesn't work in theory.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and no matter where you are around the world,
Speaker 2: that's not one hundred percent true. But in a large area,
Speaker 2: a swath of the world, there are Wikipedias for you
Speaker 2: in your language about your culture. Whether you speak Zulu
Speaker 2: or Tartar, or Sanskrit, Old English, Creole, Haitian Esperanto, Yoruba, Piedmontese, Yiddish,
Speaker 2: all of them have their own Wikipedia. There's all a
Speaker 2: lot of different WIKIPEDIAI I'm just adding eye to anything
Speaker 2: plural from now on. That's my new thing. But it's
Speaker 2: really impressive, like the idea that people came together and
Speaker 2: did this for free as volunteers, and now we have,
Speaker 2: like you said, by far, the largest reference work ever created.
Speaker 1: That's right, a site and we'll get into all this,
Speaker 1: the whys of all this, but you know it's a
Speaker 1: site with no ads. It is a very low fi
Speaker 1: site that is overseen by the Wikimedia Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: Wikimedia Foundation.
Speaker 3: It is funded by donations.
Speaker 1: I know at times when you go to Wikipedia, everyone
Speaker 1: but you, that is, occasionally you might see a little
Speaker 1: a hat out and said, hey, wouldn't you drop a
Speaker 1: couple of bucks in this thing if you like using
Speaker 1: the site.
Speaker 2: I've donated to Wikipedia. Now I get emails for it too.
Speaker 3: I see. That's how they get you.
Speaker 2: You give them an inch and they take a mile.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Operating budget of about one hundred and sixty eight million
Speaker 1: dollars a year, which is surprising to me. I didn't
Speaker 1: know it would cost that much.
Speaker 2: Oh, I thought that was low. I was surprised. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it's one of the biggest websites in the
Speaker 2: entire world. I think it's number three or five, depending
Speaker 2: who you ask for number of visits monthly visits like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but for something to have be completely created for free,
Speaker 1: mm hm, that seems high.
Speaker 2: I get that. But one hundred and sixty five million
Speaker 2: of that is Jimmy Wales's compensation, right, and let's talk
Speaker 2: about who Jimmy Wales is. That's the lie, by the way, everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should get into the history of it and
Speaker 1: hop in the old wayback machine. Oh, fire it up.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna have to go far, so we don't
Speaker 1: need much fuel. Trying to be more efficient with our
Speaker 1: travels these days in this thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're using hamsters instead of kerosene lately.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna go back to the mid nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: when the World Wide Web was just a young babe
Speaker 1: in the crib.
Speaker 3: And very adorably.
Speaker 1: When all these websites websites started popping up, there were
Speaker 1: people that were like, hey, you know what we need
Speaker 1: now is we got to be people, got to be
Speaker 1: able to find this stuff, So we need web directories.
Speaker 1: This is obviously before Google was a just a very
Speaker 1: convenient way or any or Bang or you know your
Speaker 1: search engine of choice.
Speaker 2: Don't leave Edge out her Edge.
Speaker 3: Had come along.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen ninety four, Yahoo had a pretty popular
Speaker 1: web directory going on. And if you're young enough to
Speaker 1: where you don't even know what that means, that means
Speaker 1: literally you would go to a page and it would say,
Speaker 1: like sports entertainment, kind of like a newspaper.
Speaker 2: Here's all ten websites on sports.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and it would list those websites. But then came
Speaker 1: along a company called Bomus. It was an early dot
Speaker 1: com who said no, you know what I think we
Speaker 1: should do, like an open source version of this web
Speaker 1: directory and we'll call it a webring.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the whole premise was if you were a
Speaker 2: part of the webring, your site was you would have
Speaker 2: a little thing saying like baseball or something like that
Speaker 2: the bottom of your site, and that was your connection
Speaker 2: to the webring, and you could click next and it
Speaker 2: would take you to the next site that had been
Speaker 2: connected to the first site, because they're both about baseball
Speaker 2: or something way more niche than that. And anybody, because
Speaker 2: like you said, it was open source, could make their
Speaker 2: own webring. There were usually webmasters who looked at the sites,
Speaker 2: approved them, actually put them together. But eventually, as you
Speaker 2: had more and more sites added to this ring, you
Speaker 2: had a more and more dense collection of information about
Speaker 2: one usually fairly niche topic. Apparently Pamela Anderson was like
Speaker 2: one of the biggest webrings right out of the gate
Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety six. But that was the premise
Speaker 2: of what Wikipedia eventually was built on. It was open source,
Speaker 2: people could contribute, and the the initial body of knowledge
Speaker 2: was built upon by more and more people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Bomas got popular. They kind of focused on
Speaker 1: manned stuff for lack of a better term, and I
Speaker 1: think that's what they literally called it. It was like
Speaker 1: car things and sports things, Pamela Anderson. And then they
Speaker 1: quickly realized, hey, naked women on the Internet performs really well,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, so they really started focusing on
Speaker 1: that kind of adult material. I guess to call it
Speaker 1: something a little tame and chiefly nude pictures of women.
