What Would You Ask Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales?

[lsanger]

What Would You Ask Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales?

Invites questions via Twitter, to be asked in an interview with Jimbo tomorrow. Here's mine:

Why does Wikipedia represent itself as being appropriate for kids, when it also hosts completely unfiltered porn? @NewsHour ‪#AskWikipedia‬

Turns out, I was the first to ask a question on Twitter, and @NewsHour favorited my question, so my hopes are high that it'll get asked.

No doubt Jimbo will have some ass-saving, very sincere-sounding response prepared in advance, so it won't really be that interesting. But the exchange would help get the word out about the issue, which would be interesting.

[rhindle]

Your question should get asked since you're the CO-founder. How interesting this can be is if whether Jimbo gets to screen the questions or not.

[Randy from Boise]

Your question should get asked since you're the CO-founder. How interesting this can be is if whether Jimbo gets to screen the questions or not.

Jimmy Wales owned the land and Larry Sanger ran the backhoe, but I don't think either one of them deserve credit for building the house.

RfB

[HRIP7]

Thanks for the note. I've asked a question as well, via our Twitter account: link.

[EricBarbour]

#AskWikipedia Jimmy, how many of your fans know that your friend David Gerard runs the shock site http://lemonparty.org?

Should I ask him why FT2 was blackmailed into giving up on his Arbcom run in 2010?
Or why the largest single article subject on Wikipedia is football trivia?
Or why editors are quitting and editing is declining, while WMF funding is increasing?
Or why his old buddy-pal Erik Moeller is so "intellectually favorable" towards pedophilia?
Or why Commons has more than 3,000 photos taken at the Adult Video Entertainment convention?

See? so many questions come to mind.....

[HRIP7]

#AskWikipedia Jimmy, how many of your fans know that your friend David Gerard runs the shock site http://lemonparty.org?

Should I ask him why FT2 was blackmailed into giving up on his Arbcom run in 2010?
Or why the largest single article subject on Wikipedia is football trivia?
Or why editors are quitting and editing is declining, while WMF funding is increasing?
Or why his old buddy-pal Erik Moeller is so "intellectually favorable" towards pedophilia?
Or why Commons has more than 3,000 photos taken at the Adult Video Entertainment convention?

See? so many questions come to mind.....

Just for reference, does David Gerard actually run lemonparty.org? He claimed a while back –

I don't have my own server - I'm camped out on a mate's-rates server at mate's-rates reliability, and my sites cohabit with lemonparty.org - but hey! server space is cheap.

[EricBarbour]

Just for reference, does David Gerard actually run lemonparty.org?

I'd like to see him explain who David Gerard is, on TV. If not Gerard, then who?
Who runs all the porn sites on the "mate's server"? How does Gerard make a living anyway?

You want to hit Wales with embarrassing questions, you're getting a chance.
If anyone reading this has a Twitter account, ask him a leading question. Do it quickly, I would not be surprised if
they cut it off soon.

[Randy from Boise]

I don't have my own server - I'm camped out on a mate's-rates server at mate's-rates reliability, and my sites cohabit with lemonparty.org - but hey! server space is cheap.

[/quote]


Isn't the applicable word "cohabitate"?!?

RfB

[dogbiscuit]

What was it about your career, porn site Bormis, failed start-up Wikia, sperm laden T-shirts, employing convicted felons like Caroline Doran, or porn-laden Commons that attracted David Cameron to seek your advice on IT for the Conservative Government?

[EricBarbour]

What was it about your career, porn site Bormis, failed start-up Wikia, sperm laden T-shirts, employing convicted felons like Caroline Doran, or porn-laden Commons that attracted David Cameron to seek your advice on IT for the Conservative Government?

Post it on Twitter, not here......

[rhindle]

Here's a clip

[Alison]

"Metasonix on Twitter asked, 'Jimmy, why does Wikipedia have 4,046 articles about Doctor Who, but only 1,020 articles about William Shakespeare?.

Well, ah, uh ...." <handwave>

[lsanger]

I notice that, in his answer to my question, he didn't actually answer my question.

[EricBarbour]

Oh well, we knew this is how he would handle them. He's charming and smooth when he has to be.
The Wiki-Luv delusion continues.

