WEBVTT - TechStuff TechStuff Classic: Tackles Wikipedia 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to text Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.800 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:17.880 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:21.360 I love all things tech. It's time for another tech 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:25.360 Stuff classic episode, and uh, this time we're gonna look 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:29.560 at a topic that was something of a controversial topic 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:33.200 within my old work space over at how stuff works 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:37.360 dot com. It's tech Stuff tackles Wikipedia, and the reason 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.000 it was controversial is that, well, Wikipedia was not considered 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:44.280 a reliable resource for us to use when we were 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:50.040 researching materials for uh, for podcasts, or for articles, because 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:52.760 mostly we were writing articles back then. This episode originally 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.880 published on April twenty nine, two thirteen. Let's listen in. 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.280 It's a matter of some debate among lots and lots 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:03.600 of people online, and there are good points and bad points. 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:05.160 We're going to cover them all. We are, of course 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:09.960 talking about Wikipedia, and you guys who are long time 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.600 listeners of tech Stuff might remember that Chris and I 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:16.600 did an episode about wikis and we touched upon Wikipedia 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:19.559 a little bit. But that was many years ago. Other 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.680 stuff has happened, as things are wont to do on 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:25.040 the course of time, and we decided we wanted to 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:29.440 really look at what made Wikipedia what it was and 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.080 what it is and how has it changed over the 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:35.080 time that it's existed, and and some of the reasons 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:39.000 why Wikipedia is a very useful tool and some reasons 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:43.160 why people either maybe maybe not dismiss it, but but 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:46.080 but in some ways that it could perhaps be improved. Yeah, 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:50.440 and and reasons why some people, uh suggest extreme caution 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:55.640 before relying too heavily upon it. Um. And and before 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.120 we get really into this at all, you know, I 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:00.800 used to write for How Stuff Works dot home a lot. 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:04.640 I occasionally still do, but I mostly do podcasts now 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.480 and things like that. Blogs are about about the writing 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:10.760 level juncture, right, But but I used to write these 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:13.440 these a long articles. And one of the policies and 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:16.959 How Stuff Works is that you do not use Wikipedia 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:20.040 as a source ever. Yeah. And uh, I used to 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:22.000 be an editor before I was a podcaster in social 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:23.880 media person And yes, that was one of the things 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:27.600 that we very firmly enforced, right, are still do. And 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:30.440 really the reason for that has nothing to do with 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:33.520 whether or not the infant well, it has something to 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:35.200 do with whether or not the information you find on 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:40.400 Wikipedia is reliable. But more importantly, Wikipedia is a dynamic thing, right. 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:43.840 It can be written and edited by anybody at any time. 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:47.399 And so when you sit there and cite something from Wikipedia, 0:02:47.440 --> 0:02:50.280 and maybe the next time someone visits that particular entry, 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:55.760 the the information has changed, and it may be that 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.720 the information now is more accurate than it was, or 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:01.640 maybe less accurate. At any rate, the things that make 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.519 Wikipedia a useful tool in day to day I need 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:07.840 to get this information are the same things that make 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.280 it a dangerous tool if you are writing in any 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:15.080 sort of academic or professional capacity. Facy. Yeah, thank you 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:17.840 editor for giving me the word that I don't have. 0:03:18.560 --> 0:03:20.720 But but really, before we get into all the pros 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.520 and cons that I've already just touched on, uh, let's 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:27.480 talk about the history. So before there was a Wikipedia, 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:30.799 back when there was just barely a web. Yeah, yeah, 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:34.080 it was more more local networks of computers and some 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:37.320 of them could you know, key into other local networks. Yeah, 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:39.960 we we did have an internet, uh, and the web 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:42.000 was a thing, but it was very young. But back 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:49.040 in so you know, the web essentially is introduced right three, 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:52.680 So web has not been around for very long. Rick 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:55.920 Gates comes up with this idea. He says, Uh, you 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.280 