Speaker 1: Welcome everybody too. It could happen here. Um podcast about
Speaker 1: I don't know, how things are kind of kind of
Speaker 1: kind of crumbling and how we can maybe put it,
Speaker 1: put stuff, put stuff back together. And today I am
Speaker 1: excited to talk with a senior let's see what is
Speaker 1: what is what? What is the actual? What's actual term?
Speaker 1: I saw it A senior programs strategist at Wikimedia, Alex Stinson. Hello, greetings, Hi,
Speaker 1: it's so good to be here. I'm very excited about
Speaker 1: our talk today because I mean, this should this should
Speaker 1: surprise nobody that I used to I used to be
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia editor back in the day. Not not shocking
Speaker 1: at all, if if if you know me. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about what kind of Wikipedia just itself,
Speaker 1: and then also uh, climate misinformation and disinformation and how
Speaker 1: we can maybe create a better understanding of climate change
Speaker 1: in its effects across kind of the world and how
Speaker 1: digital information works. Those are all kind of topics we
Speaker 1: talk about often enough, but never within the actual context
Speaker 1: of like Wikipedia as an entity. Um so I guess
Speaker 1: let's let's just start there with with Wikipedia and like
Speaker 1: for those who don't maybe maybe people like use website,
Speaker 1: but they're not quite sure what it is, Like, how
Speaker 1: how do you actually describe what Wikipedia is? Because it
Speaker 1: is like an interesting kind of amorphous entity. It's so
Speaker 1: many things. Um. I think most people are used to
Speaker 1: thinking about Wikipedia is like the fact checking device. Like
Speaker 1: I have a bar argument with my friends and I
Speaker 1: pull out my phone and yeah, yeah, this website at
Speaker 1: website at me. Right. Um, it's a lot of things.
Speaker 1: It's three language Wikipedia's. Actually it's not just one. Each
Speaker 1: of these communities has its own editorial community. Um. At
Speaker 1: last I checked, it's like sixty million articles across the languages.
Speaker 1: It's it's really it's a lot of different content, um.
Speaker 1: And a topic can be on each of those Wikipedia's right. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is important as we start talking about disinformation.
Speaker 1: Is like each Wikipedia because it's edited by people in
Speaker 1: that language, and it's written by that language community. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, each article is different and it has different perspectives. Um.
Speaker 1: Two d eighty thousand volunteers editing every month. So this
Speaker 1: is a lot of people, right. But the bulk of
Speaker 1: that's happening on English Wikipedia and some of the larger
Speaker 1: languages that are spoken across multiple cultural context And then
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of other content sitting behind Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: So there's a media repository, um, And there's a we
Speaker 1: called Wikimedia Commons, and there's a database called wiki Data,
Speaker 1: which kind of powers those little knowledge graphs on the
Speaker 1: right side of Google and a whole bunch of other
Speaker 1: parts of the Internet. Wiki data shows up in Amazon,
Speaker 1: Alexa and all kinds of other places, right and and
Speaker 1: so it's it's we're not just like one website. It's
Speaker 1: many websites, lots of knowledge, lots of platforms, lots of context, um.
Speaker 1: And we'll come back to that. Yeah, what really interesting
Speaker 1: part of it is like I don't know my my
Speaker 1: personal kind of social leanings. I generally kind of like
Speaker 1: things that are more decentralized in general. Um. Other other
Speaker 1: hosts on the podcast are generally kind of on like
Speaker 1: the progressive left libertarian spectrum. Um. And one thing I
Speaker 1: do really appreciated about Wikipedia is is it's more like
Speaker 1: it's It's not I I don't think it's like open source,
Speaker 1: but it the way it has decentralized editing and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. It's just a really interesting model
Speaker 1: of of like what if a lot more stuff worked
Speaker 1: this way? And I'm not not sure, like how how
Speaker 1: much of like a decentralization focus is there, like consciously
Speaker 1: at people at like the foundation and people who try
Speaker 1: to like actually like run it behind the scenes stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Wikipedia grows out of the like open source movement
Speaker 1: and the kind of early days of the Internet. Right,
Speaker 1: this idea that like knowledge wants to be free, technology
Speaker 1: wants to be free, software wants to be free. Um,
Speaker 1: let's let's use the legal infrastructure to like create freedom,
Speaker 1: right uh in that sense, And then there's also the
Speaker 1: free as in like anyone can edit, and then the
Speaker 1: free to like do whatever you want out there in
Speaker 1: the world. Um. There there's people are like free as
Speaker 1: in beer and free as in speech, right uh. And
Speaker 1: those things are those things are also there's they're always
Speaker 1: intention uh and they're kind of working. And as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, especially when you get outside of kind of
Speaker 1: multicultural Internet spaces like English Wikipedia, um, it can get challenging.
Speaker 1: Like if you're in Croatia and everyone is speaking Croatian,
Speaker 1: there's a very small bubble in which to create that Wikipedia, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's interesting in that sense. Um. I think
Speaker 1: there's also another part of Wikipedia that a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't see what just the movement behind it. So
Speaker 1: there's the editorial communities, people show up and make edits um.