Speaker 1: And they really drilled down on that and got very,
Speaker 1: very popular because of that, but then pivoted pretty quickly
Speaker 1: because Jimmy Wales, the guy you mentioned, one of the
Speaker 1: founders of Bomas, had a larger, more pure vision in
Speaker 1: mind when he said, hey, I think we could create
Speaker 1: a free encyclopedia. So we founded new Pedia, which was
Speaker 1: financed by Bone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and everybody uses an encyclopedia, whether you just need
Speaker 2: to make a quick reference, whether you're a kid writing
Speaker 2: a research paper, whether you're a parent researching your kid's
Speaker 2: research paper. Like, people just need an encyclopedia. It's a
Speaker 2: basic thing. So let's create one and then let's sell
Speaker 2: ads against it. There's nothing wrong with that. That's what
Speaker 2: we do. We put out free content and then there's
Speaker 2: ads that like that was essentially the basic premise of
Speaker 2: websites forever and still generally is right. The thing about
Speaker 2: it that made it a little more than just like
Speaker 2: a money making scheme was that from the outset, James
Speaker 2: Wales and his partner, a guy named Larry Sanger, were really,
Speaker 2: really like they placed a tremendous amount of emphasis on
Speaker 2: truth and correctness and their articles being error free. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't just something they slapped together. It had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with long tail or any terrible ideas like that.
Speaker 2: It was really well researched article was vetted by academics
Speaker 2: and professionals, with ads sold against it. That was new
Speaker 2: Pedia and it was a great idea, except that in
Speaker 2: the like go go hustle early part of the Internet
Speaker 2: where you could just get things in like that, New
Speaker 2: Pedia was glacially slow, and it was that was ultimately
Speaker 2: its downfall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And that's in you, by the way,
Speaker 1: not in ew in Upedia. It was slow because they,
Speaker 1: like you said, they wanted to get things right. There
Speaker 1: was a seven step process in place before anything was published,
Speaker 1: so it was sort of the traditional publishing model that
Speaker 1: had been used for you know how long However, long
Speaker 1: publishing traditional publishing had been around like this, which is,
Speaker 1: you you have something reviewed, whether you work for a
Speaker 1: newspaper and you do your fact checking, or you have
Speaker 1: your editor in chief checking on things. In this case,
Speaker 1: Larry Sanger was the editor in chief of new Pedia,
Speaker 1: or you know, have things reviewed by experts and then
Speaker 1: you published. That was what they were doing sort of
Speaker 1: in that order. You write something, you review it, review
Speaker 1: it through that seven step process, and then you publish
Speaker 1: it online.
Speaker 3: And it was, like you said, slow.
Speaker 1: I think twenty one articles came out in that first year,
Speaker 1: and Sanger, it seemed like, in particular, was pretty frustrated
Speaker 1: with that speed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, getting content out.
Speaker 2: For sure. So just put that aside. These guys are
Speaker 2: kind of in suspended animation at this moment. In I
Speaker 2: think nineteen ninety nine, end of nineteen ninety nine, a
Speaker 2: few years earlier earlier than that, there was a guy
Speaker 2: named Wag Cunningham in the very early nineties. He was
Speaker 2: a software engineer. He was trying to figure out how
Speaker 2: to share ideas at his company that anybody at the
Speaker 2: company could like kind of contribute to, right, So he
Speaker 2: actually took an Apple program called HyperCard and created a
Speaker 2: hypertext program that he called quick weeb I believe was
Speaker 2: the first name for and that was basically where anybody
Speaker 2: could go into this program and contribute to this body
Speaker 2: of knowledge, this body of information, and it would grow
Speaker 2: and grow and grow, and things would link to other things.
Speaker 2: That's hypertext and very fortunately. Ward Cunningham went on vacation
Speaker 2: to Hawaii also in the early nineties, and he noticed
Speaker 2: that there were little airport shuttles called wiki wiki airport buses,
Speaker 2: which means quick wiki means quick and he just loved
Speaker 2: that name. So he changed the name from quick web
Speaker 2: to wiki wiki Web, and that was the first wiki.
Speaker 2: What we understand is a wiki a bunch of user
Speaker 2: generated content that anybody can contribute to and edit and
Speaker 2: link to other stuff. The whole thing just becomes self
Speaker 2: referential and grows as a result.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was basically, in his mind, a way
Speaker 1: for programmers to talk to one another about programming. But
Speaker 1: he realized he was on to a larger concept. Not
Speaker 1: so much that he tried to get a patent on
Speaker 1: the concept of a wiki, which was probably a grave error,
Speaker 1: but he said at the time he didn't think like
Speaker 1: anyone would be interested in something like that, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't worth pursuing.
Speaker 3: The other thing we should mention about.
Speaker 1: Ward Cunningham is he has now been credited with what's
Speaker 1: known as Cunningham's law.
Speaker 3: Have you ever heard of this?
Speaker 2: I have?
