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Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and

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Speaker 1: I love all things tech. It's time for another tech

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Speaker 1: Stuff classic episode, and uh, this time we're gonna look

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Speaker 1: at a topic that was something of a controversial topic

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Speaker 1: within my old work space over at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. It's tech Stuff tackles Wikipedia, and the reason

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Speaker 1: it was controversial is that, well, Wikipedia was not considered

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Speaker 1: a reliable resource for us to use when we were

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Speaker 1: researching materials for uh, for podcasts, or for articles, because

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Speaker 1: mostly we were writing articles back then. This episode originally

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Speaker 1: published on April twenty nine, two thirteen. Let's listen in.

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Speaker 1: It's a matter of some debate among lots and lots

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Speaker 1: of people online, and there are good points and bad points.

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Speaker 1: We're going to cover them all. We are, of course

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Speaker 1: talking about Wikipedia, and you guys who are long time

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Speaker 1: listeners of tech Stuff might remember that Chris and I

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Speaker 1: did an episode about wikis and we touched upon Wikipedia

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Speaker 1: a little bit. But that was many years ago. Other

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Speaker 1: stuff has happened, as things are wont to do on

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Speaker 1: the course of time, and we decided we wanted to

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Speaker 1: really look at what made Wikipedia what it was and

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Speaker 1: what it is and how has it changed over the

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Speaker 1: time that it's existed, and and some of the reasons

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Speaker 1: why Wikipedia is a very useful tool and some reasons

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Speaker 1: why people either maybe maybe not dismiss it, but but

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Speaker 1: but in some ways that it could perhaps be improved. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and reasons why some people, uh suggest extreme caution

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Speaker 1: before relying too heavily upon it. Um. And and before

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Speaker 1: we get really into this at all, you know, I

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Speaker 1: used to write for How Stuff Works dot home a lot.

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Speaker 1: I occasionally still do, but I mostly do podcasts now

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Speaker 1: and things like that. Blogs are about about the writing

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Speaker 1: level juncture, right, But but I used to write these

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Speaker 1: these a long articles. And one of the policies and

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Speaker 1: How Stuff Works is that you do not use Wikipedia

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Speaker 1: as a source ever. Yeah. And uh, I used to

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Speaker 1: be an editor before I was a podcaster in social

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Speaker 1: media person And yes, that was one of the things

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Speaker 1: that we very firmly enforced, right, are still do. And

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Speaker 1: really the reason for that has nothing to do with

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Speaker 1: whether or not the infant well, it has something to

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Speaker 1: do with whether or not the information you find on

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Speaker 1: Wikipedia is reliable. But more importantly, Wikipedia is a dynamic thing, right.

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Speaker 1: It can be written and edited by anybody at any time.

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Speaker 1: And so when you sit there and cite something from Wikipedia,

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Speaker 1: and maybe the next time someone visits that particular entry,

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Speaker 1: the the information has changed, and it may be that

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Speaker 1: the information now is more accurate than it was, or

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Speaker 1: maybe less accurate. At any rate, the things that make

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Speaker 1: Wikipedia a useful tool in day to day I need

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Speaker 1: to get this information are the same things that make

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Speaker 1: it a dangerous tool if you are writing in any

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Speaker 1: sort of academic or professional capacity. Facy. Yeah, thank you

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Speaker 1: editor for giving me the word that I don't have.

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Speaker 1: But but really, before we get into all the pros

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Speaker 1: and cons that I've already just touched on, uh, let's

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Speaker 1: talk about the history. So before there was a Wikipedia,

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Speaker 1: back when there was just barely a web. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was more more local networks of computers and some

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Speaker 1: of them could you know, key into other local networks. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we we did have an internet, uh, and the web

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Speaker 1: was a thing, but it was very young. But back

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Speaker 1: in so you know, the web essentially is introduced right three,

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Speaker 1: So web has not been around for very long. Rick

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Speaker 1: Gates comes up with this idea. He says, Uh, you

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Speaker 1: know what would be really super awesome if if we

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Speaker 1: were to build an encyclopedia that lived on the Internet,

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Speaker 1: and if you made that encyclopedia something that anyone could

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Speaker 1: contribute to, so that way you could tap into the

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Speaker 1: world's knowledge and people who are really just experts in

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Speaker 1: whatever field that they're in, they can go in and

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Speaker 1: share that knowledge. Right, and and then you have the

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Speaker 1: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, right, except it's really the

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Speaker 1: Hitchhiker's Guide to Earth. Uh. So would be more than

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Speaker 1: mostly harmless Earth in a small amount of the surrounding galaxy. Sure, yeah,

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Speaker 1: But essentially the sum total of what human knowledge is

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Speaker 1: could go on the Internet and be in a database

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Speaker 1: that you could search, and it would be the world's

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Speaker 1: most complete encyclopedia. Uh. A fellow by the name of R. L.

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Speaker 1: Samuel came up with an idea to call it Interpedia,

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Speaker 1: and it was kind of this interesting point of discussion,

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Speaker 1: but it never went beyond that. It was just one

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Speaker 1: of those Hey, any cool if Yeah, exactly. Maybe if

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Speaker 1: someone who has more time and resources could do this,

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Speaker 1: it would be awesome. Uh. And then in a very

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Speaker 1: important development happened. And I was amazed that it happened

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Speaker 1: this early, because this was the development of the wiki platform,

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Speaker 1: and the fact that it happened in ninety four amazes

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Speaker 1: me because I was largely unaware of wikis until Wikipedia

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Speaker 1: came along. Yeah as well. So, I mean I had

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Speaker 1: been on the web since the early nineties, but I

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Speaker 1: just didn't know about wikis for many years, I mean

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Speaker 1: almost a decade. Uh. And it was and when I

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Speaker 1: finally did start to learn about wikis, they were strange

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Speaker 1: and unusual to me because it was a different experience

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Speaker 1: than your average website. Right. Yeah, Usually most websites and

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Speaker 1: most books are based on this idea that there is

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Speaker 1: one expert who is who is this terrific expert and

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Speaker 1: is talking to you about this thing. Yeah, and that's

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Speaker 1: and that's where it starts and stops. You know, no

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Speaker 1: one's arguing with them, particularly, right. There might be some

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Speaker 1: form of comment ability on a site where people can

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Speaker 1: contribute into the discussion, but in general, the content of

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Speaker 1: the site itself is created by a person or an organization,

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Speaker 1: but no one else. It's not like, you know, Bob

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Speaker 1: can just log in and put in Bob's section, and

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Speaker 1: then Joe over here logs in and puts in Joe's section.

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Speaker 1: It's Bob and Joe can't do anything because they can

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Speaker 1: just go and view the site. Well, the wiki was

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Speaker 1: based on a completely different idea and it was designed

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Speaker 1: by a guy named Ward Cunningham, and his first one

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Speaker 1: was First Software Developers. Yeah, yeah, he was. He worked

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Speaker 1: for a software consulting company that he was a partner in.

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Speaker 1: It was Cunningham and Cunningham also known as C two

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Speaker 1: dot com, and he was developing this, uh this platform

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Speaker 1: for Portland pattern Repository and he called it wiki wiki

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Speaker 1: web right, based on the Hawaiian word wiki or wiki wiki,

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Speaker 1: which means um, quick quick, Yeah. There's a the wiki

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Speaker 1: wiki Shuttle in Honolulu, which is an airport shuttle. I've

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Speaker 1: been on the shuttle and I remember my wife being

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Speaker 1: really amused every time she saw the wiki wiki shuttle.

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Speaker 1: She just loved wiki wiki. Obviously I've married the right woman.

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Speaker 1: So uh so, Ward Cunningham comes up with this idea

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Speaker 1: for the wiki, and essentially what a wiki is is

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Speaker 1: it's a website that has collaborative editing tools built into

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Speaker 1: the site itself, so you you navigate to the site

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Speaker 1: through a browser, and within the browser you can make

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Speaker 1: changes to the site collaboratively. So depending upon the level

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Speaker 1: of administrative power you have, you can you can edit things,

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Speaker 1: you can add things, you can delete things. And it's

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Speaker 1: since it's all within the web browser, you're using a

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Speaker 1: basic markup language or maybe some sort of rich text editor,

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Speaker 1: and it will let people collaborate on projects even if

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Speaker 1: they had different machines. Right, So, if Lauren's using a

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Speaker 1: Mac and I'm using a PC, not only do we

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Speaker 1: hate each other, but often we can't work on the

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Speaker 1: same thing because our platforms are so different. But this

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Speaker 1: is web based, so all we have to do is

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Speaker 1: use whichever browsers web browser we both commune, and then

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Speaker 1: we navigate there and we can make these changes and

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Speaker 1: build our collaborative I hate you website together and other

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Speaker 1: people can join in and explain why they hate everybody too.

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Speaker 1: And I don't know why I'm so negative today, but

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Speaker 1: apparently that's how this is going to work. I think.

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Speaker 1: So Cunningham develops this wiki technology, which is what makes

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Speaker 1: Wikipedia possible. But we're not at Wikipedia yet now, right,

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Speaker 1: because yeah, well go ahead, Oh, I was just gonna

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Speaker 1: say that's when we start talking about Jimmy Wales, who

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Speaker 1: is kind of the face of Wikipedia, right right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was gonna say that. At the same time around

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Speaker 1: was when Jimmy Wales had dropped out of college. He

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Speaker 1: he had started um started a couple months are for

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Speaker 1: a finance PhD from Indiana University and wound up instead

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Speaker 1: of doing that going to Chicago to be a futures

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Speaker 1: an options trader and supposedly, much like Elon Musk who

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Speaker 1: we have previously profile, wild Jimmy Wales noticed that, you know,

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Speaker 1: Netscape went public and and what quadrupled in value overnight.