Speaker 1: But because there's this ideology that you're talking about, this
Speaker 1: like decentralized, like we need to share knowledge or culture
Speaker 1: or language on the Internet, there's also a whole social
Speaker 1: movement sitting behind the scenes. Uh. And there there's a
Speaker 1: podcast recently dot com The Wikipedia Story that kind of
Speaker 1: captured that the essence of that UM and it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of people like myself, So I started editing
Speaker 1: in high school. Yeah, yeah, one of those like, oh,
Speaker 1: I know how to click the edit button and I
Speaker 1: figure out how to use the Internet and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But there's a lot of people that like
Speaker 1: the intuitiveness of clicking and edit button on a piece
Speaker 1: of open source software to create content is just not
Speaker 1: It's not clear, right, And so you have to organize
Speaker 1: and invite people in and so we have a whole
Speaker 1: movement that does that too. That there's about a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty organizations around the world that we organized events, work
Speaker 1: with libraries and museums and educational institutions, and so there's
Speaker 1: always this um kind of interesting dynamic where our values,
Speaker 1: which is this like open software platform stuff has also
Speaker 1: lived in our practice, in our outreach, like creating change
Speaker 1: through society by sharing knowledge and education. Um And so
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, it's it's it's an interesting it's an
Speaker 1: interesting dynamic. Yeah, I think that does create a really
Speaker 1: oftentimes beautiful reflection. It could it can have some dark
Speaker 1: side different once in a while, but it is It
Speaker 1: is really nice to have like kind of the ideology
Speaker 1: driving it being reflected in the actions of operating it
Speaker 1: and spreading it and that kind of thing. Um. So
Speaker 1: this is something we kind of briefly touched on already,
Speaker 1: but I think I'd like to move on to kind
Speaker 1: of why, like how climate change and broader like social
Speaker 1: issues are covered on Wikipedia, because you already mentioned like
Speaker 1: it's kind because there's not a Wikipedia, there's many based
Speaker 1: on different languages in places. It feels like to me,
Speaker 1: whenever social issues kind of get covered on Wikipedia, it's
Speaker 1: going to be in some part like a local reflection
Speaker 1: of whatever is in that area. You know, if if
Speaker 1: there's like a white liberal writing articles in New York,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be different than someone you know, halfway across
Speaker 1: the world writing them in you know, a much smaller country,
Speaker 1: let's say, like Belarus, who's under like what I would
Speaker 1: call a dictatorship. Um, so that's gonna change kind of
Speaker 1: the nature of what people are making because of that
Speaker 1: kind of divide. So how how does that kind of
Speaker 1: crop up and is there any like solutions to that
Speaker 1: or because because the because of the decentralized thing, it's like,
Speaker 1: how much can we like impose like who like I'm i'm,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not in Belarus? How much can I impose
Speaker 1: what I want their Wikipedia to look like? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: kind of two or three dynamics you're you're touching on here.
Speaker 1: The first is because there's kind of an intention bias,
Speaker 1: Like something comes up in the news, and our Wikipedia
Speaker 1: community like people are within minutes of breaking news stories
Speaker 1: are usually like editing the page, working to improve it. Right.
Speaker 1: Um So if things show up in the you know,
Speaker 1: European American press, it's very likely, especially something like English
Speaker 1: Wikipedia will pick up on it and immediately cover it.
Speaker 1: And because there are multiple perspectives in those press, usually
Speaker 1: um kind of the ideological uh kind of multi sided
Speaker 1: nice like works itself out because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: eyes and a lot of people who know how to
Speaker 1: edit there, right, um on in a kind of cultural linguistic,
Speaker 1: geographic context where there's like one set of stories and
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of diversity. Um uh, this this happens.
Speaker 1: And and I'm going to refer to the Croatian Wikipedia
Speaker 1: because we we actually had an external researcher look at
Speaker 1: Croatian Wikipedia because part of it has been kind of
Speaker 1: caught by by folks with kind of very ideological leanings
Speaker 1: in a way that's excluding others and this is not good, right.
Speaker 1: It creates a very one sided information environment and it
Speaker 1: really reflects um, kind of the news dynamic going on there.
Speaker 1: So when like breaking news happens, or when a topic
Speaker 1: like a social issue or not necess like climate change
Speaker 1: is not a social issue, right, this is a global
Speaker 1: like life threatening issue. Um. When when something becomes politicized,
Speaker 1: it's very easy for especially in smaller language wikipedias, for
Speaker 1: few people to kind of swing the whole perspective on that. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's this breaking news issue and this is
Speaker 1: where are kind of organized communities are really important. So
Speaker 1: the the example we want to point out of this
Speaker 1: working well, um is in medicine. So are our medical
Speaker 1: community during the Bola outbreaks a few years back. UM
Speaker 1: in West Africa, we're able to organize both on English
Speaker 1: and in languages that were accessible for local communities, high
Speaker 1: quality coverage of the medical content because it's like has
Speaker 1: impact on people's lives, and so they recruited translators. They
Speaker 1: thought about, like what's a simple way to communicate the story,
Speaker 1: um in that context, and like what do the workers,
Speaker 1: the or the advocates or whoever on the ground who's
Speaker 1: working with that crisis, what knowledge do they need? Right? UM?