Speaker 1: Which is kind of the foundation of the Internet in
Speaker 1: some ways, and definitely Wikipedia, which is he said the
Speaker 1: best way to get a correct answer online is not
Speaker 1: by asking a question, but by posing a wrong answer.
Speaker 1: And it was sort of a theory but has kind
Speaker 1: of proved to be true in his mind at least.
Speaker 1: And I agree that, like, when you ask someone something online,
Speaker 1: it can be very hard or slow to get a
Speaker 1: correct answer, but if you post something wrong then people
Speaker 1: are very very quick to correct you. And so that
Speaker 1: was sort of the basis of his WikiWikiWeb with programmers
Speaker 1: talking to one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's preserved at wiki dot C two dot com,
Speaker 2: And like, I can't make heads or tails of any
Speaker 2: of it, but it's still there. It's super cute and
Speaker 2: quaint looking, but it's neat. The usability is really amazing too,
Speaker 2: especially for what he built it on.
Speaker 3: That'd be fun if you could go to a year
Speaker 3: of the Internet.
Speaker 2: I know, what I'm man, and I think you can
Speaker 2: on Internet archive.
Speaker 1: No, I mean like turn your Internet into two thousand,
Speaker 1: like two thousand and one or nineteen ninety seven, and
Speaker 1: not just read things, but have it just be like
Speaker 1: from that year and what it was like.
Speaker 2: I got to just give check GPT like three more months.
Speaker 3: Right, you're probably right.
Speaker 2: So now we're going to come back to Jimmy Wales
Speaker 2: Larry Sanger and this dispute over who came up with
Speaker 2: the idea of taking the wiki concept that Ward Cunningham
Speaker 2: came up with and applying it to the encyclopedia concept
Speaker 2: that Wales and Sanger had come up with new Pedia.
Speaker 2: It doesn't ultimately matter, but just to name check, a
Speaker 2: guy named Jeremy Rosenfeld was a bonus employee. He's the
Speaker 2: one who Jimmy Whale says came up with the idea
Speaker 2: of using a wiki. Larry Sanger said he came up
Speaker 2: with the idea after having dinner with a guy named
Speaker 2: Ben Kovitz. He says he even remembers that he ordered
Speaker 2: enchiladas at the dinner. That's how much he remembers it
Speaker 2: either way, regardless, within two weeks of that dinner, that
Speaker 2: Larry Sanger had where he was introduced to the concept
Speaker 2: of a wiki. New Pedia had become a wiki, and
Speaker 2: the new Pedia advisory board was like, we don't like
Speaker 2: this idea. The smells of like brand new stuff and
Speaker 2: we're afraid of it. And also, what's this whole concept
Speaker 2: of write, publish and then review. That's that's like sacrilegious,
Speaker 2: Like you can't do that. And so Wales and Sanger said,
Speaker 2: all right, you guys stay over here with new Pedia.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go over here with our thing. We're gonna
Speaker 2: call it Wikipedia, and Wikipedia within two weeks was born
Speaker 2: on January fifteenth, two thousand and one. Larry's had that
Speaker 2: dinner on January second, two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: And as far as that claim for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: the actual Wikipedia article on Sanger confirms that it was him. Well,
Speaker 1: then I don't know, true, I don't know Jimmy Wales
Speaker 1: just begrudgingly allows that to stay there or not. But
Speaker 1: everything I saw kind of said it was Sanger. So
Speaker 1: just like I said, take it for what it's worth.
Speaker 2: It's funny you mentioned Jimmy Wales begrudgingly just letting it
Speaker 2: stay there because He was caught very early on in
Speaker 2: the early days of Wikipedia, editing the Bonus dot com
Speaker 2: Wikipedia entry to remove softcore pornography from it, say like
Speaker 2: the words softcore pornography, and he got called out for that.
Speaker 3: And they're like, dude, that's how that was our foundation
Speaker 3: at first.
Speaker 2: So but that's a really good example of what's starting
Speaker 2: to happen at this time around two thousand and one
Speaker 2: with Wikipedia. It's brand new, but people are starting to
Speaker 2: kind of come to it, figure it out out, get
Speaker 2: the hang of it, and become like enthralled by it
Speaker 2: and starting to like write articles, edit articles, discuss how
Speaker 2: to how to best make an edit. Like it's starting
Speaker 2: to kind of grow. But it took a truly horrible
Speaker 2: event for Wikipedia to truly come into its own for
Speaker 2: the very first time. And I say, we take a break, Chuck.
Speaker 3: That's quite a cliffhanger to stop. You should.
Speaker 1: All right, So you were hanging on a cliff here.
Speaker 1: You talked about a terrible event. You probably don't have
Speaker 1: to be a rocket scientist to figure out what that
Speaker 1: event was. Considering Wikipedia really got cranking in January of
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, kind of sped along for about
Speaker 1: nine months, growing pretty quickly compared to initially. I think
Speaker 1: there were about ten thousand articles written over that period.