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Speaker 1: Netscape did well, yes, they did good um and and

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Speaker 1: took note of that and said, hey, this internet thing

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Speaker 1: that I've been kind of playing around with for a

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Speaker 1: few years, I think that this could be a thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this this might go places. And of course remember this

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Speaker 1: is all before the dot com bubble burst too, so

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Speaker 1: back then it was all opportunity and wild West and

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Speaker 1: no one was really sure and bright shining dreams. Yeah

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Speaker 1: it was. It was interesting. Uh, you know, the the

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Speaker 1: roads weren't paved with gold, but they were paved with

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Speaker 1: stock options. Jimmy Wales has this thought while he's working

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Speaker 1: for a well, he's part owner of a company called

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Speaker 1: bomus dot com, which is a search engine. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: he owned that with two other joint owners, Tim Shell

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Speaker 1: and Michael Davis. Comes up with his version, his idea

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Speaker 1: for a free, collaborative encyclopedia, and he taps a guy

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Speaker 1: named Larry Sanger to be the project lead for this

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Speaker 1: new encyclopedia. Now he knew Saner from mailing lists, because

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Speaker 1: this isn't that long after the fact that people were

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Speaker 1: just using things like Usenet and mailing lists instead of

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Speaker 1: the web and uh, and so he got in touch

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Speaker 1: with Saner and and convinced Anger to head up a project,

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Speaker 1: this this collaborative encyclopedia, which at that point did not

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Speaker 1: have a name, right right, Yeah, And you know that

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Speaker 1: they've been thinking. I've read about open source software and

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Speaker 1: and how open source culture could also be a thing

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Speaker 1: and and and a beautiful thing and so yeah, and

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Speaker 1: that was kind of when you look back at Timber's Lee,

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Speaker 1: who's the guy who essentially created what we know of

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Speaker 1: as the Web. That was sort of his approach to

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Speaker 1: He thought that open was the right way to go,

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Speaker 1: that the open collaborative way would mean that the Internet

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Speaker 1: becomes the world's tool, not any one a company or

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Speaker 1: government's tool. And so, uh, this was sort of the

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Speaker 1: idea of of let's make an encyclopedia that follows those

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Speaker 1: same kind of philosophies. Yeah, and so, so Wales and

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Speaker 1: Saner and a few others start to form a project

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Speaker 1: that they call New Pdia in U P E. D

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Speaker 1: I A. And this was a peer reviewed encyclopedia that

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Speaker 1: they were going to put online. And you know, because

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Speaker 1: they wanted that they wanted that expert opinion to come in,

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Speaker 1: and they wanted everything to be as factual and reliable

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Speaker 1: as possible, exactly in fact, Singer that was he was

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Speaker 1: passionate about this. He said that, you know, you could

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Speaker 1: create an online encyclopedia where everyone just contributes, but if

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Speaker 1: you wanted to be a reliable resource, you need that

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Speaker 1: peer review step in there. So and it turned it

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Speaker 1: turned out to be extremely slow to to get people

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Speaker 1: to submit anything at all, because it was it was

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Speaker 1: intimidating and be to to you know, find the correct

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Speaker 1: expert to to look it over. And also, yeah, the

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Speaker 1: review process was a Singer would describe later laborious um,

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Speaker 1: so two thousand is when NEWPDIA starts, and it starts

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Speaker 1: in the middle of two thousand or so. And uh,

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Speaker 1: they have an advisory board of a sort of a

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Speaker 1: peer review board made up of PhD volunteers. So these

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Speaker 1: are people who are not even being paid. They're volunteering

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Speaker 1: their expertise to review papers to make sure that they

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Speaker 1: are they're ready for publications. So this is like if

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Speaker 1: you were to submit a paper to an academic journal

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Speaker 1: or a scientific journal. You know, it's something that it's

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Speaker 1: not just automatically going to get published. It has to

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Speaker 1: be reviewed and pass review. There might be a lengthy

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Speaker 1: revision process before we'll ever be published. So there were

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Speaker 1: seven steps in this review process for Newpedia and they did.

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Speaker 1: They didn't think that that it would work. I read

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Speaker 1: somewhere that that Wales really thought that, you know, it

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Speaker 1: had been conversations with people on the internet and had

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Speaker 1: realized that if it's something that they feel passionate about,

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Speaker 1: that they're usually really willing to engage in that conversation

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Speaker 1: and to help. Yeah, so the idea was that you know,

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Speaker 1: you get people who are really smart. A lot of

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Speaker 1: really smart people enjoy spreading knowledge, not that we wouldn't

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Speaker 1: know anything about. Wanting to show off knowledge. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean I'm not really smart, but I still like to

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Speaker 1: do it. So, I mean that's why I played trivia

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Speaker 1: is really just to show off how smart I am.

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Speaker 1: But I know that compared to these people, I was

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Speaker 1: and still am stupid. But anyway, so, or at least

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Speaker 1: okay different anyway, thank you. Everyone's special and nobody is. Um.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, the seventh step process to publish to review

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Speaker 1: before you would publish an article. It turned out that

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Speaker 1: this was a bit of a bottleneck um And the

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Speaker 1: very first Newpedia article that was ever published was written

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Speaker 1: by Kristoff Hust and it was about a tonality and

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Speaker 1: it was published in the summer of two thousands, so

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Speaker 1: it was early two thousand when they started working on

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Speaker 1: new Pedia. At that time, the entire submission and review

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Speaker 1: process was all through mailing lists. It was. There wasn't

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Speaker 1: a web based version yet, and so the first article

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Speaker 1: publishes in the summer of two thousand. It was either

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Speaker 1: June or July. According to Sanger, who wrote about this

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Speaker 1: I found it on slash Dot. He wrote a two

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Speaker 1: part piece that was essentially about the whole beginning of Wikipedia,

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Speaker 1: which started with this new PDIA thing. Well, in January two,

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Speaker 1: Sanger and Wales meet up with a guy named Ben

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Speaker 1: Covitz at the infamous taco stand meeting. Taco stand meeting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they were in California and they were at a taco stand.

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Speaker 1: They started talking and COVID's told Wales and Sanger about

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Speaker 1: Cunningham's wiki Wiki web platform, and they thought about this

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Speaker 1: as being a tool that would allow for collaborative work

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Speaker 1: and make it much easier to get articles and and

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Speaker 1: Saner was still thinking about this pure review process right right,

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Speaker 1: But they were thinking that in order to get more submissions,

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Speaker 1: in order to make it a little bit less intim

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Speaker 1: dating for people to you know, to to submit an

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Speaker 1: article to this crazy peer review thing, yeah, to say like,

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Speaker 1: don't worry so much about the quality, just submit stuff.

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Speaker 1: Because it turned out that, uh, you know that one

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Speaker 1: of the things they were worried about was that they

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Speaker 1: needed to have content. And part of the philosophy was

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Speaker 1: that if we can fix content, if the content is

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Speaker 1: not perfect, we can still edit it once we get it.

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Speaker 1: But if we never get any content, there's no encyclopedia.

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Speaker 1: Right Because I think at the time they had they

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Speaker 1: had maybe twenty articles, I mean something, you know, a

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Speaker 1: very low number. Yeah, it wasn't it was. It was

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Speaker 1: twenty five articles by the winter of two thousand one.

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Speaker 1: So summer two thousand their first article publishes. More than

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Speaker 1: a year later, they have twenty articles on new Pedia,

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Speaker 1: which is more articles than I write in a year,

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Speaker 1: but I mean it was fewer than what I wrote

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Speaker 1: in a year. In a year, I would write around

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Speaker 1: a hundred articles. So it's it's it's kind of you know,

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Speaker 1: but that's that shows you there was this bottleneck process,

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Speaker 1: and and you find out that a volunteer might love

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Speaker 1: their field of expertise, but they're still a volunteer, so

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Speaker 1: there's still they're still limited by the fact that they

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Speaker 1: have to do other things, most of them, unless they're

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Speaker 1: independently wealthy, they have other responsibilities they have to attend to.

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Speaker 1: But while they were thinking about this, they decided to

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Speaker 1: launch a wiki for Newpedia, and they launched that wiki

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Speaker 1: on January two thousand one. So Newpedia is still a thing,

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Speaker 1: but they launch a wiki for it with the idea

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Speaker 1: of making it this faster way to contribute articles. And

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Speaker 1: I think it actually goes live on January. If any

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Speaker 1: of you know about Wikipedia Day and are going like

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Speaker 1: that wasn't on the tenth, well that's the here's why

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Speaker 1: the wiki goes live on the tenth. The advisory board says,

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Speaker 1: I don't want anything to do with that. Like, essentially,

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Speaker 1: what happened was the peer review board looked at the

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Speaker 1: wiki and said, look, we have these other backlog of

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Speaker 1: articles that we're still reviewing. We cannot deal with this nonsense.

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Speaker 1: So what upen was the Newpedia wiki split from Newpedia

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Speaker 1: and became its own thing, and on January fifteenth, that

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Speaker 1: became Wikipedia. So Wikipedia began as a branch of Newpedia

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Speaker 1: where it was all going to be peer reviewed, but

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Speaker 1: then became its own thing where the peer review kind

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Speaker 1: of went away. The idea was that the community would review,

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Speaker 1: and so it wouldn't be peer reviewed in the sense

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Speaker 1: of an official board of experts. It would be the

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Speaker 1: community of Wikipedia collectively would be able to review and

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Speaker 1: edit the content that was being uploaded, and and that

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Speaker 1: that kind of spread of the workload was really important,

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Speaker 1: because they had a hundred and fifty entries by the

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Speaker 1: end of February. Yeah, it was, and it went really

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Speaker 1: pretty crazy. The according to Singer. He said, by the

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Speaker 1: end of January two thousand one there were six hundred

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Speaker 1: articles on Wikipedia. But that Singer, and that was from memory,

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Speaker 1: So you gotta keep in mind, this is Anger writing

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Speaker 1: in two thousand five about what happened in two thousand one.

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Speaker 1: So Sander says that by the end of two thousand

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Speaker 1: one there were six d articles, and by March or

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Speaker 1: by the end of January two thoe there six d

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Speaker 1: articles by March, by April and by May. So not

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Speaker 1: only were more articles coming online, but it was the

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Speaker 1: growth rate was increasing over time, not exponentially, but pretty

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Speaker 1: pretty regularly. So it was very quickly becoming popular. And uh.

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Speaker 1: And April two thousand one, that's when Jimmy Wales decided

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Speaker 1: to to to post a thing where he to find

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Speaker 1: that the Wikipedia voice was to be one of neutral

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Speaker 1: point of view or m p o V and uh.

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Speaker 1: Sancer actually objected to this as well, not that he

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Speaker 1: objected to the idea of neutrality, Sard that was important.

