J.D. Wales: "Wikipedia is not a reliable source"

[Mancunium]

The title of this thread is the epigraph at the head of an interview of Jimmy Wales, conducted at the One Young World thingy in Dublin.

Criador da Wikipedia quer levar site aos países mais pobres
Fundador da enciclopédia virtual mais acessada do planeta discutiu a função dela na crise do virus ebola e explicou projeto que prevê parcerias com operadoras de telefonia que não cobrarão pelo tráfego de dados de conteúdo da Wikipedia
by Pedro Caiado, Terra Brasil, 3 November 2014 linkhttp://tecnologia.terra.com.br/criador- ... aRCRD.html[/link]

Google-translation from Portuguese linkhttps://translate.google.com/translate? ... edit-text=[/link]

Creator of Wikipedia site either lead to poorer countries
Founder of the most accessed virtual encyclopedia of the world discussed her role in the virus and Ebola crisis explained design that provides partnerships with telecom carriers that do not charge for the data traffic of Wikipedia content

[...] Terra: What is the role of Wikipedia in combating Ebola epidemic?

Jimmy Wales: There is a page about the disease and another on the epidemic, with graphics and extensive information. I want journalists to inform themselves using these pages, because there are a lot of wrong information being disclosed. [...]

Terra: What do you think of the lack of reliability of some information available in Wikipedia pages?

Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia will never be a reliable source. [...]

[thekohser]

The actual talk. (A great sleep aid, I can attest.)

[Johnny Au]

Google Translate assumed that Jimbo is female. To be fair though, it is probably referring to "encyclopedia," which is feminine in Portuguese.

[Poetlister]

It's always been Wikipedia policy that it's not a reliable source. You can't cite one article to prove something in another article. I think that shows commendable honesty.

[Anthonyhcole]

It's always been Wikipedia policy that it's not a reliable source. You can't cite one article to prove something in another article. I think that shows commendable honesty.

The question was, "When will Wikipedia be reliable to cite from?" In his answer, Jimmy addressed the "cite from" aspect, rather than the "reliable" aspect of the question:

My view on that is never. Basically, when I was at university, I wouldn't have been able to cite Encyclopedia Britannica; and the reason is the role of the encyclopedia in the research process, particularly at the university level is not to be a citable source but to give you a broad background, a broad framework. If you're going to cite a source, you come to Wikipedia and get oriented about the field and then dig deeper. Go into our sources - go beyond our sources - and that's the level of work you should be doing at the university level.

So, for us, it's not about quality, it's about what is our role in the overall process. We want our quality to be absolutely as high as possible, and the best academic studies of Wikipedia show that we are of comparable quality to traditional encyclopedias - we have problems but they're different kinds of problems from traditional encyclopedias. So we're pretty pleased that we've come as far as we have. We want to be even better, but we don't think as an end point that our goal should be to be citable as an academic source.

I've cued it here. (Sorry, I don't know how to embed these things.)

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

The actual talk. (A great sleep aid, I can attest.)

Especially as a guy who makes his living giving speeches (besides an economically advantageous marriage), Jimbo Wales (T-C-L) needs training in public speaking.

Jimmy Wales (T-H-L) seems to be shape shifting from Middle-Aged Man into Drinking Buddy (Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 1990–1991#Middle-Aged_Man (T-H-L)).