Speaker 1: And then nine to eleven happened, and that changed everything
Speaker 1: because news sites crashed. Everyone was trying to get information
Speaker 1: and they were going to these you know, super heavily
Speaker 1: ad filled websites, websites with videos, pop up ads, all
Speaker 1: kinds of things that like slow traffic down and overload things,
Speaker 1: and all these people were trying to go to these
Speaker 1: sites to find out news and information. Wikipedia is there
Speaker 1: with its lo fi, no ads, no pop ups, no
Speaker 1: video kind of layout, and it didn't crash. And so
Speaker 1: the September eleventh, two thousand and one terrorist attack article
Speaker 1: on Wikipedia grew at a speed that I don't know
Speaker 1: any web page has ever grown before.
Speaker 2: No, and that was that it's like Wikipedia. The idea
Speaker 2: finally took off on September eleventh and the days after
Speaker 2: because people were searching for information on it, like every second,
Speaker 2: they were just looking for more and more info. Stuff
Speaker 2: was news was coming out hard and fast like that,
Speaker 2: and with the news sites down, that Wikipedia article became
Speaker 2: like the de facto source of information, and so as
Speaker 2: more people came to it and were like what is
Speaker 2: this and then kind of figured out right there on
Speaker 2: the fly how Wikipedia worked. They actually stuck around and
Speaker 2: started adding to the article, editing the article, discussing like
Speaker 2: the wording for the article, and that single article on
Speaker 2: the September eleventh, two thousand and one terrorist attack that
Speaker 2: became the cornerstone of how Wikipedia developed. That article did
Speaker 2: in all of the discussions, and still today they archived
Speaker 2: all the discussions all the way back to the first day,
Speaker 2: and it is really interesting to see like the arguments
Speaker 2: and discussions that people got into over that because it
Speaker 2: was at the time and then in the years following,
Speaker 2: it's just always been such a controversial topic and such
Speaker 2: a sacred topic too here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and not only just the topic, but kind of
Speaker 1: everything that they were, all the subtopics, and that was
Speaker 1: where Wikipedia really came to find what it was and
Speaker 1: what it wasn't because they were doing things like truly
Speaker 1: helpful things at the time, like a list of victims,
Speaker 1: blood drives and links to where you could go to
Speaker 1: help and donate and things like that. But as that
Speaker 1: was happening, like you said, it was sort of happening
Speaker 1: in real time, and their talk page was flooded with
Speaker 1: people saying, well, wait a minute, I'm not sure beyond
Speaker 1: just like editing, you know, the news and facts. They
Speaker 1: were like, well, what are we doing here? We need
Speaker 1: to be truthful and accurate, of course, but do we
Speaker 1: have stuff like is this an encyclopedia or not? Like
Speaker 1: do we have a list of victims of you know,
Speaker 1: I hate to say it, but like people who aren't
Speaker 1: well known, because an encyclopedia probably wouldn't. Would we have
Speaker 1: links to blood drives? Probably not, because an encyclopedia wouldn't.
Speaker 1: So as they went through those really pretty tough discussions,
Speaker 1: what Wikipedia wasn't became pretty clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it became what's known as the five pillars, which
Speaker 2: we'll talk about in a second. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that emerged from it too was they weren't there
Speaker 2: to report the news. So anybody who had breaking news,
Speaker 2: it became clear Wikipedia was not a place for that.
Speaker 2: They were meant to be behind the curve. They report
Speaker 2: on reliable sources reporting. That's what the entries were built on,
Speaker 2: and that was a huge, huge foundation that was kind
Speaker 2: of laid that day, I guess. But just as one
Speaker 2: little aside at this time, shortly After this, Wikipedia attracted
Speaker 2: a lot of people. People started sticking around and writing
Speaker 2: other articles that were related to the two thousand and
Speaker 2: one September eleventh attacks, and it just started to grow.
Speaker 2: At the same time, it also attracted trolls essentially out
Speaker 2: of the gate, and there were trolls on the site.
Speaker 2: And Larry Sanger did not have the stomach for that
Speaker 2: at all. And I don't blame him. Trolls sucked. They're
Speaker 2: the worst. But he quit because he said, we need
Speaker 2: to have some sort of structure here. We need to
Speaker 2: have a constitution, We need a way to vet these
Speaker 2: these claims and these facts that are in these articles.
Speaker 2: We got to slow this down, man. And Jimmy Wales
Speaker 2: is like, no, that's we're not going to do that.
Speaker 2: We've met in ein ran chat forums, for God's sake,
Speaker 2: We're not gonna We're not gonna do this. We're going
Speaker 2: to go the opposite direction. We'll figure it out as
Speaker 2: as we go. And so Larry Sanger quit and became
Speaker 2: one of the biggest critics of Wikipedia. He was only
Speaker 2: there for I think fourteen months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Weiss called them their most outspoken critic In two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, he said the site was broken beyond repair.