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Speaker 1: He objected to the phrase point of view because he

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Speaker 1: said that it still means that the article has a

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Speaker 1: point of view, and it shouldn't Sander in some of

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Speaker 1: his points, I was reading in this if I saw

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Speaker 1: and slash doot, I was thinking, this is getting to

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Speaker 1: be a little bit about semantics, weird and pedantic a

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Speaker 1: little bit. I respect a lot of what he was saying,

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Speaker 1: but it's something and I think that that. You know,

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Speaker 1: pedantic has its place on the Internet, absolutely, but does

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Speaker 1: whenever I'm in a comment, it's my first weapon of choice. Um. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: So by the winter of two thousand one, that's when

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Speaker 1: only articles had published on Newpedia, and the approval process

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Speaker 1: moves so slowly that even when the tools to review

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Speaker 1: and approve articles moved from email to web based clients,

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Speaker 1: it just wasn't doing very well. And because it was

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Speaker 1: such a slow process, more and more of the people

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Speaker 1: involved in it began to neglect it and drop off

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Speaker 1: of it. And Wikipedia, but at that same time, was

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Speaker 1: getting more and more popular. So yeah, so Sanger's responsibilities

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Speaker 1: were starting to shift more towards Wikipedia than new Pedia,

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Speaker 1: simply because that's where all the action was. So by

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Speaker 1: two thousand one and into two thousand two, new Pedia

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Speaker 1: activity had slow dramatically and uh and also the the bubble.

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Speaker 1: By then, the dot com bubble had burst, which really

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Speaker 1: kind of wiped out a lot of the folks who

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Speaker 1: were contributing in some way, so that kind of also

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Speaker 1: made the funding kind of dry up for new Pedia. Wikipedia,

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Speaker 1: by the way, was existing at that time and still

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Speaker 1: is to this day on donations. Um. So the new

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Speaker 1: pet was trying really hard to redefine the rules that

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Speaker 1: were needed to review submissions so that they could streamline

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Speaker 1: the process. But by that time it was it was

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Speaker 1: too little, too late. Uh and and it gets really

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Speaker 1: sad in another year. But when I get there, I'll

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Speaker 1: mention it. So um. Even at this early stage of Wikipedia,

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Speaker 1: Sanger was really saying, let's pay attention to what experts

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Speaker 1: have to say. Let's give them special attention and respect,

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Speaker 1: and make sure that their voices are the ones we

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Speaker 1: pay the most attention to. Not that we won't accept

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Speaker 1: submissions from the general public, but that we should pay

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Speaker 1: more attention to things that are coming from people who

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Speaker 1: are recognized. Because again, this is this is Sanger saying

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Speaker 1: that in order to be a credible resource for people,

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Speaker 1: you have to have some form of review or or

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Speaker 1: you know, you have to have some way of of

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Speaker 1: saying the information here is from right right, the same

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Speaker 1: way that scientific journals won't just you know, accept accept

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Speaker 1: research that has not been checked over by a peer

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Speaker 1: of view system. At least it's ideally an ideally right

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Speaker 1: if you ever hear In fact, this is just a

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Speaker 1: little side note. Uh, this is important if you're reading

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Speaker 1: something on Wikipedia and you look at the references. It's

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Speaker 1: something that Lauren and I do a lot. Uh. It's

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Speaker 1: important also to pay attention to what the references are

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Speaker 1: because there are scientific quote unquote scientific papers out there

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Speaker 1: that are actually logs that aren't scientific papers. So then

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Speaker 1: you will quote unquote have a paper published in a

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Speaker 1: scientific journal, but it's not a peer reviewed scientific journal. Correct. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I see this with a lot of free energy papers,

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Speaker 1: where energy is one of those things where like well

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Speaker 1: it was published in sessions, like yeah, I check that out.

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Speaker 1: That's that guy's personal blog. He called it the Journal

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Speaker 1: of Nuclear Physics, but it's just live journal. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we we just did an episode about about nuclear power,

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Speaker 1: not fusion power, and yeah there was cold fusion and

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Speaker 1: cold fusion and there was a lot of that that

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Speaker 1: that's stuck in my head. Yes, exactly. If you do

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Speaker 1: research on cold fusion, you'll find quote unquote papers, but

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Speaker 1: they are posted on online resources. That turn out to

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Speaker 1: be not an actual scientific journal. That doesn't necessarily mean

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Speaker 1: that the research is unreliable. It just means that you

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Speaker 1: don't have that peer review to really be sure that

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Speaker 1: it's past muster. And also, before I was an editor here,

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Speaker 1: I was actually an editor for a medical research journal

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Speaker 1: about rheumatism, and so so I am intimately and acquainted

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Speaker 1: with the peer review process. Yeah. Uh, well, moving on

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Speaker 1: talking about the difference between Wikipedia and peer review, Saner

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Speaker 1: actually talked about how he had suggested a rule called

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Speaker 1: ignore all rules, and in his two thousand five recounting

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Speaker 1: of the beginning of Wikipedia, he said that the Wikipedia

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Speaker 1: community might be surprised to hear that he was the

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Speaker 1: one who who suggested that, because you know, again Sander

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Speaker 1: was the one who was all about peer review, and

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Speaker 1: here he is saying ignore all rules, and his his

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Speaker 1: philosophy was that again, they wanted to get as much

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Speaker 1: content on Wikipedia as possible, and if the rules intimidated

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Speaker 1: someone so that they did not feel like they were

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Speaker 1: qualified or capable of posting, he wanted to take that

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Speaker 1: barrier away. But he thought of that as a temporary measure,

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Speaker 1: something to to get Wikipedia going, to get the ball

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Speaker 1: rolling and then nodded something that would wind up being

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Speaker 1: one of the continuing five pillars, not a central central

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Speaker 1: tenant of the entire of the entire side. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: ignoral rules. He kind of later on said that I

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Speaker 1: I kind of regret saying that now because he felt

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Speaker 1: that that was one of the past Yeah, of of him.

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Speaker 1: There's a little bit of a falling out, you know,

431
00:24:20,840 --> 00:24:25,040
Speaker 1: there's Yeah, Saner Singer definitely, Uh, if you read his stuff,

432
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 1: you see and I mean there's there's there's a lot

433
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:30,680
Speaker 1: of rancor on both parts. Uh. Sander has a lot

434
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:34,080
Speaker 1: to say about the direction that Wikipedia took and uh,

435
00:24:34,080 --> 00:24:37,520
Speaker 1: and it's pretty clear that he feels that it's not ideal.

436
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: I mean, he doesn't outright come out and say that

437
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: this is uh, it's it's useless or anything like that,

438
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,520
Speaker 1: but he has a lot of criticisms. Meanwhile, the Wikipedia community,

439
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:49,119
Speaker 1: in turn, has a lot of criticisms that they direct

440
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 1: to Singer, and they both sides have relevant points. So

441
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:55,359
Speaker 1: even though I'm talking a lot about Singer, it's mainly

442
00:24:55,400 --> 00:24:59,560
Speaker 1: because that's that's the account I went with UH for

443
00:25:00,119 --> 00:25:02,359
Speaker 1: history years. Yeah, it's not that it's not that I

444
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 1: necessarily sided with sayer. I'm not that far to that extreme. Uh. Anyway,

445
00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 1: a lot of the the policies of Wikipedia actually came

446
00:25:14,119 --> 00:25:17,400
Speaker 1: out of the community. It became sort of communal decisions

447
00:25:17,440 --> 00:25:19,600
Speaker 1: of how the site should work, which was kind of

448
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:22,160
Speaker 1: interesting because they had originally thought of it being sort

449
00:25:22,160 --> 00:25:24,479
Speaker 1: of again an extension of new Pedia, but this became

450
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:28,240
Speaker 1: more of the open, communal approach to the Internet, which

451
00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 1: again is more of the Tim Burners Lee approach, which

452
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:33,280
Speaker 1: makes it a lot harder to direct. You know, you

453
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:36,000
Speaker 1: can't you know, when you've got a group of fifty

454
00:25:36,119 --> 00:25:39,000
Speaker 1: people who have all decided they want to go left,

455
00:25:39,080 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: it's really hard to make them go right, you know,

456
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:43,359
Speaker 1: when you're one guy. Yeah, yeah, and you know, and

457
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,240
Speaker 1: there's there's voting systems in place, there's you know, even

458
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: back in those days, there were a lot of a

459
00:25:48,760 --> 00:25:51,240
Speaker 1: lot of ways for people to communicate with each other.

460
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:55,280
Speaker 1: These ideas that they had for the community. They had

461
00:25:55,359 --> 00:25:59,240
Speaker 1: decided that that Wikipedia content would always remain free for

462
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 1: others to read and edit, meaning that there would never

463
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:05,160
Speaker 1: be a point where there'd be a paywall or subscription

464
00:26:05,200 --> 00:26:09,520
Speaker 1: for Wikipedia. And uh, they also, you know, we're putting

465
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: in those policies that allow people to publish rough drafts

466
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,600
Speaker 1: or rough ideas that could be polished over time, either

467
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:19,679
Speaker 1: by themselves or by other people. And then Google started

468
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:23,880
Speaker 1: to include Wikipedia and its search results for different topics,

469
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: which meant that there was suddenly a huge rush of people. Yeah,

470
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:32,120
Speaker 1: and and Sanger noticed like, as more people were coming

471
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:35,920
Speaker 1: to visit Wikipedia more than we're getting involved as editors

472
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 1: and contributors. So that meant that even that as the

473
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:43,399
Speaker 1: Wikipedia traffic was increasing, so was the content. You were

474
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:47,120
Speaker 1: suddenly seeing even faster growth as far as how much

475
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:52,159
Speaker 1: information was being contained within Wikipedia. Um and the summer

476
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: of uh, well, one of the before I get to

477
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:58,080
Speaker 1: the summer two thousand one one thing Singer did note

478
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:00,800
Speaker 1: was that even in those early days that he was

479
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:05,360
Speaker 1: starting to notice that people who were difficult and who

480
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:10,639
Speaker 1: were persistent, uh, we're sometimes irritating very valuable members of

481
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia community. And the valuable members were like, I

482
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:18,159
Speaker 1: don't need this, never mind, I'm a volunteer see and

483
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 1: they just left and then U. So that meant that

484
00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:24,399
Speaker 1: you started to have more of the persistent difficult type

485
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:29,000
Speaker 1: and fewer of the valuable expert types. And Singer saw

486
00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:32,160
Speaker 1: that as another kind of downfall of Wikipedia, and there

487
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 1: there was there wasn't really any way to counteract that

488
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:40,639
Speaker 1: without essentially violating kind of those philosophies that Wikipedia was

489
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:43,240
Speaker 1: founded upon, right and you know, you know, one of

490
00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 1: those philosophies is definitely that the editors and contributors should

491
00:27:47,480 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: be polite to each other, which happens sometimes, but yeah, exactly,

492
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,440
Speaker 1: you know it's human error. Ye, I mean the vast

493
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:57,879
Speaker 1: majority and I think I think the vast majority of

494
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:03,120
Speaker 1: people who are regular contributor to Wikipedia are in general

495
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: very courteous. But all it takes are a few trolls

496
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 1: to really stir things up and U and trolls who

497
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 1: are particularly effective can cause huge amounts of frustration in

498
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:19,160
Speaker 1: a community. Um and in fact, that's that's why they

499
00:28:19,160 --> 00:28:21,879
Speaker 1: do it. You know, it's right, with a little effort,

500
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:25,679
Speaker 1: they make a big impact. And uh boy, we did

501
00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:27,320
Speaker 1: a whole episode on how trolls work. It was a

502
00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:28,720
Speaker 1: great one. You guys should go back and listen to

503
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: that one. But in summer of two thousand one, someone

504
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:35,200
Speaker 1: ended up using the editing tools to vandalize the front

505
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: page of Wikipedia because that was one of the ones

506
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: you could edit back in those days and uh, and

507
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: so they vandalized it, and then someone tried to archive

508
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: the vandalized page. So Sander when end deleted the archive.

