04/17/2006 04:23:00 PM 
(1) 
(1) Wikipedia is, indeed, global. There are 3.5 million articles across 200 languages. There are 71,000,000 entries written in english - which only makes up less then a third of the total entries. It is bigger then Brittanica and Encarta combined. The popularity of this site is astonishing; it has a broader reach then the combination of the New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and Chicago Tribune combined. There are around 5 billion page views monthly.
On Friday, Influx attended a seminar organized by The Long Now Foundation. Jimbo Wales, founder and president of Wikipedia, spoke about the fundamentals and foundation of Wikipedia. He began his lecture by introducing Wikipedia as "a revolution in progress." Wikipedia has degraded the notion that people only do things in their best interest.
The seminar was titled, "Vision: Wikipedia and the Future of Free Culture." Wikipedia's vision is "to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language." Jimbo explained that ?free? is a key word to describe Wikipedia. It is free in every sense of the word: it does not cost a penny, it is free to copy, free to distribute, and free to modify.
Wikipedia must remain "free" if it is to stay on course with its vision. Jimbo stated firmly that "Wikipedia will never compromise with censors." He argued that most social systems are based on distrust rather then trust. "Suppose you ran a restaurant that way. If you serve steak, that means steak knives, which are really dangerous in the wrong hands, so you need to put barriers between the tables... If you prevent people from doing bad things, you prevent them from doing good things, and it eliminates opportunities for trust."
Jimbo broke down Wikipedia into two possible schools of thought. The first being that Wikipeida is an "emergent phenomenon, pseudo-Darwinian" and the second, which he prefers, is the think of Wikipedia as "a community of thoughtful users."
The foundation of Wikipedia was not based on a technological innovation. Instead it is completely a social innovation. All of the technology behind Wikipedia was invented by 1995. The design of Wikipedia is the "design of community." This means it is completely human. Definitions of subject are the result of human dialogue. Wikipedia is a continual conversation amongst individuals; it is not based on the tally of anonymous votes or on statistical information.
Wikipedia survives and functions just like any community. It takes into account personality - if you're a jerk, you're asked to leave. It understands the development and importance of trust - if you contribute meaningful and helpful information then you gain stature. It listens to varying points of view and through conversation and collaboration reveals the best possible definition.
So what's next? Check out Jimbo's next endeavor - a for-profit wiki-community enabler called Wikia. Wikia takes the idea of edit-able content beyond an encyclopedia.
You can download this past Friday's seminar here.
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I love Wikipedia. I can spend hours clicking on links and finding interesting things to look at.