Speaker 1: He has said that there's a large and this is
Speaker 1: just a few of the criticisms. Of course, there's very
Speaker 1: very many. You might want to say he has a
Speaker 1: bone to pick with Wikipedia, but I also feel like
Speaker 1: he truly believes his stuff. Sure, he said that it
Speaker 1: has a massive left wing bias and has used examples
Speaker 1: on everything from LGTBQ websites to Donald Trump versus Barack
Speaker 1: Obama's I keep saying websites, I should call them Wikipedia
Speaker 1: articles rather Oh yeah, okay, Donald Trump's page versus Barack
Speaker 1: Obama's page, all kinds of stuff, basically saying that, hey,
Speaker 1: we're only getting one point of view here. We're not
Speaker 1: getting the right wing side of things, We're not getting
Speaker 1: the libertarian viewpoint on things. So he's had a bone
Speaker 1: to pick with Wikipedia, although I think he has softened
Speaker 1: it here and there saying that I think he said
Speaker 1: that the bias is probably the least of their problems.
Speaker 1: So that's not like really where he's.
Speaker 3: Hand has had. I don't want to make it seem
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Well, what's interesting is his criticism seem to have worked
Speaker 2: themselves out because one of the things that Wikipedia strives
Speaker 2: for is neutrality is close to neutrality and objective, I don't.
Speaker 2: I keep wanting to use the word reporting, but that's wrong.
Speaker 2: Reporting makes it documenting. It's neutral, objective, documentation of knowledge.
Speaker 2: That's what it's after, right. And So I was looking
Speaker 2: at banned users and a lot of them seem to
Speaker 2: be like social justice warriors who are like righting wrongs
Speaker 2: and they get banned for life. So I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't think that it necessarily has a political bias one
Speaker 2: way or the other, if anything. Politically, from what I
Speaker 2: can tell, it's that's where it's closest to neutral. Of
Speaker 2: all gender, ethnicity, that's a different story. But politically it
Speaker 2: does seem to be pretty centrist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well Sanger doesn't feel like it at least, but
Speaker 3: you know that's his take.
Speaker 2: Well get him on the phone.
Speaker 1: Oh man, what if we took Collers, that'd be great,
Speaker 1: Go ahead, Collar. I've always wanted to say that, Hey,
Speaker 1: long time, first time. So in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: Wikipedia avoided what would have been a sea change when
Speaker 1: they thought about getting ads on the site and making money,
Speaker 1: you know, the good old fashioned webway, and the people
Speaker 1: of Wikipedia got upset. Users were like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is what makes you guys different. You can't do
Speaker 1: that in Spain. There were some Spanish Wikipedians who got
Speaker 1: so upset they created their own well, I guess you
Speaker 1: would say Encyclopedia libra, but it's just spelled differently. They said,
Speaker 1: you know, that scared them off, basically to where they're
Speaker 1: created their own And he said, all right, I'll hear
Speaker 1: you loud and clear. We'll launch the Wikimedia Foundation.
Speaker 3: That was pretty early on.
Speaker 1: It was in two thousand and three, and then they
Speaker 1: change from dot com to dot org. They shut down
Speaker 1: new Pedia that same year and got together and figured
Speaker 1: out these five pillars that you mentioned earlier, one of
Speaker 1: which you just reference, which was neutrality.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So there are five pillars the fundamental principles of Wikipedia,
Speaker 2: and a lot of these were find its roots in
Speaker 2: that September eleventh, two thousand and one page, but they've
Speaker 2: also really been refined and developed over time. And I
Speaker 2: think we should cut to the last one first because
Speaker 2: it really kind of gives a It gives you, like
Speaker 2: the right impression when you hear the rest of the rules.
Speaker 2: And the last one is that Wikipedia has no firm rules.
Speaker 2: There's no one in charge. There's a group of people
Speaker 2: who are volunteer administrators who actually can ban you. They
Speaker 2: actually can delete like entire entries if they feel like
Speaker 2: that's necessary. But those are those people are few and
Speaker 2: far between, and they are meant to like not wield
Speaker 2: their power. Essentially, no one's in charge, No one owns
Speaker 2: an article, and there are different competing philosophies about how
Speaker 2: Wikipedia should be built, how articles should be written, what's truth,
Speaker 2: what's a reliable source? And these competing philosophies battle one
Speaker 2: another or engage in conversation and dialogue with one another
Speaker 2: on the talk page for these amazing like like the
Speaker 2: really well written, well researched articles or entries that people
Speaker 2: really care about. There's really fascinating discussions about, you know,
Speaker 2: just wording, like just what word to use or this
Speaker 2: word doesn't quite fit, or what's a reliable citation? And
Speaker 2: that the reason why it works is because there's it
Speaker 2: will constantly evolve in that in that setup, there's no rigidity.
Speaker 2: It's like whatever philosophy wins out wins out, and that
Speaker 2: one specific disagreement over that one specific edit on that
Speaker 2: one specific entry, and then the next time it may
Speaker 2: have a completely different outcome, but collectively as a whole,
Speaker 2: that leads to that leads to the neutrality that we
Speaker 2: referenced earlier.
Speaker 1: That's right, So that's I guess five and two. Pillar
Speaker 1: Number one is that it's an encyclopedia, which speaks for itself.