509
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 1: So then they kind of reposted the archives somewhere else

510
00:28:49,520 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: and Saner when and deleted that, and this became a

511
00:28:52,680 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 1: big kerfuffle between Sander and the community. The community, not

512
00:28:56,960 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: the entire community, but there were sections of the community

513
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 1: that said, you are overstepping your balance, right, this is

514
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: not yours to do this with your using power powers.

515
00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 1: And yeah, the fact that you have the ability to

516
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: do that doesn't mean that you are that you should

517
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 1: do that, Like, you are capable of doing that, but

518
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:17,040
Speaker 1: you should not do it and uh, and Singer was like,

519
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: this is kind of silly. The whole point of this

520
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 1: is that we don't want the vandalized version of Wikipedia

521
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 1: to be a representation of Wikipedia. We don't want that

522
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:27,880
Speaker 1: to come up in search because it hurts the community.

523
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:30,320
Speaker 1: I don't see where the problem is. And others were saying,

524
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, that's beside the point. It doesn't matter

525
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:34,560
Speaker 1: what the content is is the matter. The matter is

526
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:37,520
Speaker 1: that you've deleted it. You've overstep If you start deleting,

527
00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:40,640
Speaker 1: then where does it end right, you've bypassed the whole process,

528
00:29:40,680 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: and by bypassing it, you've rendered the process meaningless. And

529
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 1: it went from kerfuffle to shenanigans well in UH in

530
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:53,000
Speaker 1: two thousand two, February two thousand two, Singer is laid

531
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: off of Wikipedia. At that point, the dot com bubble

532
00:29:56,600 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 1: bursting had really started to take its effect. New PD

533
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:04,040
Speaker 1: essentially was petering out at that point and UH and

534
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:08,560
Speaker 1: at first Singer was had his had his salary reduced

535
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:10,960
Speaker 1: a couple of times I think, and then he was

536
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 1: laid off. He continued to work in a volunteer capacity

537
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 1: for a little while. Also in February two thousand two,

538
00:30:16,000 --> 00:30:20,360
Speaker 1: the Spanish language version of Wikipedia forked off of the

539
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 1: main version and became Encyclopedia Libre. And the reason for

540
00:30:25,240 --> 00:30:29,600
Speaker 1: the split was that the the people working on the

541
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: Spanish side were worried that there was going to be

542
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: problems with censorship, I think, things like Saner deleting stuff.

543
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: And also there was worry that Wikipedia would soon start

544
00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 1: to institute advertising on its site to monetize Wikipedia, and

545
00:30:46,680 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: that there was a worry there that by monetizing Wikipedia,

546
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: you would compromise the site's integrity, which is something that

547
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 1: Saner was saying didn't exist because of the lack of

548
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 1: peer review. So it's kind of this interesting like you're

549
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 1: you're going to ruin the integrity of the site and

550
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: saying there's like what integrity. Uh. So that was an

551
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 1: interesting discussion, and in August of two thousand two, Jimmy

552
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 1: Wales said that Wikipedia would never run ads on its site,

553
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: and in fact, that's also when Wikipedia dot com became

554
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 1: Wikipedia dot org as sort of an an example of

555
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: this is this is who we are. We are not

556
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:27,280
Speaker 1: We're not a not a company, We're an organization. Uh.

557
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 1: In December of that year, in two thousand two, they

558
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:33,120
Speaker 1: launched wictionary, which is kind of funny because there was

559
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: a whole page on Wikipedia about how Wikipedia is not

560
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 1: a dictionary, so they did dictionary. Now, Lauren, let me

561
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 1: ask you this, do you think now I can understand

562
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:50,200
Speaker 1: the value of an open source, crowdsourced encyclopedia because there

563
00:31:50,240 --> 00:31:53,720
Speaker 1: are huge disciplines of knowledge out there. There are people

564
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:55,320
Speaker 1: who are experts in it, there are people who have

565
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: experience with it, their researchers who really know what they're

566
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,200
Speaker 1: doing when they're looking into that sort of stuff. And

567
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:05,720
Speaker 1: the more minds you bring into an encyclopedia, the better

568
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:08,720
Speaker 1: chance you have of getting a fuller picture of whatever

569
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: it is. Right, do you see the same thing being

570
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:15,960
Speaker 1: valuable in the dictionary? Well, okay, The thing about dictionaries

571
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 1: I think now that you ask me, is that, um,

572
00:32:18,360 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 1: you know, there are these really terrific, very thorough sources

573
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: like the Oxford English. It's probably the pinnacle of English dictionaries.

574
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:28,120
Speaker 1: If if I'm allowed to make that kind of qualitative

575
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:31,560
Speaker 1: statement right now, American heritage myself. But you know, well

576
00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:34,720
Speaker 1: I said that about you, John, I support my I

577
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: support my country. Why do you hate America? Lauren? What

578
00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:40,200
Speaker 1: do you hate America? Well? Because, okay, so so you

579
00:32:40,280 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 1: know they're they're there are these large resource dictionaries that

580
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: have a terrific wealth of historical information behind them. Um, however,

581
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:50,320
Speaker 1: they are a little bit slow on the uptake of

582
00:32:50,360 --> 00:32:52,680
Speaker 1: new words. I say, so, you would see the value

583
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:56,239
Speaker 1: of dictionary being something that could incorporate words that are

584
00:32:56,360 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: entering the lexicon that would maybe take five to ten

585
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 1: years to start at at the at the fastest speed possible,

586
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 1: five to ten years to be incorporated into a dictionary

587
00:33:07,480 --> 00:33:10,040
Speaker 1: classic dictionary. Right, And also you know to to do

588
00:33:10,080 --> 00:33:11,719
Speaker 1: it in a way that is that is, you know,

589
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: a not branded because because as as much as I

590
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 1: as much as I do love very specific dictionaries, there

591
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 1: their brands, their companies, they're they're out there to make

592
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 1: a profit, um at the end of the day. And

593
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 1: so so having an open source one is a really

594
00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 1: terrific idea, and having one that's perhaps better policed than

595
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 1: for example, urban dictionary, I think, I think it's a

596
00:33:31,640 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 1: good a good thing to do. Okay, although to be fair,

597
00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: it's still community police. Well it is, but I would

598
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:45,640
Speaker 1: say that the quality of policing on dictionary versus urban

599
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: dictionary is um, that's fair. That's fair. I can I

600
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:52,160
Speaker 1: can agree to that because I don't know of any

601
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:54,280
Speaker 1: policing that happens on urbans. I don't think that that's

602
00:33:54,280 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 1: a thing. So June two thousand three, Whales announces the

603
00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:02,040
Speaker 1: Wikimedia Foundation, which is a nonpro fit that administrates Wikipedia.

604
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:06,479
Speaker 1: And in September two thousand three, Nupedia's servers crash and

605
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:09,560
Speaker 1: it never comes back. Yeah, it just shuts down. You know,

606
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: the computer failed. So we're just gonna believe it. I

607
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 1: don't think it ever really got more than those articles.

608
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: That was I think that was about it kind of

609
00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:22,600
Speaker 1: the peak. Yeah wow, yeah, so nupedia was a failed experiment. Wikipedia,

610
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:24,399
Speaker 1: the what was originally going to just be a little

611
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: offshoot of nupedia, was already a rousing success. Yeah. Yeah.

612
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:30,680
Speaker 1: There were many other non English sites that were that

613
00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:32,759
Speaker 1: were launching around that time. I think that not all

614
00:34:32,800 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 1: of them had officially split off yet, but there were

615
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 1: There were at least seventeen different languages being worked on

616
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:42,600
Speaker 1: within Wikipedia. Hey guys, um, we're gonna come right back

617
00:34:42,640 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 1: to this classic episode of tech stuff about Wikipedia. But

618
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: first I gotta follow this link because I'm learning all

619
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: about gophers. I'll be right back all right, now back

620
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:02,480
Speaker 1: to Wikipedia. Okay, so we just talked about two thousand three.

621
00:35:02,480 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 1: Do you have anything between two thousand three and two

622
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:06,879
Speaker 1: thousand five, because otherwise I'm just going to skip around ahead. Um.

623
00:35:06,920 --> 00:35:09,840
Speaker 1: I believe that in two thousand four Wikia was founded,

624
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:13,280
Speaker 1: which is which is the for profit kind of branch

625
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: of Wikipedia that that maintains a whole bunch of of

626
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 1: entertainment mostly related wikis. Um. I think I think that

627
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: the the Wikipedia is among them stuff like that. Okay,

628
00:35:24,640 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 1: and you know those are the wikis that I've recently

629
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,240
Speaker 1: become more and more familiar with, because you know, pretty

630
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 1: much any kind of entertainment thing out there has its

631
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:35,799
Speaker 1: own wiki, to the point where I'm like, I can't

632
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 1: believe this has a wiki. I can't believe tech stuff

633
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 1: doesn't anyway, But but yeah, so yeah, so in these

634
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:46,919
Speaker 1: these are ads supported. Um, however, they're still community run

635
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: and uh you know, yeah right right, so so similar.