Speaker 1: And you see, like other open technology movements do stuff
Speaker 1: like this, like humanitarian Open Streetmap has a similar kind
Speaker 1: of way of organizing. They're like, hey, there's a crisis happening, UM,
Speaker 1: let's pull people together from different parts of the world
Speaker 1: who have the right knowledge or skills and like address
Speaker 1: the knowledge gap. UM, so so you can solve it.
Speaker 1: It's just it's complicated. UM. And you know, we've been
Speaker 1: trying to address as a movement what we call the
Speaker 1: gender gap. So there's both less women editors as women's
Speaker 1: content on many of the wikis, and like it's taken
Speaker 1: years and it's very hard to organize, and even when
Speaker 1: there's investment in it. Um, It's it's challenging to to
Speaker 1: make substantial progress because there might be contextual issues around
Speaker 1: it too. And so you can't just like drop in
Speaker 1: on a Central Asian language with a like Western perspective
Speaker 1: and expect to like change the culture of the wiki overnight.
Speaker 1: You have to engage with it consistently and be persistent
Speaker 1: and work on it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: We are going to take a short break to hear
Speaker 1: a message from our lovely lovely advertisers unless it's exomobile again,
Speaker 1: but we will be back shortly, okay, and we're back. Um.
Speaker 1: One one thing that we cover decently part of my
Speaker 1: job and and and and Robert Evans job is disinformation
Speaker 1: and misinformation and how that type of stuff spreads online. Um,
Speaker 1: particularly you usually kind of linked to like political extremism
Speaker 1: um or conspiracy theories or you know, in that general
Speaker 1: kind of bubble um. And so what what type of
Speaker 1: kind of climate misinformation has really been festering on various
Speaker 1: you know wikipedias across the world really, because like we
Speaker 1: would just be talking about like these topics and how
Speaker 1: and how and and like why it happens, But like
Speaker 1: what are the main types of misinformation or disinformation that
Speaker 1: is much more like prevalent. Yeah. Um, so the first
Speaker 1: is just kind of neglect of uh content that's happening
Speaker 1: across the various things related to climate. Um. But we've
Speaker 1: identified on English Wikipedia over three thousand seven d articles
Speaker 1: that are directly related to climate change. Uh. We don't
Speaker 1: have a very big editorial community and English on that topic.
Speaker 1: That's like interesting fluent in the science and fluent and
Speaker 1: the other stuff. And then you go out to the
Speaker 1: other languages and like some of the languages have like
Speaker 1: three thousand of them, some of them have like two hundred, right, um,
Speaker 1: And so there is both um and some of that
Speaker 1: content was like translated several years ago, right or five
Speaker 1: or ten years ago, and yeah, you know, and like
Speaker 1: the climate rhetoric has really changed, and like numbers and
Speaker 1: statistics all that stuff gets updated every year. And it's yeah,
Speaker 1: that is there is there's there's a lot to cap
Speaker 1: with and like reading the IPCC report or looking at
Speaker 1: any of the consensus science, there's like a lot of
Speaker 1: change that you have to be influent in like science communication.
Speaker 1: You have to understand like where to look for the
Speaker 1: information um. And it's interesting. My partner is a Spanish
Speaker 1: language speaker and she was in a kind of workshop
Speaker 1: for journalists in Argentina for climate communication, and the the
Speaker 1: workshop was like, oh, you should cite the Guardian, right,
Speaker 1: so even as to to kind of understand this climate stuff.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these local language contexts, there aren't
Speaker 1: even good sources, and the sources they do have are
Speaker 1: often citing like the dominant narrative that's going on and
Speaker 1: like the anglophone news cycle, right, because there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of climate communication going on, and so there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of complexity involved in updating that much content
Speaker 1: all the time. Um. And so the bulk of the
Speaker 1: stuff that kind of creeps in is like this neglect. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like some dominant idea in the narrative just hasn't
Speaker 1: been updated, and like we need someone to update it. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's like an organizing problem, right, that's uh, like
Speaker 1: we need more people who are science literate, who speak
Speaker 1: the local language, who understand how to edit Wikipedia. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's trainable, Like we can do that. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: reason that matters, the neglect matters is it stops people
Speaker 1: from making decisions about climate change because they don't have
Speaker 1: like an accurate sense of what we need to do, right,
Speaker 1: which is cut the false fuels, increase increased resilience through
Speaker 1: adaptation like actual political change, right. Um. And so so
Speaker 1: that that's just it's a problem. Um. The other stuff
Speaker 1: is a bit more it's a little bit more complicated. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that happens is that, as you know,
Speaker 1: there's quite a manipulation of narrative that has happened around
Speaker 1: climate change. There's this really great podcast by Amy Westervelt
Speaker 1: about how the fossil fuel industry like got its message
Speaker 1: into schools in the last three years in the US,
Speaker 1: and like that narrative is just so prevalent. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things about wikipedias that we try to
Speaker 1: do a balance of positions. If there are reputable sources
Speaker 1: kind of describing or analyzing a topic, and this is
Speaker 1: back to here polarization question too, if they're reputable sources
Speaker 1: describing on topic, we try to give them equal weight
Speaker 1: and balance across the article. The problem with climate is
Speaker 1: that some of the narratives that look like reputable sources
Speaker 1: are just pumped out of fossil fuel industry funded think tanks. Right,
Speaker 1: and these things are not truthful narratives, right. Um. And
Speaker 1: so the BBC ran an article, uh two weeks ago
Speaker 1: on kind of climate denial and some of these smaller languages,
Speaker 1: a smaller language wikipedias, and what they found was a
Speaker 1: lot of these narratives being given equal weight with the
Speaker 1: climate science. Um. And I took a look our community
Speaker 1: after that BBC article came out, started looking across all
Speaker 1: the language Wikipedia articles about just the main climate change page,
Speaker 1: and they found thirty one Wikipedia's that had some of
Speaker 1: that like equal weight of bad climate science. Interesting yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And you know the BBC article only found like five
Speaker 1: or ten, right, we found another lot a lot more, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. And so it's it's like a it's a
Speaker 1: really like these narratives just seep in and you know, again,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go back to the Croatian example, like if
Speaker 1: your media environment has been locked down by a certain
Speaker 1: political rhetoric, too, those narratives might have traveled from like
Speaker 1: the Anglo sphere into these other spaces and then gotten stuck, right,
Speaker 1: and it's just like keeps getting recycled, and so that
Speaker 1: causes delay. Um. And I was listening to your podcasts
Speaker 1: recently about soft climate denial. Like this is what's happening
Speaker 1: in other language environments, right, is people are rehearsing this misinformation.