Speaker 1: Number three is that it's free. And that well also
Speaker 1: kind of part three because you said that no one
Speaker 1: owns a Wikipedia article. I imagine that can be tough
Speaker 1: at times. If you have, if you're if you have
Speaker 1: created an entry that is very very niche that you
Speaker 1: knew a lot about and you care a lot about,
Speaker 1: I imagine it can it can be very tough to
Speaker 1: sort of hand that over and say, okay, like I
Speaker 1: guess anyone can change this right, so that that must
Speaker 1: be hard, but still a pillar.
Speaker 3: And the number four is.
Speaker 1: Editors should treat each other with respect and civility. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that that well, we know that that is gotten
Speaker 1: out of hand because there's been reports of bullying within
Speaker 1: the what are they called wikipedians. But the pillar at
Speaker 1: least is to avoid these edit wars and work with
Speaker 1: your fellow editors instead of against them, to not bully,
Speaker 1: to have patients with new editors, and things like that
Speaker 1: and try and foster like kind of a different community
Speaker 1: for what usually happens online.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's amazing is it generally works. The whole premise
Speaker 2: of that pillar is assume good faith. That it's such
Speaker 2: a it's such an important point that it's abbreviate is AGF,
Speaker 2: and that is that if you see somebody adding some dumb,
Speaker 2: dumb fact that's clearly a conspiracy theory, as if it's
Speaker 2: fact to some article, don't don't take that act as
Speaker 2: a like like they're willfully trying to harm that article
Speaker 2: or hurt Wikipedia or personally insult you. What they're doing
Speaker 2: probably if you assume good faith is in their mind
Speaker 2: they think they're actually helping Wikipedia, they're helping the site,
Speaker 2: they're making this entry more legit, even though they're totally
Speaker 2: completely wrong. So if you come at it from that
Speaker 2: premise where you assume good faith, then that's where it's
Speaker 2: going to. That's where it's least likely to devolve into
Speaker 2: an argument or name calling or threats or wiki bullying.
Speaker 2: And that seems to be like the the case or
Speaker 2: the place that the editors that I saw will go from.
Speaker 2: Like that whole assuming good faith first part a lot
Speaker 2: of them, do not all of them obviously, because it's
Speaker 2: the Internet for sure.
Speaker 1: All Right, I say we take another break and come
Speaker 1: back with blocks and bands and whether or not Wikipedia
Speaker 1: is truly reliable?
Speaker 3: Is that sound good?
Speaker 2: That sounds great, Chuck? All right, Still you should know
Speaker 2: so even though you assume good faith that you're supposed
Speaker 2: to assume good faith, like we said, it can become
Speaker 2: clear that somebody's like willfully being a jerk. There's a
Speaker 2: whole thing called vandalism, where you are purposefully like inserting
Speaker 2: incorrect stuff into an article just to mess with people, right,
Speaker 2: just to mess with the article. It can be hilarious.
Speaker 2: Spamming is another one, where you promote yourself or your product,
Speaker 2: which is just you should just know that you don't
Speaker 2: do that, but people do that.
Speaker 1: What else, well, obviously we've talked about the bullying and harassment,
Speaker 1: the three revert rule, which is basically you don't revert
Speaker 1: or change or undo three edits on the same page
Speaker 1: within twenty four hours, which is kind of like a
Speaker 1: slow year role move a little bit. Copyright violations pretty
Speaker 1: self explanatory. Using multiple Wikipedia accounts, which they call sock puppetry.
Speaker 1: It's very cute and anything. Just that's against the idea
Speaker 1: of what they're trying to do, which is to build
Speaker 1: out this encyclopedia and all of this is this is
Speaker 1: not decided upon by just your average user or Wikipedia Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: and rather but the volunteer administrators. I think the English
Speaker 1: Wikipedia has more than eight hundred administrators, and they are Wikipedians.
Speaker 1: They're just really experienced ones who know the ins and
Speaker 1: outs and take it really seriously. They do not work
Speaker 1: for the Wikimedia Foundation and get a cut of that
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty million bucks a year, right, but
Speaker 1: they're the ones in charge of determining when a block
Speaker 1: or a ban can happen.
Speaker 3: Blocks being.
Speaker 1: Temporary, they can be longer duration wise, it can be shorter,
Speaker 1: can be a one specific thing you did in an
Speaker 1: article or the whole article that you're blocked from for
Speaker 1: a little while. You can appeal those, but it's meant
Speaker 1: to be a preventative measure and not a punitive. And
Speaker 1: then you have the ban, which kind of speaks for itself.
Speaker 1: It's usually a site band, which means you just you
Speaker 1: can't come on here anymore.
Speaker 2: You know, you can go on, but you can't make
Speaker 2: a single edit. All you can do is sit there
Speaker 2: and read pal.
Speaker 1: Oh well yeah, I mean we're talking about editing, not
Speaker 1: like anyone can read anything.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, right, And also anybody can edit unless you've
Speaker 2: been blocked or banned, and you don't even have to
Speaker 2: create an account, which is one of the cool things.