636
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 1: But again this is following mora along the wiki lines

637
00:35:53,960 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: of philosophy rather than the Wikipedia one. Because again, one

638
00:35:57,600 --> 00:36:00,360
Speaker 1: of the things Sanger also said in his in his

639
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 1: talks or in his writings was that, um, you know,

640
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 1: he saw that the wicked philosophy was kind of counter

641
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:11,680
Speaker 1: to that of an encyclopedia, like the two did not

642
00:36:12,520 --> 00:36:14,640
Speaker 1: did not move, you know, I didn't mention a very

643
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:18,520
Speaker 1: very seamless way, and that that that was a concern

644
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:21,680
Speaker 1: to him, but that he felt that because Wikipedia was

645
00:36:21,719 --> 00:36:26,880
Speaker 1: specifically supposed to be an encyclopedia, it helped guide the policies, uh,

646
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 1: for better or for worse. So it's the community on

647
00:36:31,080 --> 00:36:33,919
Speaker 1: Wikipedia is not exactly the same as what you would

648
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:38,239
Speaker 1: find on your average wiki because the process is slightly

649
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:41,440
Speaker 1: different because it has a very specific purpose to be

650
00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: an encyclopedia. Well. Uh. In two thousand five, Wired published

651
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,640
Speaker 1: a report that said that that Jimmy Wales had done

652
00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: something that's generally frowned upon within the Wikipedia community, and

653
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:57,080
Speaker 1: that is to edit your own page eighteen times apparently,

654
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:01,520
Speaker 1: and supposedly the edits that were made um or removing

655
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:07,800
Speaker 1: things like, uh, like Sanger's involvement in the early genesis

656
00:37:07,800 --> 00:37:11,200
Speaker 1: of Wikipedia. Yeah, essentially, there was there was a charge

657
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:14,319
Speaker 1: that Wales had removed the sentence that had referred to

658
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,399
Speaker 1: Sander as a co founder of Wikipedia. Um. And then

659
00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,480
Speaker 1: there were other things as well. That's that Wales said

660
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:25,200
Speaker 1: was it was just an attempt to remove some inaccuracies.

661
00:37:25,200 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 1: It wasn't. He wasn't trying to watching anything or cleaning

662
00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: it out according to why he was saying. Anyway, it

663
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 1: still defends this, by the way, right in general, that

664
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:37,319
Speaker 1: that's considered bad form on Wikipedia. It's not. It's not

665
00:37:38,080 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: explicitly against the rules. If you're not you're generally, I

666
00:37:42,200 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: mean you're you're generally if if you find it an

667
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 1: accuracy about something that concerns you due to and they

668
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: have an acrony important and all um. Uh, it is

669
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: the conflict of interest a bit of it that that, Yeah,

670
00:37:55,160 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: that you're supposed to submit it to an editor who

671
00:37:57,120 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 1: can then make a non conflict of interest meant call

672
00:38:00,520 --> 00:38:02,120
Speaker 1: about whether or not that it needs to be made.

673
00:38:02,200 --> 00:38:05,480
Speaker 1: That's interesting that particular sequence is going to play an

674
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:09,480
Speaker 1: important part towards the end of this timeline conversation, definitely,

675
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:12,120
Speaker 1: because it turns out some people have taken advantage of

676
00:38:12,200 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: that particular approach to the point where they have been

677
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 1: able to insertain misleading information or at least leaving out

678
00:38:20,120 --> 00:38:25,799
Speaker 1: important truths in the process of quote unquote correcting or

679
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:28,680
Speaker 1: adding to an article. But we'll get to that in

680
00:38:28,680 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: a moment. Yeah. So Wales ends up and getting some

681
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:36,120
Speaker 1: heat for this. Uh, even though to this day he

682
00:38:36,160 --> 00:38:38,399
Speaker 1: says that it wasn't it was not a big deal.

683
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:40,520
Speaker 1: It's not that he doesn't even say he didn't do

684
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:43,359
Speaker 1: anything wrong. He's like, I don't understand what the big

685
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 1: deal is here? Was fixing errors. He's He's like, yeah,

686
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:48,239
Speaker 1: I did it. There was nothing wrong with what I did,

687
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: so calm down. But then you know, other people would say, well,

688
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:53,600
Speaker 1: if you had just gone through the regular channels, then

689
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:56,799
Speaker 1: it would have been Another story, UH, May of two

690
00:38:56,800 --> 00:39:01,200
Speaker 1: thousand five was when we had uh an anonymous user

691
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: who was later identified but I'm not going to say

692
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:06,120
Speaker 1: the name here, but he posted comments in an article

693
00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: about Segon Dollar, John Seingon Dollar, saying that he was

694
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:15,160
Speaker 1: a suspect in the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy.

695
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: Segon Dollar as a journalist and was a friend to

696
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:23,360
Speaker 1: Robert Kennedy actually one of his palmers. So Segon Dollar

697
00:39:24,120 --> 00:39:30,080
Speaker 1: said that this amounted to Internet character assassination. The comments

698
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:33,479
Speaker 1: were a hoax. It was supposed to be a joke,

699
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 1: although I don't know who would find this particularly Yeah,

700
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:39,400
Speaker 1: but the hoax it was made in May, but it

701
00:39:39,440 --> 00:39:43,359
Speaker 1: wasn't discovered until September of two thousand five, and then

702
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:46,800
Speaker 1: the mainstream media caught hold of the story and began

703
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:51,000
Speaker 1: to cover it. And this ended up being a big

704
00:39:51,040 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 1: black eye on Wikipedia because everyone ran with the story saying,

705
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:57,520
Speaker 1: how can you trust a resource that anyone can go

706
00:39:57,600 --> 00:40:01,279
Speaker 1: into and change in, vandalist or create a hoax like

707
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:06,200
Speaker 1: this joke? Yeah, insert completely false information or delete something

708
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:10,360
Speaker 1: so that whatever is left is not an accurate portrayal

709
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 1: of the actual subject. Crow the entire side is useless. Yeah,

710
00:40:15,320 --> 00:40:18,040
Speaker 1: you know what's fitialist media is kind of right, right.

711
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: It definitely escalated to from hey, sometimes you can't trust

712
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:25,439
Speaker 1: what's on Wikipedia to Wikipedia is bad because people are

713
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: evil and they will mislead you. Uh. And by the way,

714
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:34,400
Speaker 1: I don't really think either extreme is healthy. While I

715
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: often will dismiss Wikipedia in any sort of academic approach,

716
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:43,799
Speaker 1: I am not one to say that fits all. There's

717
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,640
Speaker 1: some things about Wikipedia that I find genuinely amusing, and

718
00:40:46,680 --> 00:40:50,319
Speaker 1: there's some things I find genuinely helpful. But but yeah,

719
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 1: I would never go so far on either side. Get

720
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:58,200
Speaker 1: to know. So April two thousand six, we have another

721
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:04,200
Speaker 1: scandal guy from Glasgow whose name I will not be

722
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:08,759
Speaker 1: able to say, Alan mickel Wraith, mickil Wraith. It's gonna

723
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:10,920
Speaker 1: be mckil writh in front of me. That sounds. That

724
00:41:10,920 --> 00:41:13,800
Speaker 1: sounds it's got to be Mickilraith m c I l

725
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 1: w R A I t H mckilraith. So he created

726
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia entry about himself that betrayed him as a

727
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 1: decorated army officer, something that he was not. And again

728
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: the mainstream media picked up on this and said, like,

729
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: here's a guy who was promoting himself, uh, created a

730
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 1: false identity for himself and uh, and this shows that

731
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:43,239
Speaker 1: you can't trust what's on Wikipedia. Yeah. Meanwhile, all this

732
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:48,160
Speaker 1: bad press was not particularly affecting the growth of Wikipedia.

733
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:50,359
Speaker 1: By by mid two thousand six, I think that they

734
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:54,239
Speaker 1: had five million articles. Yeah, this is they went from

735
00:41:54,760 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: uh they had one million in English, but probably five

736
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 1: million I think total total. Yeah. So right, right, there's

737
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:02,840
Speaker 1: a little bit of debate about well, yeah, because I

738
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 1: got confused. I saw at one point, like in two

739
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 1: thousand four, they hit one million articles, and then I

740
00:42:06,640 --> 00:42:08,200
Speaker 1: read later like a two thousand and six they hit

741
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:11,280
Speaker 1: one million articles again, and then I realized, oh wait,

742
00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 1: the first one two thousand four was one million articles

743
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: total across all languages. Two thousand six was one million

744
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:21,160
Speaker 1: in English. But it was that the growth was incredible. Uh.

745
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 1: And in two thousand seven we have another scandal. This

746
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,640
Speaker 1: is when it was discovered that a Wikipedia editor who

747
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 1: was using a handle called s J E. S. S

748
00:42:32,160 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: J A Y was discovered to have also created a

749
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 1: false identity. In this case, s J had been uh

750
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:46,799
Speaker 1: posing as someone who held a PhD uh in uh

751
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: in theology. I assume because he was saying that he

752
00:42:49,719 --> 00:42:53,520
Speaker 1: was a tenured professor with an expertise in Kennon law,

753
00:42:54,200 --> 00:42:56,200
Speaker 1: and in reality he was a twenty four year old

754
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: guy who had been to several colleges in Kentucky. Did

755
00:42:59,640 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: not all the less of an expert, perhaps, but objectively speaking,

756
00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: he was saying that he had created this identity in

757
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:08,839
Speaker 1: order to give himself a buffer so that people who

758
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:12,440
Speaker 1: disagreed with him would not be able to attack him personally. So,

759
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: in other words, he was just creating a handle. It's

760
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 1: just a little bit more more involved than just a handle.

761
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:21,560
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. He was also using his fake

762
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:26,839
Speaker 1: credentials to back up his arguments whenever he was making edits. Yeah,

763
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:29,920
Speaker 1: that's that's that, that's going beyond. He's saying, like, because

764
00:43:29,920 --> 00:43:32,480
Speaker 1: of my expertise in this field, I know that this

765
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:35,560
Speaker 1: particular thing should be worded this way rather than that way.