Speaker 1: It seems like a valid position because it's been rehearsed
Speaker 1: so many times by by folks. Some people who are
Speaker 1: championing that position are like doing so unknowingly, and then
Speaker 1: the process, we're kind of disconnecting it entirely from the
Speaker 1: source of the information, and that is just it's it's
Speaker 1: really bad. One interesting thing that I thought of when
Speaker 1: you were bringing up like sourcing, how sourcing itself coming
Speaker 1: an issue like in the States, there's kind of like
Speaker 1: a joke that like wicked like when people use just
Speaker 1: Wikipedia as like as a source to be like they
Speaker 1: just they just link the article. But like that is
Speaker 1: the default for so many people when they begin begin
Speaker 1: a research project, is like, Okay, what's the what's the
Speaker 1: what is what does Wikipedia have on it? What's the
Speaker 1: sources Wikipedia uses um and kind of branch off from there.
Speaker 1: It's a very common thing. So I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: like how different internet culture will be different in in
Speaker 1: other countries. But if they do not, if they if
Speaker 1: they don't have like the base sourcing necessary to create
Speaker 1: like a decent home page article, then just sourcing from
Speaker 1: Wikipedia in the first place becomes so much harder. Um,
Speaker 1: because you like you were saying, like just use the
Speaker 1: Guardian is is like one of the things, like that's
Speaker 1: not horrible advice, but if it's only just from one thing,
Speaker 1: then that that's going to change the entire nature of
Speaker 1: like coverage and information on specific topics. Yeah. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: had just being really interesting kind of thing that I
Speaker 1: never thought of before is how different countries wikipedias or
Speaker 1: like language with Wikipedia's will have will have like different sources.
Speaker 1: So then getting information from from the page, it's just
Speaker 1: going to be so different. And like yeah, like like
Speaker 1: the whole, like the whole like teared of sourcing is
Speaker 1: just completely changed. Yeah. And and I think, like you know,
Speaker 1: in medicine, and most medical practitioners expect most of the
Speaker 1: medical literature to be in a handful of languages like
Speaker 1: English and Chinese and that kind of stuff, right, and
Speaker 1: like part of your professional work and part of like
Speaker 1: saving people's lives is being able to use those sources.
Speaker 1: And so if a medical Wikipedia article has a translation
Speaker 1: from like an English article into another language, and you're
Speaker 1: distributing that to medical practitioners and they find the citation
Speaker 1: and it's in English and they can go follow the source.
Speaker 1: Like that's not such a big deal. But with in
Speaker 1: a topic like climate um, where the vast majority of
Speaker 1: the people that have to make decisions on this information
Speaker 1: do not have access to other languages. Maybe their access
Speaker 1: to English is through like machine translation, Google or something
Speaker 1: like that. Like having not having sources in your local language, UM,
Speaker 1: or just having the sources that were translated from an
Speaker 1: English Wikipedia article, which happens a lot on these smaller
Speaker 1: language wikipedias, is kind of like not helpful for climate
Speaker 1: decision making. UM. And this is where it's um. It's
Speaker 1: easy for example, and a lot of these like Eastern
Speaker 1: European languages or Central Asian UH languages for like a
Speaker 1: politically spun news site opinion about something to kind of
Speaker 1: creep in at the same level of of kind of
Speaker 1: UH validity as as another as scientific research as the
Speaker 1: the you know, consensus understanding of the climate pricis, So
Speaker 1: how how might I know? We talked about like like
Speaker 1: training for like journalists and people to start editing Wikipedia's
Speaker 1: in their language, but like, how how do we kind
Speaker 1: of improve climate communication overall with open access to information
Speaker 1: and you know, creating more linguistic um diversity and stuff. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think there's like a couple of opportunities UM in
Speaker 1: this and then I there's some other misinformation. I also
Speaker 1: want to talk about two UM, but I think that
Speaker 1: this the sourcing one, is a particularly challenging one. UM.