know what would be really super awesome if if we 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:04.120 were to build an encyclopedia that lived on the Internet, 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:08.120 and if you made that encyclopedia something that anyone could 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:10.640 contribute to, so that way you could tap into the 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:15.200 world's knowledge and people who are really just experts in 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:17.320 whatever field that they're in, they can go in and 0:04:17.320 --> 0:04:19.640 share that knowledge. Right, and and then you have the 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:22.120 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, right, except it's really the 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:25.160 Hitchhiker's Guide to Earth. Uh. So would be more than 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:29.159 mostly harmless Earth in a small amount of the surrounding galaxy. Sure, yeah, 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:32.520 But essentially the sum total of what human knowledge is 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.719 could go on the Internet and be in a database 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.800 that you could search, and it would be the world's 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:43.640 most complete encyclopedia. Uh. A fellow by the name of R. L. 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:47.560 Samuel came up with an idea to call it Interpedia, 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.039 and it was kind of this interesting point of discussion, 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:53.320 but it never went beyond that. It was just one 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.480 of those Hey, any cool if Yeah, exactly. Maybe if 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:58.800 someone who has more time and resources could do this, 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:03.560 it would be awesome. Uh. And then in a very 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.760 important development happened. And I was amazed that it happened 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:11.480 this early, because this was the development of the wiki platform, 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:13.880 and the fact that it happened in ninety four amazes 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:18.560 me because I was largely unaware of wikis until Wikipedia 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.039 came along. Yeah as well. So, I mean I had 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:23.600 been on the web since the early nineties, but I 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:27.120 just didn't know about wikis for many years, I mean 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:30.719 almost a decade. Uh. And it was and when I 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:33.840 finally did start to learn about wikis, they were strange 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:37.440 and unusual to me because it was a different experience 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:41.159 than your average website. Right. Yeah, Usually most websites and 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:43.240 most books are based on this idea that there is 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.440 one expert who is who is this terrific expert and 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.720 is talking to you about this thing. Yeah, and that's 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:51.240 and that's where it starts and stops. You know, no 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.120 one's arguing with them, particularly, right. There might be some 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:59.520 form of comment ability on a site where people can 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:03.039 contribute into the discussion, but in general, the content of 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:07.080 the site itself is created by a person or an organization, 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:10.640 but no one else. It's not like, you know, Bob 0:06:10.720 --> 0:06:13.080 can just log in and put in Bob's section, and 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.880 then Joe over here logs in and puts in Joe's section. 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:19.760 It's Bob and Joe can't do anything because they can 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:21.839 just go and view the site. Well, the wiki was 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.440 based on a completely different idea and it was designed 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.200 by a guy named Ward Cunningham, and his first one 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.640 was First Software Developers. Yeah, yeah, he was. He worked 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:33.680 for a software consulting company that he was a partner in. 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:37.000 It was Cunningham and Cunningham also known as C two 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:41.120 dot com, and he was developing this, uh this platform 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:45.839 for Portland pattern Repository and he called it wiki wiki 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:49.560 web right, based on the Hawaiian word wiki or wiki wiki, 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:53.159 which means um, quick quick, Yeah. There's a the wiki 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:57.760 wiki Shuttle in Honolulu, which is an airport shuttle. I've 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.960 been on the shuttle and I remember my wife being 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.560 really amused every time she saw the wiki wiki shuttle. 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:08.839 She just loved wiki wiki. Obviously I've married the right woman. 