766
00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:39,080
Speaker 1: And he didn't hold those credentials. So the New Yorker

767
00:43:39,120 --> 00:43:42,800
Speaker 1: writes about Wikipedia, and they write about s J before

768
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:47,280
Speaker 1: finding out that s J is not who he claims

769
00:43:47,280 --> 00:43:51,120
Speaker 1: to be. Then the information breaks that s J is

770
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:55,160
Speaker 1: actually someone else, and the New Yorker ends up writing

771
00:43:55,160 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: a pretty strongly worded response to that, and again mainstream

772
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:04,120
Speaker 1: media blows up, and online it blows up. The community

773
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 1: begins to sift through all the edits that s J

774
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:10,440
Speaker 1: made on Wikipedia, particularly in the places where he was

775
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:15,080
Speaker 1: using his false credentials to bolster his arguments, because now

776
00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:18,479
Speaker 1: the community has the responsibility to fix this or if

777
00:44:18,520 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 1: if in fact needs to be fixed, they have to

778
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: address it so that they can again show that Wikipedia

779
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:26,319
Speaker 1: is something you can rely upon at least, or that

780
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:29,400
Speaker 1: it's at least useful and not just shouldn't just be

781
00:44:29,480 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 1: raised to the ground. Yeah, it's not just a database

782
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:36,239
Speaker 1: of information you cannot really be sure is accurate or not. Uh,

783
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 1: it was, you know, it was fighting a powerful perception problem,

784
00:44:41,160 --> 00:44:45,120
Speaker 1: right right right? That was also, did did you? That

785
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:46,840
Speaker 1: was also the year two thousand and seven that Virgil

786
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 1: griff Griffith released wicket Scanner. I don't know about this one, okay,

787
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:54,320
Speaker 1: so so so wicket Scanner was this, you know, terrific

788
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 1: little program that he wrote that whenever an unregistered anonymous

789
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:01,920
Speaker 1: user edits a Wikipedia entry, the site logs the user's

790
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:06,320
Speaker 1: IP address and and this can come in terrifically handy

791
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:08,759
Speaker 1: because you know, it's not not all the problems are

792
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,480
Speaker 1: with people pretending to be who they aren't when an

793
00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 1: anonymous user can log in and talk about anything that

794
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 1: they want to, you know, for the kind of things

795
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 1: that we're coming out of this wicker scanner business were

796
00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:23,480
Speaker 1: the facts like people from Apple I p addresses had

797
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:28,560
Speaker 1: been editing Microsoft pages on Wikipedia and vice versa, which

798
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 1: is another reason why we find Wikipedia. It's it's one

799
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,400
Speaker 1: of those reasons why it's hard to trust stuff because

800
00:45:35,080 --> 00:45:38,239
Speaker 1: sometimes people with an agenda will go in and adjust

801
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: a uh AN entry either to make one party and

802
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: it look better than it than it would otherwise have

803
00:45:46,239 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: looked or look worse, depending upon the person's agenda. Sure, yeah,

804
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:54,040
Speaker 1: yeah member, you know. And and Democratic Party member's IP

805
00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:57,239
Speaker 1: address was traced to edits about Rush Limbaugh that we're

806
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:02,200
Speaker 1: extremely unflattering. Yeah, this is this is happened any election year.

807
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:05,840
Speaker 1: This stuff runs rampant to the point where sometimes Wikipedia

808
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:10,239
Speaker 1: will lock down a particular page about a subject in

809
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:14,120
Speaker 1: order to avoid the crazy number of edits that different

810
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 1: sides of a debate will will put onto a page

811
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:19,680
Speaker 1: in order to support their side. I mean, think about it.

812
00:46:19,719 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: This is kind of crazy, right. It's like if I

813
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:25,560
Speaker 1: if I have a disagreement with Lauren about a particular subject,

814
00:46:26,000 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 1: and then I go to Wikipedia and edit a page

815
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:30,759
Speaker 1: so it supports my argument, and then I cite Wikipedia

816
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:34,960
Speaker 1: as a support for my argument. That's it's pretty insidious.

817
00:46:35,000 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: That's dirty pool, That's what that is. And I don't

818
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 1: want to say that all anonymous Wikipedia editors are are

819
00:46:40,640 --> 00:46:43,920
Speaker 1: bad or doing nefarious things at all. For example, a

820
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:45,320
Speaker 1: couple of the other things came out of this is

821
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:47,800
Speaker 1: that they found out that am someone from the CIA

822
00:46:48,280 --> 00:46:52,560
Speaker 1: contributed a really long entry about lightsaber combat um some

823
00:46:52,719 --> 00:46:56,360
Speaker 1: someone from DARPA had written fairly extensively about Schila booth.

824
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:58,239
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's it's just stuff. You know,

825
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:01,080
Speaker 1: it's not always bad, right, Yeah, But and we don't

826
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:03,520
Speaker 1: mean to suggest that it's always bad or that this

827
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:06,440
Speaker 1: happens all the time. It's the fact that it happens

828
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,440
Speaker 1: that's the problem. And you don't, you know, unless you

829
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:13,279
Speaker 1: are actually adept at looking at the edits page and

830
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:16,640
Speaker 1: understanding what that means, you may not be aware of

831
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:20,959
Speaker 1: something that's going on that's not quite right. And so, uh,

832
00:47:21,040 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 1: while while the odds of that actually happening on any

833
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:27,759
Speaker 1: given page on any given day maybe low because you're

834
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:30,440
Speaker 1: talking about lots and lots of people using this resource

835
00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 1: and lots of opportunities to fiddle with it, it does happen.

836
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:36,319
Speaker 1: That's that's why you're like, you know, the odds are

837
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: with you that you're going to be fine whenever you

838
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 1: use Wikipedia. There are like eight thousand regular contributors and

839
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: seventy seven thousand regular editors on Wikipedia as so, and

840
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: after that whole uh, the whole problem with Segenthaler where

841
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 1: the the quote unquote the joke about him being a

842
00:47:55,280 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 1: suspect in the assassination of the Kennedy's uh, Wales had

843
00:47:59,160 --> 00:48:01,920
Speaker 1: instituted a new policy saying that unregistered users can no

844
00:48:01,960 --> 00:48:06,520
Speaker 1: longer post new articles at all, because that was he

845
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:08,759
Speaker 1: wanted to head off that problem, and then by registering

846
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:12,799
Speaker 1: he hoped that that would create more accountability. Now, of course,

847
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:15,880
Speaker 1: the s j issue showed that there were other problems,

848
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:18,439
Speaker 1: and Wales came down pretty hard on that to Once

849
00:48:18,480 --> 00:48:21,319
Speaker 1: all the facts came out in two thousand nine, the

850
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: Arbitration Committee had to restrict access to its site from

851
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:30,400
Speaker 1: the Church of Scientology IP addresses and also banned several

852
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:35,879
Speaker 1: anti Scientologist editors because the two sides were both manipulating

853
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:39,280
Speaker 1: the same articles to either post scientology and a positive

854
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 1: or a negative light. Obviously when that was around when

855
00:48:43,760 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 1: uh Anonymous I believe was really involved in in their

856
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: crash campaign, so that the thing that was coming up

857
00:48:50,080 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 1: into question was the neutral point of view here and

858
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:55,960
Speaker 1: both sides were trying to use Wikipedia to bolster their

859
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:59,719
Speaker 1: own arguments. Uh, and whether you side with one or

860
00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:01,520
Speaker 1: the other or it was clear that both sides had

861
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 1: agendas and uh, you know, some of those people may

862
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:08,240
Speaker 1: have been trying very hard to create an objective post,

863
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:10,320
Speaker 1: but there were a lot of people who really weren't.

864
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:14,520
Speaker 1: And that's where the banning and the and IP address

865
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 1: blocking came in. And that same year, Wikipedia became licensed

866
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 1: under Creative Commons right yeah, yeah, UM, which which basically

867
00:49:22,920 --> 00:49:26,080
Speaker 1: just means that it's it's licensed under their um share

868
00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:29,319
Speaker 1: and share like yeah. So in other words, you don't

869
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:34,800
Speaker 1: have to worry about uh getting chased down by lawyers

870
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:37,960
Speaker 1: when you're reusing this material and another and you cannot,

871
00:49:38,000 --> 00:49:41,520
Speaker 1: like a person who contributes to Wikipedia cannot claim that

872
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 1: work to be their own at all. They have they

873
00:49:43,680 --> 00:49:46,560
Speaker 1: have essentially signed off right right, you know, it's the

874
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:50,440
Speaker 1: content UM is still technically owned by the contributors, but

875
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 1: it is freely reproducible and distributable. Yeah, and when anyone

876
00:49:53,960 --> 00:49:55,520
Speaker 1: can go in and edit it. Actually, that was one

877
00:49:55,560 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 1: of those things that people worried about early on in

878
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:00,400
Speaker 1: Wikipedia's have Wait a minute, I'm an awesome writer. I

879
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:04,000
Speaker 1: write awesome things. My awes credit for my awesome thing

880
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:06,360
Speaker 1: or or I even if I don't get credit, I

881
00:50:06,480 --> 00:50:09,799
Speaker 1: certainly shouldn't be subjected to seeing other plebeians coming in

882
00:50:09,840 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 1: and editing my awesome prose where I wrote this amazing

883
00:50:15,239 --> 00:50:18,280
Speaker 1: piece on Optimist Prime and his importance to Western culture.

884
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:21,319
Speaker 1: And some idiot came in and said that he turned

885
00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 1: into this model of of of a Semitruck when clearly

886
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:28,279
Speaker 1: it was this other model of Yeah, that's that was

887
00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:31,399
Speaker 1: like an actual argument that happened on Wikipedia, early, early, early,

888
00:50:31,520 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 1: early on. But people have to let go because that's

889
00:50:35,080 --> 00:50:37,959
Speaker 1: kind of the way Wikipedia works. And as a writer,

890
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:40,160
Speaker 1: I can completely understand what the people who get really

891
00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:43,319
Speaker 1: antsy about that. Although I would often turn my writing

892
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:46,600
Speaker 1: assignments into Chris and then never see them again until

893
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:48,160
Speaker 1: they were published on the page, and I was all

894
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:51,319
Speaker 1: right with it. Uh, you learned to let go here

895
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: and how stuff. I learned to leg go, and I

896
00:50:53,040 --> 00:50:54,640
Speaker 1: learned that this way, I don't have to look at

897
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 1: those red marks all over my paper, because Chris just

898
00:50:57,040 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 1: fixed it himself. It was awesome. It made me feel

899
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:01,160
Speaker 1: like I was a better writer than I actually was.

900
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 1: All Right, we've got a little bit more to talk

901
00:51:03,560 --> 00:51:07,320
Speaker 1: about with Wikipedia, but before we dive into the next link,

902
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:18,160
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break in two thousand and twelve.