[EricBarbour]

Note that at 4.55 Jimbo said that "the Kazakh Wikipedia is booming, it's doing great". He should have qualified that slightly:

I looked into the edit activity on kk-wiki, and they were almost dead, same as most other language wikis.
Until June 2011, when they suddenly had 159 new "active editors". They generated many thousands of new articles from then until December, then
editing declined dramatically. Turns out it was all due to one guy, Rauan Kenzhekhanuly. He attended Harvard and the 2011 Wikimania, went back to Almaty,
and started a club, that generated hundreds of new users and thousands of articles. Rauan wanted to start a "sustainable" editing community there, and
it looks to me as if he was only partly successful. (He won "Wikipedian Of The Year" for this.)

[Zoloft]

I loved the look on Jimmy's face when Larry Sanger's name came up as asking a question.

[Randy from Boise]

I notice that, in his answer to my question, he didn't actually answer my question.

That's what politicians do.

RfB

[HRIP7]

"Metasonix on Twitter asked, 'Jimmy, why does Wikipedia have 4,046 articles about Doctor Who, but only 1,020 articles about William Shakespeare?.

Well, ah, uh ...." <handwave>

Jimmy answered that one very well – in the mind's eye, he makes you smile indulgently at all those youthful Doctor Who and Pokemon fans (isn't Wikipedia great, giving them an outlet for their enthusiasm ...), and makes you forget about what that says about the editor demographics driving community decision-making processes.

As for Larry's question, Jimmy obviously avoided the first part, about Wikipedia being touted as child-friendly (especially in the context of fundraising), and said how "difficult" it was to get the balance with sexual content right – a platitude anyone can agree with. And in the same interview, he managed to advertise Wikipedia's child-friendly potential twice – in referring to Pokemon, and in his stock reference to the 12-year-old citing Wikipedia in his homework.

[Anroth]

"Metasonix on Twitter asked, 'Jimmy, why does Wikipedia have 4,046 articles about Doctor Who, but only 1,020 articles about William Shakespeare?.

Well, ah, uh ...." <handwave>

Honestly, why even bother asking this question.

The answer is 'people like Dr Who'.

[dogbiscuit]

Would you rather your kids looked on Wikipedia for their illegal porn than elsewhere? Jimbo goes for "other stuff exists" as his excuse - isn't that against policy?

[EricBarbour]

And I presume that "other stuff" includes Shakespeare?

Just once I'd like to see him admit that the Doctor Who material has no educational value, nor does 90% of Wikipedia's contents generally.
There's a pretty good encyclopedia in there, somewhere, buried in a mountain of crap.

[iii]

Why does Jimmy Wales think Wikipedia' reputation is rising in the eyes of academics? And what's with this veiled insult that academics are somehow "behind the times" in their reactions to the internet....

[rhindle]

Why does Jimmy Wales think Wikipedia' reputation is rising in the eyes of academics? And what's with this veiled insult that academics are somehow "behind the times" in their reactions to the internet....

I wish I, or anyone for that matter, would have thought to ask him if he really thinks that 17 year-old kids are more often than not more credible than a person who has dedicated their life to a particular subject.

[Anroth]

Why does Jimmy Wales think Wikipedia' reputation is rising in the eyes of academics? And what's with this veiled insult that academics are somehow "behind the times" in their reactions to the internet....

I wish I, or anyone for that matter, would have thought to ask him if he really thinks that 17 year-old kids are more often than not more credible than a person who has dedicated their life to a particular subject.

On the topic of Shakespeare probably, have you seen the wars over the authorship issue?

[rhindle]

Why does Jimmy Wales think Wikipedia' reputation is rising in the eyes of academics? And what's with this veiled insult that academics are somehow "behind the times" in their reactions to the internet....

I wish I, or anyone for that matter, would have thought to ask him if he really thinks that 17 year-old kids are more often than not more credible than a person who has dedicated their life to a particular subject.

On the topic of Shakespeare probably, have you seen the wars over the authorship issue?

There can always be exceptions to the rule that you can find. However, Jimbo said "more often than not." So, by Jimbo logic, incoming college freshman should be deciding which curriculum their professors should be teaching them because they know better. This Newshour interview was probably the first time he ever had to answer questions where he couldn't ignore if he didn't like them. It would be interesting to see if he would clarify that statement he made.

[thekohser]

I would ask Jimmy Wales how he manages to get along in life with such a delusional perspective on facts.

[Kumioko]

Personally I would love to ask him if he plans on doing anything about the growing toxicity in the editing community and if the WMF plans on continuing to release broken and unfinished software and using the Wikipedia community as guinea pigs and testers for the Media wiki software.