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.200 So uh so, Ward Cunningham comes up with this idea 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:14.480 for the wiki, and essentially what a wiki is is 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:19.560 it's a website that has collaborative editing tools built into 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:22.600 the site itself, so you you navigate to the site 0:07:22.640 --> 0:07:26.120 through a browser, and within the browser you can make 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:30.800 changes to the site collaboratively. So depending upon the level 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:35.559 of administrative power you have, you can you can edit things, 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.680 you can add things, you can delete things. And it's 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:40.680 since it's all within the web browser, you're using a 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:44.559 basic markup language or maybe some sort of rich text editor, 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:48.560 and it will let people collaborate on projects even if 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:52.360 they had different machines. Right, So, if Lauren's using a 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:54.720 Mac and I'm using a PC, not only do we 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:56.680 hate each other, but often we can't work on the 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:00.280 same thing because our platforms are so different. But this 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:02.440 is web based, so all we have to do is 0:08:02.520 --> 0:08:05.920 use whichever browsers web browser we both commune, and then 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.000 we navigate there and we can make these changes and 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.920 build our collaborative I hate you website together and other 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.600 people can join in and explain why they hate everybody too. 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.760 And I don't know why I'm so negative today, but 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:19.800 apparently that's how this is going to work. I think. 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:23.800 So Cunningham develops this wiki technology, which is what makes 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:27.520 Wikipedia possible. But we're not at Wikipedia yet now, right, 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:29.920 because yeah, well go ahead, Oh, I was just gonna 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:34.559 say that's when we start talking about Jimmy Wales, who 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.640 is kind of the face of Wikipedia, right right, Yeah, 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:39.120 I was gonna say that. At the same time around 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:43.120 was when Jimmy Wales had dropped out of college. He 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:47.760 he had started um started a couple months are for 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.199 a finance PhD from Indiana University and wound up instead 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.120 of doing that going to Chicago to be a futures 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:58.880 an options trader and supposedly, much like Elon Musk who 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:02.520 we have previously profile, wild Jimmy Wales noticed that, you know, 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:07.079 Netscape went public and and what quadrupled in value overnight. 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.680 Netscape did well, yes, they did good um and and 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:13.640 took note of that and said, hey, this internet thing 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:15.800 that I've been kind of playing around with for a 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:17.600 few years, I think that this could be a thing. Yeah, 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.480 this this might go places. And of course remember this 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:24.439 is all before the dot com bubble burst too, so 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:27.960 back then it was all opportunity and wild West and 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:31.079 no one was really sure and bright shining dreams. Yeah 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.600 it was. It was interesting. Uh, you know, the the 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.000 roads weren't paved with gold, but they were paved with 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:42.679 stock options. Jimmy Wales has this thought while he's working 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:47.080 for a well, he's part owner of a company called 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.240 bomus dot com, which is a search engine. Yeah, and 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:54.040 he owned that with two other joint owners, Tim Shell 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:59.320 and Michael Davis. Comes up with his version, his idea 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:04.160 for a free, collaborative encyclopedia, and he taps a guy 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:08.240 named Larry Sanger to be the project lead for this 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:12.520 new encyclopedia. Now he knew Saner from mailing lists, because 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.880 this isn't that long after the fact that people were 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:18.440 just using things like Usenet and mailing lists instead of 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.280 the web and uh, and so he got in touch 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:26.160 with Saner and and convinced Anger to head up a project, 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:29.160 this this collaborative encyclopedia, which at that point did not 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.240 have a name, right right, Yeah, And you know that 0:10:31.320 --> 0:10:35.120 they've been thinking. I've read about open source software and 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.000 and how open source culture could also be a thing 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:41.400 and and and a beautiful thing and so yeah, and 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:44.959 that was kind of when you look back at Timber's Lee, 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:47.679 who's the guy who essentially created what we know of 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:50.800 as the Web. That was sort of his approach to 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:53.120 He thought that open was the right way to go, 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:56.920 that the open collaborative way would mean that the Internet 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:01.079 becomes the world's tool, not any one a company or 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:05.000 government's tool. And so, uh, this was sort of the 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.840 idea of of let's make an encyclopedia that follows those 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:12.480 same kind of philosophies. Yeah, and so, so Wales and 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:15.600 Saner and a few others start to form a project 0:11:15.679 --> 0:11:19.160 that they call New Pdia in U P E. D 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.200 I A. And this was a peer reviewed encyclopedia that 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.040 they were going to put online. And you know, because 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:27.079 they wanted that they wanted that expert opinion to come