Speaker 2: But there's entire site bands, so like you can be
Speaker 2: completely banned from English Wikipedia, or you could be globally banned,
Speaker 2: so any Wikipedia in any language. And I believe some
Speaker 2: of the other Wiki projects like wictionary, like you just
Speaker 2: you'll be you can't do anything on those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that kind of brings us to where we
Speaker 1: started with this whole thing and why we didn't use it.
Speaker 1: Why we don't use it and started out at least
Speaker 1: and still don't. Is that is it? Is it reputable?
Speaker 1: Is it truthful? Is it accurate? You usually can't use
Speaker 1: Wikipedia as a source for a school paper, certainly not
Speaker 1: a college paper. We make up our own rules, as
Speaker 1: Josh and Chuck do stuff, you should know, so we
Speaker 1: could do whatever we wanted. Sure, that was just something
Speaker 1: that we did from the beginning. Like, no one, I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone told us to do that, did they?
Speaker 2: No? Apparently it was just my idea because I'm a
Speaker 2: big snob.
Speaker 3: Right, No, not at all. We were both on board.
Speaker 1: There was a study into two thousand and five and
Speaker 1: there's I tried to find something more recent, but they
Speaker 1: compared forty two entries on Wikipedia to the same thing
Speaker 1: in the Encyclopedia Britannica and found that the average mistakes
Speaker 1: per article was four for Wikipedia, three for the Britannica,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit startling. Yeah, the differences between
Speaker 1: Wikipedia and Britannica is that you can change something really
Speaker 1: fast on Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, at least for the
Speaker 1: hard copy volumes. You know, obviously he's going to have
Speaker 1: to wait till the next publish. And they've tested out
Speaker 1: the speed of Wikipedia changes or I guess corrections, and
Speaker 1: they filed false information in thirty three different articles about
Speaker 1: dead philosophers, and in forty eight hours, a third of
Speaker 1: those had been fixed, and three of those within sixty seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I looked those up and some of them are hilarious.
Speaker 2: They all seem rather innocuous, but if you stop and
Speaker 2: think about what they're saying, they're pretty funny. Like Wickenstein
Speaker 2: was fined for poisoning squirrels in his yard, or Spinoza
Speaker 2: supported himself by selling stolen jewelry, or that David Hume
Speaker 2: used to wrestle with local sportsmen, like we just but
Speaker 2: just completely like the way that the sentences were written,
Speaker 2: like you would totally buy them and they still got corrected.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of like the whole premise of Wikipedia
Speaker 2: is like eventually somebody's going to find that and they're
Speaker 2: going to correct it. Might be in a minute, it
Speaker 2: might be in forty eight hours, it might be in
Speaker 2: six weeks, but eventually it's going to get created, like
Speaker 2: you'll eventually get to the truth or correctness.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, And Dave points out and this is
Speaker 1: really really the truth of the matter is something as
Speaker 1: as large as Wikipedia created by users. There's going to
Speaker 1: be some great articles. There's going to be some good ones,
Speaker 1: and there's going to be some not so great ones.
Speaker 1: Just how it shakes out, and so are they're actually
Speaker 1: labeled now, which is something that a lot of people
Speaker 1: may not really realize, but they can be labeled good
Speaker 1: or fee. If it's good, that means it's got a
Speaker 1: little small plus sign inside a green circle. They're close
Speaker 1: to forty thousand good articles on the English version. If
Speaker 1: it's featured, that means it's the cream of the crop
Speaker 1: as far as Wikipedia vetting goes. And there are close
Speaker 1: to sixty five hundred that are featured with that bronze star.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw the Museum of Bad Art as a
Speaker 2: featured article. There's a but there's just tons of them, thousands, right,
Speaker 2: And you can just go look at the list and
Speaker 2: be like, oh, Okay, this is a really good article.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read this one. Despite all that, I
Speaker 2: think the featured articles represent one out of every thousand
Speaker 2: and fifty articles on the site. It's a very low percentage.
Speaker 2: And because of that, Wikipedia even says Wikipedia is not
Speaker 2: a reliable source. They say it it's expressed on their website.
Speaker 2: And you can't actually use a Wikipedia entry as a
Speaker 2: citation on another Wikipedia entry. You link to other stuff,
Speaker 2: you can hyperlink it, but you can't use that to
Speaker 2: or support that sentence or that fact or whatever. And
Speaker 2: there's the reason why. One of the reasons why. It
Speaker 2: was kind of perfectly captured by that amazing comic XKCD,
Speaker 2: and they coined the term cytogenesis, where somebody can put
Speaker 2: in a fake fact on a Wikipedia page and then
Speaker 2: go to that Wikipedia page to prove that their fact
Speaker 2: is correct. Right, So it's like this snake that eats
Speaker 2: its tail. And there's actually an example of that. There's
Speaker 2: an Australian duo called Peaking Duck and one of their
Speaker 2: fans got backstage because he inserted his name as a
Speaker 2: relative of one of the band members and showed it
Speaker 2: to like the guy who was guarding the backstage and
Speaker 2: ended up getting backstage because of it. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 3: Pretty amazing?