Speaker 1: We need like more basic science based climate communication and
Speaker 1: more languages. And I'm not saying like just the the
Speaker 1: like more languages like the big u N languages are
Speaker 1: the ones that are kind of colonial across cultural languages
Speaker 1: like Spanish or French or Arabic or you know, all
Speaker 1: these languages that have been used across cultures. We also
Speaker 1: need it in local languages, UM. And we needed to
Speaker 1: be evidence based and we needed to be an audience based. Right.
Speaker 1: So if if someone is like searching online in Swahili
Speaker 1: about how like drought is happening in Kenya, right or
Speaker 1: Tanzania or or the you know there's suddenly flooding or
Speaker 1: like I need to deal with X, Y and Z
Speaker 1: adaptation to the climate crisis, UM, which is by the way,
Speaker 1: what all of the global South is doing right now, right,
Speaker 1: like the global South is having to adapt to this
Speaker 1: crisis that polluting countries has have made, and we're not
Speaker 1: actually giving them the resources to the to the problem
Speaker 1: that we've cost. You. Well, it's not even like giving
Speaker 1: the research. We're not even like the people who are like,
Speaker 1: we want to adapt our society. We're not resourcing the
Speaker 1: folks on the ground who have the agency, who have
Speaker 1: the understanding, who know how to do the research in
Speaker 1: the context, who know how to do the communication in
Speaker 1: the context. Right, We're not even like bolstering their their
Speaker 1: request for help. Right, Like the the the You and
Speaker 1: Climate Conference kind of failed on this adaptation funding, right,
Speaker 1: And uh, this is you know, this is where like
Speaker 1: a platform like Wikipedia and like kind of approaching this
Speaker 1: from a knowledge activist perspective where you're like, there are
Speaker 1: people who need this knowledge to address like understand what's
Speaker 1: happening around them so they can make decisions. That doesn't
Speaker 1: like you know, yeah, we need those kinds of information.
Speaker 1: We need open source knowledge, not just Wikipedia but one
Speaker 1: of the platforms um and and you know the you
Speaker 1: all do open source investigation and you're used to like
Speaker 1: open source software communities, And I listened a couple of
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and you're kind of constantly speaking back to
Speaker 1: those open communities that that come out of like angleophone,
Speaker 1: software spaces um. And like we need to acknowledge that,
Speaker 1: like we we figured out how to knowledge, but we
Speaker 1: haven't given all those tools. We haven't transferred the knowledge
Speaker 1: on how to do it. We haven't adapted those tools
Speaker 1: to other parts of the world and other languages. UM.
Speaker 1: And so just like starting to look for these other communities,
Speaker 1: asking for the people, like who's ready to organize, like
Speaker 1: giving them money to go do it? Right? These things
Speaker 1: are like really practical UM. And I think we're we're
Speaker 1: not We're not often not listening or we're not looking
Speaker 1: for that solution and render like most of the people
Speaker 1: having to adapt um are in the global South and
Speaker 1: speak other languages. Like we need to be there in
Speaker 1: that language if we want the climate crisis to like
Speaker 1: resolve itself without you know, destraining people's lives. Yeah, absolutely, um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing we try to bring up that
Speaker 1: the people is going to be initially worse affected are
Speaker 1: the people who are already kind of not in the
Speaker 1: greatest situation in the first place. That's like how how
Speaker 1: like how like the areas that are gonna that are
Speaker 1: gonna experience the most flooding, the most extreme weather events,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. It's it's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not starting with something like New York City. It's starting
Speaker 1: with areas that are already dealing with a lot of
Speaker 1: like local issues and now this is just something else
Speaker 1: on top. And yeah, fixing all of that is uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, fixing all of it's impossible. We can only
Speaker 1: take like small adaptive steps to like mitigate some of
Speaker 1: the worse effects. And yeah, I mean that that's that's
Speaker 1: stuff that comes up a bunch. But you mentioned you
Speaker 1: wanted to at least briefly mentioned, um, some other forms
Speaker 1: of disinformation. Yeah, so we We've also witnessed a couple
Speaker 1: of times, um where something will hit like breaking news
Speaker 1: or become a political position in a context, and then
Speaker 1: like we will see bad actors show up on Wikipedia
Speaker 1: and try to manipulate it. UM. I have two examples
Speaker 1: of those. The first is about a year year ago. Uh,
Speaker 1: we found a group of accounts editing about some of
Speaker 1: the inter Amazonian highways that the Bolsonaro presidency is building
Speaker 1: through through the Amazon um where they were trying to
Speaker 1: remove the environmental and Indigenous people's uh impact assessments from
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia articles UH and so like basic human rights stuff,
Speaker 1: basic you know, healthy environment things that the government is
Speaker 1: like expected to follow through on. We're being like manipulated
Speaker 1: out of the articles for a more like pro economic
Speaker 1: growth narrative UM. And so you know, it's we can't
Speaker 1: like the shift towards this like very extreme right like
Speaker 1: economic growth only version of reality um does play out
Speaker 1: on the wikie now were we were lucky that this
Speaker 1: was fairly trans like fairly easy to see once we
Speaker 1: found it, But we had to coordinate across um, English,
Speaker 1: Spanish and Portuguese to like address the problem. So so
Speaker 1: we need like multi lingual communities who are kind of
Speaker 1: coordinating and talking to each other to address that. UM.