in, 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.520 and they wanted everything to be as factual and reliable 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.280 as possible, exactly in fact, Singer that was he was 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.960 passionate about this. He said that, you know, you could 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.679 create an online encyclopedia where everyone just contributes, but if 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:42.560 you wanted to be a reliable resource, you need that 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.480 peer review step in there. So and it turned it 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:48.800 turned out to be extremely slow to to get people 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.000 to submit anything at all, because it was it was 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:54.400 intimidating and be to to you know, find the correct 0:11:54.440 --> 0:11:58.080 expert to to look it over. And also, yeah, the 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:04.040 review process was a Singer would describe later laborious um, 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:07.560 so two thousand is when NEWPDIA starts, and it starts 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:10.880 in the middle of two thousand or so. And uh, 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:13.720 they have an advisory board of a sort of a 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.800 peer review board made up of PhD volunteers. So these 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:20.520 are people who are not even being paid. They're volunteering 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.800 their expertise to review papers to make sure that they 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.920 are they're ready for publications. So this is like if 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:29.720 you were to submit a paper to an academic journal 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:33.360 or a scientific journal. You know, it's something that it's 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:35.439 not just automatically going to get published. It has to 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:39.000 be reviewed and pass review. There might be a lengthy 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:42.760 revision process before we'll ever be published. So there were 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:47.440 seven steps in this review process for Newpedia and they did. 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:49.320 They didn't think that that it would work. I read 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:52.360 somewhere that that Wales really thought that, you know, it 0:12:52.360 --> 0:12:54.760 had been conversations with people on the internet and had 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.280 realized that if it's something that they feel passionate about, 0:12:57.280 --> 0:12:59.840 that they're usually really willing to engage in that conversation 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:02.360 and to help. Yeah, so the idea was that you know, 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:04.560 you get people who are really smart. A lot of 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:09.200 really smart people enjoy spreading knowledge, not that we wouldn't 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:11.840 know anything about. Wanting to show off knowledge. Yeah, I 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:13.880 mean I'm not really smart, but I still like to 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.440 do it. So, I mean that's why I played trivia 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:18.960 is really just to show off how smart I am. 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:21.240 But I know that compared to these people, I was 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.720 and still am stupid. But anyway, so, or at least 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:33.480 okay different anyway, thank you. Everyone's special and nobody is. Um. 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.920 So yeah, the seventh step process to publish to review 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:39.600 before you would publish an article. It turned out that 0:13:39.640 --> 0:13:42.640 this was a bit of a bottleneck um And the 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:46.320 very first Newpedia article that was ever published was written 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.880 by Kristoff Hust and it was about a tonality and 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:52.080 it was published in the summer of two thousands, so 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:55.160 it was early two thousand when they started working on 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:59.520 new Pedia. At that time, the entire submission and review 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.760 process was all through mailing lists. It was. There wasn't 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:06.720 a web based version yet, and so the first article 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:08.760 publishes in the summer of two thousand. It was either 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:12.079 June or July. According to Sanger, who wrote about this 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.520 I found it on slash Dot. He wrote a two 0:14:16.559 --> 0:14:20.800 part piece that was essentially about the whole beginning of Wikipedia, 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:25.360 which started with this new PDIA thing. Well, in January two, 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.640 Sanger and Wales meet up with a guy named Ben 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:35.560 Covitz at the infamous taco stand meeting. Taco stand meeting. Yeah, 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:38.320 they were in California and they were at a taco stand. 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.760 They started talking and COVID's told Wales and Sanger about 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:45.920 Cunningham's wiki Wiki web platform, and they thought about this 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.080 as being a tool that would allow for collaborative work 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:52.800 and make it much easier to get articles and and 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:56.080 Saner was still thinking about this pure review process right right, 0:14:56.480 --> 0:14:58.479 But they were thinking that in order to get more submissions, 0:14:58.480 --> 0:14:59.960 in order to make it a little bit less intim 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.000 dating for people to you know, to to submit an 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:06.040 article to this crazy peer review thing, yeah, to say like, 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:08.880 don't worry so much about the quality, just submit stuff. 