Speaker 2: I love that story, And apparently Peaking Duck they said
Speaker 2: it was a genius mastermind move, so I guess they
Speaker 2: appreciated it too.
Speaker 3: So so, you know, we mentioned a bias earlier.
Speaker 1: With politics, but the real bias comes in, like you
Speaker 1: mentioned at the beginning with kind of who is who
Speaker 1: these wikipedians are, eighty seven percent of these editors are
Speaker 1: men and eighty nine percent are white.
Speaker 2: That means one hundred and seventy six percent are white men.
Speaker 1: Half of them are in Europe and twenty percent live
Speaker 1: in North America. So unsurprisingly you're going to have some
Speaker 1: gender bias playing out. I think less than nineteen percent
Speaker 1: of the English language biographies are about women, and those
Speaker 1: are also the articles that are most often flagged for
Speaker 1: deletion as being you know, not notable enough. And they've
Speaker 1: combatd this over the years in different ways. They get
Speaker 1: together sometimes and organize edit athons where they try and
Speaker 1: boost content about women and minorities, people of color, ethnic diversity,
Speaker 1: like anything like that. They could have an edit to
Speaker 1: though about to try and you know, bring more, bring
Speaker 1: more of a light onto those groups.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have to say, there's so that whole
Speaker 2: idea that premise that Wikipedia is unreliable. It seems to
Speaker 2: basically find a single source. Initially, there's a journalist named
Speaker 2: John Seigenthaler who had a joke Entry made about him.
Speaker 2: He was an advisor, i think to Bobby Kennedy, and
Speaker 2: the Hoaxter wrote that he was a suspect in the
Speaker 2: assassination of Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy and John Siegenthaler
Speaker 2: heard about this, and he did not find that funny
Speaker 2: at all. He just happened to be one of the
Speaker 2: founding editors of USA Today. So he took to the
Speaker 2: pages of USA Today and completely excoriated Wikipedia, called it
Speaker 2: out as a completely unreliable irresponsible research tool, right. That
Speaker 2: was two thousand and five, and that really kind of
Speaker 2: laid the foundation for Wikipedia's bad reputation for a while.
Speaker 2: But if you go on to the Wikipedia entry about Wikipedia,
Speaker 2: which I admit I read some of, they even say
Speaker 2: around starting sometime in about the twenty tens, that reputation
Speaker 2: started to get shed and we're finally reaching the point
Speaker 2: today where people are saying, go use Wikipedia, just use
Speaker 2: it as like a an introduction to your topic, and
Speaker 2: then go out and do further research. So it's really
Speaker 2: kind of come into its own twenty years on.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: If you want to get into editing, there are tutorials.
Speaker 1: There's an introduction tutorial of how to do everything from
Speaker 1: creating things from scratch to editing. I mean, good luck
Speaker 1: creating something from scratch and finding something that doesn't exist
Speaker 1: already at this point. And if you want a gamified version,
Speaker 1: you can check out the Wikipedia Adventure to help with
Speaker 1: your tutorial, and they also have a help desk and
Speaker 1: the Tea House, which is where new editors can learn
Speaker 1: the ropes in a friendly manner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think just going on the talk page
Speaker 2: of any article will kind of familiarize you with what
Speaker 2: you should be doing. If you want to contribue, but
Speaker 2: do contribute. It's nice, I said, it's nice. I don't
Speaker 2: think Chuck has anything else because he didn't respond, So
Speaker 2: I think that means it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this bonsai inspiration.
Speaker 3: It was very cool.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, a few years ago you did the bon
Speaker 1: Si episode. My dad and I listened to it became
Speaker 1: very inspired. I have a horticultural degree from USU.
Speaker 3: That's Utah.
Speaker 1: By the way, he thought it might be interested too,
Speaker 1: so as father and son, we began working on trees.
Speaker 1: Fast forward to today, we have thirty different trees. We've
Speaker 1: lost a few along the way, but have learned so
Speaker 1: much through a Bonsi show. In twenty seventeen, we became
Speaker 1: members of the Utah bon Si Club and have both
Speaker 1: entered bon Sai into a show hosted bly hosted by
Speaker 1: Red Butte Gardens. Who would have thought that a simple
Speaker 1: podcast could have inspired my dad and I to do
Speaker 1: this and go this far with it. I would love
Speaker 1: to give my dad a shout out. He turned sixty
Speaker 1: this year. Proud of him and what we've accomplished. That
Speaker 1: is from Nathan Staker in Utah and as Pop's mister,
Speaker 1: Brent Steaker.
Speaker 2: Nice congratulations Nathan and Brent. That's pretty great. We love
Speaker 2: inspiring people.
Speaker 3: Beautiful trees, very beautiful.
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Nathan and Brent and
Speaker 2: let us know how we inspired you to do something cool,
Speaker 2: We love that kind of thing, you can send it
Speaker 2: in an email to stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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