Speaker 1: The other thing we've seen is like, so did you
Speaker 1: I don't know how well you follow the climate movement? UM,
Speaker 1: but did you see when Disha Rabb got arrested and
Speaker 1: India by chance? I don't think so. So she she's
Speaker 1: a youth climate activist that was part of Friday's for
Speaker 1: Future India, which is like a group kind of sister
Speaker 1: group of the group that formed in Europe. Around Greta Twinberg, right,
Speaker 1: um and uh she uh um. Her Gmail account got
Speaker 1: attached to a Google doc. Uh just seen active on
Speaker 1: a Google doc that was about sharing social media about
Speaker 1: the India the farmers protests in India, which have been
Speaker 1: like a real political sticking point issue. And I had
Speaker 1: written so I'm both a volunteer and a professional who
Speaker 1: organizes the community. And in my volunteer time, I had
Speaker 1: written the biography of Nishar Rabi like months before the
Speaker 1: Indian government kind of identified her with this social media
Speaker 1: tool kit. And um, when she got arrested for something
Speaker 1: that's like just basic social organizing tactic social media, UMU,
Speaker 1: the kind of Hindu nationalist social media environment like zoomed
Speaker 1: in on her Wikipedia article and on all these other
Speaker 1: social media presences she had, and they tried to silence it.
Speaker 1: Um be like, okay, we need to leave this article.
Speaker 1: And uh Fortunately, like a group of us were watching
Speaker 1: the page and we caught it and we're able to
Speaker 1: stop that. But there's kind of the the kind of
Speaker 1: flash mob situation that happens a lot now in social media,
Speaker 1: where it's that is, this thing has been polarized. Now
Speaker 1: we need to go attack it um. And so you
Speaker 1: can imagine, like English Wikipedia has a healthy immune system
Speaker 1: for this kind of stuff, it like sees it. But
Speaker 1: it has enough, it has enough people that it can
Speaker 1: do that. Yeah. Yeah, but you can imagine on a
Speaker 1: smaller wiki that the narrative could shift and stay permanently
Speaker 1: shifted quite quickly. Yeah, um if that happened. And so
Speaker 1: that that's another concern. Right, So there's like the subtle
Speaker 1: like a few accounts just like quietly removing things and
Speaker 1: then like the act of political um kind of intervention
Speaker 1: that happens. And in terms of like disinformation, do you
Speaker 1: see the Wikipedia as being kind of susceptible to like
Speaker 1: intentional disinformation campaigns of people slowly kind of editing the
Speaker 1: ideology of of articles to to push kind of some agenda.
Speaker 1: What whether that be like individually and like like you know,
Speaker 1: more of like a crowd operation um or even like
Speaker 1: run by like people with political power, um. Like do
Speaker 1: do you how much of a risk do you see
Speaker 1: that with this kind of open source idea? Is that's
Speaker 1: of of like intentional slow dissemination of disinformation on like
Speaker 1: important articles and stuff. Well, so I think I might
Speaker 1: reframe your question a little bit like, uh, all open
Speaker 1: source kind of knowledge spaces are susceptible to that, right. Um.
Speaker 1: The question is is to like what degree and how
Speaker 1: harmful is it going to be? Right, Um, like is
Speaker 1: it is it like very open to this and will
Speaker 1: it cause a lot of problems? Um, The bigger language
Speaker 1: Wikipedia's have healthy immune systems, but we we have a
Speaker 1: combination of kind of bots that are like AI generated
Speaker 1: that flag bag edits, and then we have a lot
Speaker 1: of community patrolling happening. And even in some of the
Speaker 1: smaller communities that have like medium sized editor communities like
Speaker 1: Swedish Wikipedia, it doesn't take a lot for that local
Speaker 1: language community to patrol the pages and like be like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, um, these changes are kind of weird. I
Speaker 1: can roll it back, um, Like this doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it fits our culture of Wikipedia. The problem is when
Speaker 1: a language Wikipedia has very few editors and they're not
Speaker 1: active all the time. Um. And and so this is
Speaker 1: where we need kind of more eyes on the content,
Speaker 1: right because it's it's very easy for like a really
Speaker 1: small language community to kind of have a little bit
Speaker 1: of content but never see it maintained. Um And and
Speaker 1: this is where the like where where our communities are
Speaker 1: forming around these languages, like a lot of the West
Speaker 1: African languages for example, that our communities are are kind
Speaker 1: of organizing, and we we like invest in those communities
Speaker 1: existing and like figuring out the governance and training people
Speaker 1: how to edit and getting access to the kind of
Speaker 1: technical skills to do this. Um. And you know, we
Speaker 1: have kind of systems that we're hoping over the next
Speaker 1: few years invest in that resilience, right, like building a
Speaker 1: code of conduct making it easier for communities to see
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. But it is three languages, right, um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it is a volunteer built system, and you do
Speaker 1: need a healthy editatorial community in order to keep a
Speaker 1: wiki from like drift team too much. Um. So a
Speaker 1: good example of listening to get a reference creation because
Speaker 1: it's the one we've done research on, Like it was
Speaker 1: possible for a few people to push people who are
Speaker 1: more in consensus with the global position on various topics
Speaker 1: out of the wiki. Um. And that's just like we
Speaker 1: we have to find a balance between like local language. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is my personal opinion, right, we need to
Speaker 1: find a balance between kind of local language sovereignty on
Speaker 1: this stuff, and also not like radicalizing, it's topical environment
Speaker 1: and we and we see this particularly on impactful topics, right,
Speaker 1: like ones that directly affect like politics or in the
Speaker 1: kids climate crisis, like people's livelihoods and ability to function
Speaker 1: in society right. Um And we just like we need
Speaker 1: to be cautious about that. But but you know, Wikipedia
Speaker 1: is a common resource, and I think this is really important.