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:12.160 Because it turned out that, uh, you know that one 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:13.840 of the things they were worried about was that they 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:17.320 needed to have content. And part of the philosophy was 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:20.280 that if we can fix content, if the content is 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:23.400 not perfect, we can still edit it once we get it. 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:26.480 But if we never get any content, there's no encyclopedia. 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:28.320 Right Because I think at the time they had they 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.120 had maybe twenty articles, I mean something, you know, a 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:34.640 very low number. Yeah, it wasn't it was. It was 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:38.600 twenty five articles by the winter of two thousand one. 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.720 So summer two thousand their first article publishes. More than 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.840 a year later, they have twenty articles on new Pedia, 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:48.440 which is more articles than I write in a year, 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:50.480 but I mean it was fewer than what I wrote 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:53.200 in a year. In a year, I would write around 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:56.240 a hundred articles. So it's it's it's kind of you know, 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:58.640 but that's that shows you there was this bottleneck process, 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.800 and and you find out that a volunteer might love 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.840 their field of expertise, but they're still a volunteer, so 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:09.000 there's still they're still limited by the fact that they 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:11.160 have to do other things, most of them, unless they're 0:16:11.160 --> 0:16:15.600 independently wealthy, they have other responsibilities they have to attend to. 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:19.400 But while they were thinking about this, they decided to 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:24.640 launch a wiki for Newpedia, and they launched that wiki 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:28.920 on January two thousand one. So Newpedia is still a thing, 0:16:28.960 --> 0:16:31.400 but they launch a wiki for it with the idea 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:35.840 of making it this faster way to contribute articles. And 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:38.880 I think it actually goes live on January. If any 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.360 of you know about Wikipedia Day and are going like 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:44.040 that wasn't on the tenth, well that's the here's why 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:47.640 the wiki goes live on the tenth. The advisory board says, 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.120 I don't want anything to do with that. Like, essentially, 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:51.720 what happened was the peer review board looked at the 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:55.000 wiki and said, look, we have these other backlog of 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:59.080 articles that we're still reviewing. We cannot deal with this nonsense. 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:04.680 So what upen was the Newpedia wiki split from Newpedia 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:07.960 and became its own thing, and on January fifteenth, that 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:13.679 became Wikipedia. So Wikipedia began as a branch of Newpedia 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.080 where it was all going to be peer reviewed, but 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:18.480 then became its own thing where the peer review kind 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.200 of went away. The idea was that the community would review, 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:23.760 and so it wouldn't be peer reviewed in the sense 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:28.080 of an official board of experts. It would be the 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:32.439 community of Wikipedia collectively would be able to review and 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.000 edit the content that was being uploaded, and and that 0:17:36.160 --> 0:17:38.959 that kind of spread of the workload was really important, 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:41.000 because they had a hundred and fifty entries by the 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:45.600 end of February. Yeah, it was, and it went really 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:49.720 pretty crazy. The according to Singer. He said, by the 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:52.520 end of January two thousand one there were six hundred 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:58.280 articles on Wikipedia. But that Singer, and that was from memory, 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:00.520 So you gotta keep in mind, this is Anger writing 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.520 in two thousand five about what happened in two thousand one. 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:06.720 So Sander says that by the end of two thousand 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.840 one there were six d articles, and by March or 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:11.800 by the end of January two thoe there six d 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:16.879 articles by March, by April and by May. So not 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.080 only were more articles coming online, but it was the 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:24.080 growth rate was increasing over time, not exponentially, but pretty 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:29.600 pretty regularly. So it was very quickly becoming popular. And uh. 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:32.840 And April two thousand one, that's when Jimmy Wales decided 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.600 to to to post a thing where he to find 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:39.640 that the Wikipedia voice was to be one of neutral 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:44.119 point of view or m p o V and uh. 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.000 Sancer actually objected to this as well, not that he 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:49.880 objected to the idea of neutrality, Sard that was important. 