903
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: Do you have anything between Actually, we're going to wrap

904
00:51:22,080 --> 00:51:24,120
Speaker 1: up the timeline pretty soon. The two thousand and twelve

905
00:51:24,160 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 1: The big story I have was, of course, that Wikipedia

906
00:51:26,840 --> 00:51:33,960
Speaker 1: took place in the blackout day on Janua and Pipa. Yeah, Pippa. Sorry,

907
00:51:34,080 --> 00:51:37,160
Speaker 1: it's fine, you haven't. You haven't been through the whole

908
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 1: ordeal of talking about Sopa and Pippa. I called it

909
00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:44,160
Speaker 1: Pipa for about three weeks until everyone else in technology

910
00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 1: just consistently called it Pippa and a. Final I've been

911
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:50,439
Speaker 1: wrong this whole time, But yeah, Sopa and Pippa. Those were,

912
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 1: of course, the online Piracy Acts that were in consideration

913
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 1: in Congress in the United States, and several sites ended

914
00:51:57,920 --> 00:52:02,160
Speaker 1: up doing blackouts to protest this proposed legislation. UH to

915
00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:05,520
Speaker 1: bring more attention to it and say these the way

916
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:08,360
Speaker 1: these these laws or these these potential laws are worded,

917
00:52:08,640 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 1: they could seriously harm the operation of the Internet and

918
00:52:12,200 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 1: and cause trouble to lots of people and lots of organizations,

919
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:19,400
Speaker 1: and they should not be turned into law. Uh. And

920
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:22,359
Speaker 1: then in two thousand thirteen, oh but but before before

921
00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:25,680
Speaker 1: we leave too important cultural note, that is the year

922
00:52:25,719 --> 00:52:29,800
Speaker 1: that Encyclopedia Britannica ceased publishing on paper after two hundred

923
00:52:29,800 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 1: and forty four years of doing so, you know, there's

924
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:35,239
Speaker 1: also kind of interesting there was I remember, and I

925
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:37,319
Speaker 1: didn't write this down in my my research because it

926
00:52:37,320 --> 00:52:39,120
Speaker 1: didn't actually it didn't occur to me while I was

927
00:52:39,160 --> 00:52:41,760
Speaker 1: researching it. But I remember specifically, there was a time

928
00:52:42,440 --> 00:52:46,719
Speaker 1: when Wikipedia was starting to consider looking for experts to

929
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:51,279
Speaker 1: send in articles, just like the old New Pedia days.

930
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:54,240
Speaker 1: They were they were actually thinking about going to experts

931
00:52:54,239 --> 00:52:57,799
Speaker 1: to get expert subject matter experts to write information for Wikipedia.

932
00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 1: At the same time, Britannica was looking at the possibility

933
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:04,400
Speaker 1: of crowdsourcing articles. So it looked like for a moment

934
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,239
Speaker 1: that these two models were about the flip flop that

935
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:10,440
Speaker 1: didn't actually happen that way, But I remember hearing about

936
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:13,879
Speaker 1: that or my brain just invented one of the two.

937
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:17,120
Speaker 1: Also interesting cultural point. In between two thousand eight and

938
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, this kind of dead space that that

939
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:21,960
Speaker 1: we have created, first of on our timeline here, um,

940
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:25,239
Speaker 1: the Wikimedia Foundation total assets went from five point six

941
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:28,360
Speaker 1: million to about forty nine point three million. And again

942
00:53:28,480 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 1: it's existing on donations donations only, and and so, and

943
00:53:31,960 --> 00:53:36,799
Speaker 1: that's that's fabulous for the concept of shared knowledge, I think, right,

944
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:39,000
Speaker 1: and also really interesting to see what kind of I

945
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:41,120
Speaker 1: mean to know exactly what they mean when they when

946
00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 1: they have those giant banners every year to beg for money, right, Yeah,

947
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 1: when you see Jimmy Wells face on their saying on

948
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:50,080
Speaker 1: every page, yeah, give money so that this can continue

949
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:52,720
Speaker 1: to exist. I mean, and not that you shouldn't donate.

950
00:53:52,840 --> 00:53:54,440
Speaker 1: I just you know, I just think that it's it's

951
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 1: an interestingly, it's it's a really cool number. Yeah, And

952
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:01,000
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's cool that he took that approach.

953
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:04,279
Speaker 1: I mean, it definitely gives them the benefit of saying, look,

954
00:54:04,320 --> 00:54:07,799
Speaker 1: we're not beholden to any organization or company. We are

955
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:10,920
Speaker 1: accepting the nation crowd crowd source and this is this

956
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:15,520
Speaker 1: is really meant to be a tool to enrich the

957
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:18,720
Speaker 1: human race. Really, it's it's meant to really make things

958
00:54:19,520 --> 00:54:23,200
Speaker 1: better for everybody, and it's not meant to be the

959
00:54:23,239 --> 00:54:26,600
Speaker 1: platform for one company to say, hey, by our stuff

960
00:54:26,640 --> 00:54:29,520
Speaker 1: and some of that other guy's stuff. One two their

961
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:34,200
Speaker 1: teams speaking about companies. So that's this year. Earlier this year,

962
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:38,479
Speaker 1: a story broke that British Petroleum or BP, I should

963
00:54:38,520 --> 00:54:41,719
Speaker 1: say BP is better now. The Brits hate it when

964
00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:44,719
Speaker 1: I say British Petroleum because they said, look, you don't

965
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:48,360
Speaker 1: bring us into this fault. The story was that BP

966
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 1: had edited its own Wikipedia page, maybe rewriting up to

967
00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 1: the content in order to make the environmental impact at

968
00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:01,840
Speaker 1: the oil spell yeah, the deep water horizon and the Gulf,

969
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:07,480
Speaker 1: to make that seem less bad. Maybe it's kind of

970
00:55:07,520 --> 00:55:11,080
Speaker 1: hard to word this properly, but essentially that they have

971
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 1: sort of whitewashed the disaster and the follow up to it. Uh.

972
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:20,560
Speaker 1: And here here I'm quoting this directly from c NET,

973
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:25,560
Speaker 1: which reported on this. BP is not directly editing its page,

974
00:55:25,560 --> 00:55:29,680
Speaker 1: but instead has apparently inserted a BP representative into the

975
00:55:29,840 --> 00:55:34,720
Speaker 1: editing community who provides Wikipedia editors with text. The text

976
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:38,960
Speaker 1: is then copied as is onto the page by Wikipedia editors,

977
00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 1: while readers are none the wiser that sections pretending to

978
00:55:42,640 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 1: be unbiased information are in fact vetted by higher ups

979
00:55:46,800 --> 00:55:51,279
Speaker 1: at BP before hitting the page. BP's image clean up

980
00:55:51,440 --> 00:55:56,640
Speaker 1: cleverly skirts Wikipedia's editorial rules, wherein Wikipedia editors are using

981
00:55:56,719 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 1: text that VP posts on Wikipedia itself as the course,

982
00:56:00,560 --> 00:56:04,720
Speaker 1: although the text is not published on BP's website. This way,

983
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:07,880
Speaker 1: the significant involvement of BP in its own entry is

984
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:12,240
Speaker 1: completely hidden from Wikipedia readers. While Wikipedia editors, as usual

985
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,600
Speaker 1: argue and attack each other over editorial policy, while BPS

986
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:20,560
Speaker 1: favorable pr editing continues. Right and uh, alright, so so

987
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:24,120
Speaker 1: there there's really one person who was submitting these changes,

988
00:56:24,640 --> 00:56:28,279
Speaker 1: someone by the name of Arturo silver Silva. Pardon me, um.

989
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:31,359
Speaker 1: He was from the corporate Communications department in Houston and

990
00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:34,720
Speaker 1: um and he was actually going through the correct channels

991
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:38,840
Speaker 1: to submit these changes. He he suggested the changes to editors.

992
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:42,240
Speaker 1: He identified himself as a BP employee to those editors.

993
00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:45,360
Speaker 1: So essentially what was happening was that he was playing

994
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:48,920
Speaker 1: by the rules. Uh, it was technically in good faith,

995
00:56:48,960 --> 00:56:51,200
Speaker 1: aside from the part that that you know, it was

996
00:56:51,320 --> 00:56:55,879
Speaker 1: still whitewashing, whitewashing the whole situation. Right, So so these

997
00:56:55,920 --> 00:56:58,239
Speaker 1: are like when we were talking about earlier about how

998
00:56:58,719 --> 00:57:02,800
Speaker 1: you know, Jimmy Whale had edited his own his own

999
00:57:02,880 --> 00:57:05,759
Speaker 1: article and that he should have gone through the proper channels.

1000
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 1: These are those channels that we were talking about. This

1001
00:57:08,200 --> 00:57:10,840
Speaker 1: is what the VP person was doing, but it was

1002
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:14,800
Speaker 1: still putting in possibly you know, you might say biased

1003
00:57:14,800 --> 00:57:18,640
Speaker 1: information is clearly clearly biased. It's from the company that

1004
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:21,880
Speaker 1: the page is about, so you can't you know, there's

1005
00:57:21,920 --> 00:57:24,160
Speaker 1: no way it could be unbiased. If I write my

1006
00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:26,720
Speaker 1: own Wikipedia page, that's going to be biased. Even if

1007
00:57:26,720 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 1: I think I'm being objective, I'm still going to talk

1008
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: about how freaking awesome I am. You know, so right,

1009
00:57:31,640 --> 00:57:33,320
Speaker 1: But you know, I don't know, like like at that point,

1010
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 1: I would personally, and this is speaking as an editor,

1011
00:57:35,440 --> 00:57:37,560
Speaker 1: so I might be a little bit upity about it.

1012
00:57:37,600 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: I would blame the editors at that because because if

1013
00:57:40,200 --> 00:57:42,240
Speaker 1: they're not if they're not going like, yeah, this is

1014
00:57:42,280 --> 00:57:44,919
Speaker 1: maybe not the right source to trust. This information from

1015
00:57:45,080 --> 00:57:48,640
Speaker 1: UM and this is going beyond a a factual a

1016
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:52,720
Speaker 1: clearly factual change, they're not showing good editorial judgment, correct yeah,

1017
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:56,600
Speaker 1: I agree with that. And uh and so you know,

1018
00:57:56,840 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 1: Jimmy Wales actually came down again and said that while

1019
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:03,760
Speaker 1: BP is saying essentially that they totally played by the rules,

1020
00:58:03,800 --> 00:58:06,040
Speaker 1: he said, that's not what the rules are there to protect.

1021
00:58:06,680 --> 00:58:08,880
Speaker 1: The rules are there to protect against the kind of

1022
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 1: stuff that this this company is pulling. It's just this

1023
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:14,920
Speaker 1: company is pulling the tricks within the context of the rules,

1024
00:58:15,240 --> 00:58:18,440
Speaker 1: which either means that the rules themselves are faulty or

1025
00:58:18,480 --> 00:58:21,640
Speaker 1: the people who are who are in charge, like the editors,

1026
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:24,160
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Lauren, are faulty. At any rate,

1027
00:58:24,360 --> 00:58:26,800
Speaker 1: this is something that if you know, I don't want

1028
00:58:26,800 --> 00:58:29,360
Speaker 1: to put words into wales his mouth, but I assume

1029
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:31,960
Speaker 1: from what he has said he would not want this

1030
00:58:32,040 --> 00:58:36,520
Speaker 1: to have happened. Um. So, anyway, all of that being said,

1031
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:39,840
Speaker 1: there's an awful lot of information on Wikipedia, and a

1032
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:44,160
Speaker 1: lot of that over two million articles in two languages

1033
00:58:44,160 --> 00:58:48,320
Speaker 1: in fact, and then there's stuff on there that's incredibly useful.