Speaker 1: Like the way Wikipedia works is you know, the Wikimmunitia
Speaker 1: Foundation provides the servers, We fund our communities, we support them,
Speaker 1: we help them work through governance issues. But like the
Speaker 1: we we need editorial communities to maintain it. That's what
Speaker 1: those two thousand people are doing as volunteers as they're
Speaker 1: building an editorial practice that makes the content work. Um.
Speaker 1: And and we we need that um. And so we
Speaker 1: need you know, like minded communities like the people for
Speaker 1: your your podcasts who are like, oh, we need the
Speaker 1: Internet to be reliable and have accurate information a lot
Speaker 1: to show up um Because if we don't do that,
Speaker 1: it's it's really like it's the common resource. We we
Speaker 1: we have a decent international listening base as well. UM.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking like, what what would you like recommend people?
Speaker 1: You know in different countries or even people inside inside
Speaker 1: kind of like uh, you know, the States, America, Canada,
Speaker 1: the UK who are like multi langual would at least
Speaker 1: encourage them to browse other language wikipedias and maybe start
Speaker 1: making edits when they see this type of misinformation popping up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I to kind of perspectives on this one. UM,
Speaker 1: look for a local organized community. So we we have
Speaker 1: what's called wikimedia Affiliates. These are fifty organizations around the world.
Speaker 1: They regularly run events, especially now that we're leaving COVID,
Speaker 1: increasingly more in person events. They trained folks like look
Speaker 1: for them in your context and if you need help finding,
Speaker 1: you know, find me on Twitter and I can connect
Speaker 1: you with those communities. Um. And the other part is
Speaker 1: small edits. So I think a lot of people look
Speaker 1: at Wikipedia and they think about like a traditional publishing firm, right, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to write the whole whole article.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I have to be a master.
Speaker 1: And and the secret sauce to all of this is
Speaker 1: like most people start with one citation, one comma, one
Speaker 1: type of fix, and they do a handful of those
Speaker 1: a month, and then they keep coming back and as
Speaker 1: you do those small edits, you start reading the content
Speaker 1: more carefully and fixing the things you can fix. And
Speaker 1: so I recommend going in to like add one citation,
Speaker 1: Like if you go and add one citation today, that
Speaker 1: like makes life better, or you fix the communication on
Speaker 1: the sentence. Um. The other part of it is, you know,
Speaker 1: I said, there's these organized groups, uh for the climate
Speaker 1: In particular, I run this campaign called Wiki for Human Rights,
Speaker 1: which is focused on UM. We it's a theme that
Speaker 1: we kind of identified with you and human rights on
Speaker 1: the right to a healthy environment, which is this new
Speaker 1: human right that has been acknowledged by the Human Rights Council.
Speaker 1: And we're organizing kind of writing contests and editor fonds
Speaker 1: and kind of trainings for communities to go and look
Speaker 1: for the human dimension of the climate crisis. So I
Speaker 1: think when we think about climate communication, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are like science right there, like oh, this is
Speaker 1: you know about how weather systems work and how the
Speaker 1: atmosphere it forms and the stuff and the content that's
Speaker 1: more impactful is this like human inflected stuff, like how
Speaker 1: does the climate crisis in fact, you as an individual
Speaker 1: and agriculture in the cities you live in, and the
Speaker 1: clothing you buy in the manufactured goods absolutely mine around
Speaker 1: the corner that's producing water pollution that's gonna harm your
Speaker 1: children for the next thirty years, right, Um. And and
Speaker 1: that is the kind of stuff that we're encouraging communities
Speaker 1: to pay attention to. Is it is more the like
Speaker 1: justice and human rights oriented perspective on these topics. And
Speaker 1: your cat is very cute. Yeah, every once in a
Speaker 1: while they love to love to take the camera. Um
Speaker 1: and so yeah, So so if you follow me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I will I can hook you up with that campaign
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. Yeah. Where where can people find you
Speaker 1: online and to learn more information about you know, the
Speaker 1: various kind of topics we've discussed today. So, um, search
Speaker 1: if you're interested in climate change stuff on Wikipedia English.