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:52.879 He objected to the phrase point of view because he 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:54.840 said that it still means that the article has a 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:57.560 point of view, and it shouldn't Sander in some of 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.320 his points, I was reading in this if I saw 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.800 and slash doot, I was thinking, this is getting to 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:07.600 be a little bit about semantics, weird and pedantic a 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:11.439 little bit. I respect a lot of what he was saying, 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.240 but it's something and I think that that. You know, 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:18.880 pedantic has its place on the Internet, absolutely, but does 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:25.160 whenever I'm in a comment, it's my first weapon of choice. Um. Anyway, 0:19:25.480 --> 0:19:29.159 So by the winter of two thousand one, that's when 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:32.960 only articles had published on Newpedia, and the approval process 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:36.439 moves so slowly that even when the tools to review 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:39.800 and approve articles moved from email to web based clients, 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.000 it just wasn't doing very well. And because it was 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:46.399 such a slow process, more and more of the people 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:49.400 involved in it began to neglect it and drop off 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:51.600 of it. And Wikipedia, but at that same time, was 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:56.080 getting more and more popular. So yeah, so Sanger's responsibilities 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:59.040 were starting to shift more towards Wikipedia than new Pedia, 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.479 simply because that's where all the action was. So by 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:05.200 two thousand one and into two thousand two, new Pedia 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:09.520 activity had slow dramatically and uh and also the the bubble. 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:12.920 By then, the dot com bubble had burst, which really 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.240 kind of wiped out a lot of the folks who 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:20.159 were contributing in some way, so that kind of also 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:24.480 made the funding kind of dry up for new Pedia. Wikipedia, 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:27.280 by the way, was existing at that time and still 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:33.080 is to this day on donations. Um. So the new 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:35.960 pet was trying really hard to redefine the rules that 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:39.560 were needed to review submissions so that they could streamline 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.600 the process. But by that time it was it was 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.440 too little, too late. Uh and and it gets really 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.080 sad in another year. But when I get there, I'll 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:52.840 mention it. So um. Even at this early stage of Wikipedia, 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:57.760 Sanger was really saying, let's pay attention to what experts 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:00.640 have to say. Let's give them special attention and respect, 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:05.199 and make sure that their voices are the ones we 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:08.639 pay the most attention to. Not that we won't accept 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:11.919 submissions from the general public, but that we should pay 0:21:12.400 --> 0:21:15.200 more attention to things that are coming from people who 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:19.639 are recognized. Because again, this is this is Sanger saying 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:23.040 that in order to be a credible resource for people, 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:27.560 you have to have some form of review or or 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:29.440 you know, you have to have some way of of 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:32.560 saying the information here is from right right, the same 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:35.560 way that scientific journals won't just you know, accept accept 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:38.440 research that has not been checked over by a peer 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.199 of view system. At least it's ideally an ideally right 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:44.199 if you ever hear In fact, this is just a 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:47.760 little side note. Uh, this is important if you're reading 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:49.879 something on Wikipedia and you look at the references. It's 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:53.040 something that Lauren and I do a lot. Uh. It's 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:55.679 important also to pay attention to what the references are 0:21:55.720 --> 0:21:59.000 because there are scientific quote unquote scientific papers out there 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:02.840 that are actually logs that aren't scientific papers. So then 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:05.679 you will quote unquote have a paper published in a 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:09.640 scientific journal, but it's not a peer reviewed scientific journal. Correct. Yeah. 0:22:09.680 --> 0:22:12.120 I see this with a lot of free energy papers, 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:14.600 where energy is one of those things where like well 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:16.800 it was published in sessions, like yeah, I check that out. 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:20.119 That's that guy's personal blog. He called it the Journal 0:22:20.119 --> 0:22:23.760 of Nuclear Physics, but it's just live journal. Yeah. Yeah, 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:27.160 we we just did an episode about about nuclear power, 0:22:27.280 --> 0:22:30.199 not fusion power, and yeah there was cold fusion and 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:32.320 cold fusion and there was a lot of that that 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:34.159 that's stuck in my head. Yes, exactly. If you do 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.720