1034
00:58:49,120 --> 00:58:52,800
Speaker 1: I mean I I use Wikipedia casually all the time,

1035
00:58:53,840 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 1: probably every day. It is incredibly useful. Um. But because

1036
00:58:59,440 --> 00:59:02,200
Speaker 1: of what we've about, that's why a lot of teachers

1037
00:59:02,320 --> 00:59:06,480
Speaker 1: and and publications like how stuff works. Say you cannot

1038
00:59:06,520 --> 00:59:09,440
Speaker 1: use Wikipedia as a source, and it's because of the

1039
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:12,880
Speaker 1: reasons we've listed. It's not that it's a bad thing.

1040
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:15,760
Speaker 1: I actually think that Wikipedia is an amazing idea and

1041
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:18,720
Speaker 1: it's actually phenomenal to me that's worked as well as

1042
00:59:18,760 --> 00:59:21,320
Speaker 1: it has right, right, you know, considering that that certain

1043
00:59:21,480 --> 00:59:23,760
Speaker 1: certain portions the Internet can definitely be a wretched hive

1044
00:59:23,760 --> 00:59:26,360
Speaker 1: of scammon villainy. Right If you look at YouTube comments

1045
00:59:26,360 --> 00:59:29,320
Speaker 1: and then you think, this is the same this is

1046
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:32,080
Speaker 1: the same world that we live in where we can

1047
00:59:32,080 --> 00:59:35,120
Speaker 1: go to Wikipedia and read an article about something, you know,

1048
00:59:35,200 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: something really technically advanced, and get a really good understanding

1049
00:59:38,880 --> 00:59:41,520
Speaker 1: of it. Uh, and it's this is a collaborative effort

1050
00:59:41,840 --> 00:59:45,480
Speaker 1: on the part of possibly hundreds of people. And then

1051
00:59:45,480 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 1: you go to YouTube and you read the comments and

1052
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:51,360
Speaker 1: you think, how is this the same world? How what happened? Uh?

1053
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:54,320
Speaker 1: So you know it's amazing. But there are also some

1054
00:59:54,360 --> 00:59:56,640
Speaker 1: things that you can poke some fun at, like, uh,

1055
00:59:56,720 --> 00:59:59,000
Speaker 1: there was a I wish I could remember what which

1056
00:59:59,000 --> 01:00:01,560
Speaker 1: web comic this was, and listeners, if you happen to

1057
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:03,600
Speaker 1: know what I'm referring to, if you've been reading web

1058
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:06,000
Speaker 1: comics forever, and the strikes a chord. Let me know.

1059
01:00:06,440 --> 01:00:09,520
Speaker 1: But I remember reading a web comic ages ago where

1060
01:00:09,560 --> 01:00:12,080
Speaker 1: was a whole series about Wikipedia, and one of the

1061
01:00:12,120 --> 01:00:15,840
Speaker 1: things they pointed out, very snarkily, was if you were

1062
01:00:15,880 --> 01:00:21,720
Speaker 1: to assume that the the the entries that have the

1063
01:00:21,760 --> 01:00:24,439
Speaker 1: most words are the most important to the human race,

1064
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:28,720
Speaker 1: then Optimist Prime would be way more important than Neighbraham Lincoln.

1065
01:00:29,080 --> 01:00:32,840
Speaker 1: I feel like those Penny Arcade Somebody, somebody, please please

1066
01:00:32,840 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 1: write in and tell me that. I can tell you

1067
01:00:34,280 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 1: it was not Penny Arcade. Well, I mean, Penny Arcade

1068
01:00:36,880 --> 01:00:39,000
Speaker 1: very well may have made that same joke, but I

1069
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:41,880
Speaker 1: don't read Penning Penny Arcade, so I know it wasn't

1070
01:00:41,920 --> 01:00:45,880
Speaker 1: Penning Arcade. All right, Well that's fair, I'm not I'm

1071
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:48,960
Speaker 1: not criticizing. Look, I don't read any web comics anymore.

1072
01:00:49,200 --> 01:00:51,480
Speaker 1: I just don't have the time. But I used to

1073
01:00:51,480 --> 01:00:53,960
Speaker 1: read a lot of them. I recall. I recall seeing

1074
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 1: that that as well. At any rate, whoever created it,

1075
01:00:57,040 --> 01:01:00,720
Speaker 1: somebody somebody writing and tell us, because it's gonna bug otherwise.

1076
01:01:01,040 --> 01:01:03,280
Speaker 1: I used to You know what's worse, I used to

1077
01:01:03,320 --> 01:01:05,520
Speaker 1: have these pinned up in my cubicle. They're not up

1078
01:01:05,520 --> 01:01:07,640
Speaker 1: there anymore, but I used to Ye, I can't even remember,

1079
01:01:07,680 --> 01:01:09,160
Speaker 1: but I used to have them. There's a whole bunch

1080
01:01:09,200 --> 01:01:12,200
Speaker 1: of them. Um. But anyway, that's one of those things.

1081
01:01:12,240 --> 01:01:14,520
Speaker 1: That's one of those things that you could joke about,

1082
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:20,400
Speaker 1: is that that seemingly irrelevant things would get a huge

1083
01:01:20,560 --> 01:01:23,400
Speaker 1: amount of attention because they were. They were interesting that

1084
01:01:23,520 --> 01:01:26,280
Speaker 1: you know, especially stuffing geek culture that people are really

1085
01:01:26,320 --> 01:01:32,800
Speaker 1: really passionately uh interested in, like you know, which again

1086
01:01:32,880 --> 01:01:35,680
Speaker 1: shows you why they're these wikis now that exist all

1087
01:01:35,720 --> 01:01:39,200
Speaker 1: around these properties, right right, and that's a perfect format

1088
01:01:39,240 --> 01:01:43,240
Speaker 1: for that kind of level of minutia of interstory detail.

1089
01:01:43,440 --> 01:01:45,320
Speaker 1: I mean, it's ridiculous when I can look up a

1090
01:01:45,360 --> 01:01:48,880
Speaker 1: comic book character and see every single iteration of that

1091
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:52,080
Speaker 1: comic book character, and then I look up and someone

1092
01:01:52,120 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: who was fundamentally important in some huge moment in history

1093
01:01:56,000 --> 01:01:59,000
Speaker 1: and they have a fraction of That's not that you

1094
01:01:59,160 --> 01:02:02,520
Speaker 1: not that you couldn't cover the important contributions of that

1095
01:02:02,560 --> 01:02:05,120
Speaker 1: person in that amount of space. You might be able to,

1096
01:02:05,400 --> 01:02:08,040
Speaker 1: but it just gives you this weird feeling like if

1097
01:02:08,040 --> 01:02:10,040
Speaker 1: I were to put these in scales as this one

1098
01:02:10,120 --> 01:02:15,080
Speaker 1: so heavy. Any but yeah, and you know, Wikipedia is

1099
01:02:15,240 --> 01:02:19,560
Speaker 1: as as of January, fifth most popular website in the world,

1100
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:23,800
Speaker 1: behind only Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Facebook, and in fact

1101
01:02:23,880 --> 01:02:28,600
Speaker 1: ahead of Amazon, Apple, and eBay. So I yeah, I

1102
01:02:28,600 --> 01:02:31,600
Speaker 1: mean they're doing and again there's a lot of valuable

1103
01:02:31,640 --> 01:02:35,000
Speaker 1: stuff on there. So I know that we definitely kind

1104
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:37,680
Speaker 1: of criticize Wikipedia quite a bit in this this podcast.

1105
01:02:38,160 --> 01:02:40,440
Speaker 1: But keep in mind we're talking about specifically in the

1106
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:43,760
Speaker 1: use for things like academic like academic research. And I

1107
01:02:43,760 --> 01:02:45,920
Speaker 1: do want to say what we do, what Jonathan and

1108
01:02:46,000 --> 01:02:48,320
Speaker 1: I both do, I think, is um, we'll did we

1109
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:50,520
Speaker 1: say this already? We we we we go to Wikipedia and

1110
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:52,720
Speaker 1: we go straight to the resource section. You look at

1111
01:02:52,760 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 1: the references and you take a look to take a

1112
01:02:54,720 --> 01:02:57,919
Speaker 1: look and see like because there you can learn more

1113
01:02:57,960 --> 01:03:01,440
Speaker 1: about you know, go to the the places where the

1114
01:03:01,440 --> 01:03:03,640
Speaker 1: people who have written the article on Wikipedia where they

1115
01:03:03,680 --> 01:03:07,160
Speaker 1: got their information from. Because I mean, that also allows

1116
01:03:07,200 --> 01:03:10,360
Speaker 1: you to remove the interpreter as well, right, because anytime

1117
01:03:10,400 --> 01:03:13,000
Speaker 1: you're reading an article on Wikipedia, you're reading an interpretation

1118
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:15,800
Speaker 1: of someone else's stuff. Because you know, that's another thing

1119
01:03:15,800 --> 01:03:20,440
Speaker 1: we didn't mention on Wikipedia. You do not publish primary information.

1120
01:03:20,480 --> 01:03:23,920
Speaker 1: You don't publish information for the first time, specifically against

1121
01:03:23,960 --> 01:03:25,880
Speaker 1: the rules. Yeah, you have to. You have to. If

1122
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:30,040
Speaker 1: you're going to present a fact that someone could look

1123
01:03:30,120 --> 01:03:33,439
Speaker 1: up and verify or reject, you have to be able

1124
01:03:33,480 --> 01:03:36,720
Speaker 1: to cite it. And that wraps up another classic episode

1125
01:03:36,720 --> 01:03:39,200
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you

1126
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:43,439
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future tech Stuff topics, no matter

1127
01:03:43,520 --> 01:03:46,280
Speaker 1: what it may be, if it's a company or a technology,

1128
01:03:46,360 --> 01:03:49,360
Speaker 1: a trend in tech, maybe it's a great innovator you

1129
01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:51,640
Speaker 1: would like to have sort of a biography of that person,

1130
01:03:52,200 --> 01:03:54,480
Speaker 1: let me know. You can reach out to me on

1131
01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:58,080
Speaker 1: Twitter or on Facebook. We use the handled text stuff

1132
01:03:58,320 --> 01:04:00,960
Speaker 1: hs W A both and I'll talk to you again

1133
01:04:01,560 --> 01:04:09,480
Speaker 1: really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.

1134
01:04:09,720 --> 01:04:12,560
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i

1135
01:04:12,680 --> 01:04:15,920
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

1136
01:04:15,960 --> 01:04:16,880
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.