Speaker 1: Wikipedia has a wonderful wiki project climate change that has
Speaker 1: a little tab at the So if you search wiki
Speaker 1: project climate change on Google and you find there's a
Speaker 1: tab at the top that says get started with easy
Speaker 1: edits and that kind of can get you oriented to
Speaker 1: like where can you affect English Wikipedia on this? And
Speaker 1: you know, once you find a gap on English, it's
Speaker 1: easy to find it on other languages. Um. For the
Speaker 1: kind of learning about Wiki for Human Rights. You can
Speaker 1: search for that um and or follow me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Um A S A A D S sad ads on Twitter. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: We also have a group called Wikimedians for Sustainable Development
Speaker 1: who's kind of communicating on Twitter, which is the group
Speaker 1: that's really focused on sustainability topics more generally. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, the other way to look is find something
Speaker 1: you've been reading about about the climate crisis or sustainability
Speaker 1: issues in the news. Look it up on Wikipedia. See
Speaker 1: if it's missing. Um. If it's not, click the edit
Speaker 1: button at a sentence. Right. Um. The good example of this,
Speaker 1: I learned about a park and uh the center of
Speaker 1: Nairobi that's being protested by environmental activists because some of
Speaker 1: the big trees were being cut down a Huru park, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: This came by on my Twitter handle, Like I'm not
Speaker 1: connected to this at the moment, right, Um, But because
Speaker 1: I had news sources, I had three or four news
Speaker 1: sources I could say really simply in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: the art came under scrutiny for renovation that included removing
Speaker 1: old trees. That's a climate action, right Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think you know I am constantly overwhelmed by the climate
Speaker 1: crisis as as a lot of people. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: and like just being able to tell that little story, like, hey, um,
Speaker 1: the decisions people are making are not productive here, right, Um,
Speaker 1: just just gathering that story is important. And what's important
Speaker 1: is Wikipedia plays institutional memory on this, right. I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of a lot of activists work
Speaker 1: is very temporal. It's very like in that moment, right, um,
Speaker 1: And if it doesn't get documented on Wikipedia, the local
Speaker 1: news sources are gonna get lost in the wind of time. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think, you know, if you to do
Speaker 1: your little activist motion, like a sentence describing what happened
Speaker 1: in a moment where resistance was happening, is like a
Speaker 1: huge step forward, right because it connects the environmental crisis,
Speaker 1: climate crisis, human rights issues to like daily lives. Like
Speaker 1: people look up this park probably on Google because they
Speaker 1: want to go there, right, or they read about it
Speaker 1: because people are like when was it created? What was
Speaker 1: that protest that happened there the other day? And if
Speaker 1: those source isn't there, um, then it doesn't really exist
Speaker 1: in their minds. Yeah, it doesn't exist in their minds.
Speaker 1: And I think that's like one of the big issues
Speaker 1: with climate crisis and you know, amplified even worse in
Speaker 1: other languages, right, is that people aren't making that connection.
Speaker 1: They aren't seeing it around them, and they're not you know,
Speaker 1: kind of connecting action to how we address it. That. Uh,
Speaker 1: that is a really good that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean I will encourage everybody to to
Speaker 1: start making small leddits. That's what's what I did for
Speaker 1: a long time before I moved into like open source
Speaker 1: um journalism and reporting. It's a great way to get started,
Speaker 1: and it's a great way to get just start start
Speaker 1: disseminating small bits of information because the only thing that
Speaker 1: we can really do is people is small steps. We
Speaker 1: can have like an adaptive goal in mind, but you
Speaker 1: need to take small steps to get there. And that
Speaker 1: is a really great way to start influencing the way
Speaker 1: people think about climate and our situation. Um. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and I think too, you know, your your podcast kind
Speaker 1: of appeals to folks who are interested in like finding
Speaker 1: the truth and reality, right, and that that's that's like
Speaker 1: that that investigation is what a Wikipedia article is. It
Speaker 1: is like one ten hundred editors out there in the
Speaker 1: world trying to go like, what the heck is this
Speaker 1: topic about? Right? How do I compile my notes? Uh
Speaker 1: in a way that helps other people? And I think
Speaker 1: in the face of the climate crisis. Dr Ianna Johnson says, like,
Speaker 1: find the thing you're good at, find the thing your
Speaker 1: past and about, and find the thing that like or
Speaker 1: that that makes you feel good and you're you're is rewarding.
Speaker 1: And find the thing that actually like helps affect the
Speaker 1: climate crisis. Right, And a small DNA on Wikipedia meets
Speaker 1: your kind of knowledge needs. It's very satisfying because people
Speaker 1: will read it and it is incremental change in the
Speaker 1: right direction. Right, people will make decisions on it. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and I guess uh, I think that I
Speaker 1: think that probably closes this up today. And let's do
Speaker 1: anything else to add Um, I guess one more plug
Speaker 1: for your Twitter so we can get get more eyeballs
Speaker 1: on you, um and the work that you're doing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um so at S A D A D S. It's
Speaker 1: my long term handle on the internet and you you
Speaker 1: can find me Oliver plates Uh and I tweet about
Speaker 1: Wikipedia on the climate crisis, will and we'll will link
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia wiki project climate change page in the description
Speaker 1: for people to find. Thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: time to talk to us all about these topics. UM,
Speaker 1: I'm really really great, uh, really grateful to have this
Speaker 1: type of knowledge readily accessible to more people. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: in the spirit of Wikipedia. Thanks so, thank you so much. UM.
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