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Jimmy Ìý Ìý ÌýYou know one of the, one of the most important principles er, for an encyclopaedia is neutrality er, this is the idea that er, Wikipedia itself shouldn't take a stand on any controversial issue. Um, our job is not to be a place for political commentary or persuasion um, but basically just to lay out the, the, the landscape for people.

So if there's a controversial issue, we try to report neutrally on what er, you know relevant and important authorities about it have said. So you know er, pick as an example um, er, a hot button issue like abortion. Wikipedia of course is not going to take a stand on abortion, but it's going to report um, you know that, that the catholic church position is this, and the pope has said that, and critics have responded this way and so on, er, you know the idea is so if you're new to the topic and you want to know what everybody's fussing about, you can come and get that landscape. Of course neutrality's not always easy um, we are human beings and it's a, you know it's, it's serious effort, er, but that's one of the core principles. Er, some of the other principles that are really important are things like reliable sourcing. Now that's something the community has gotten more and more um, interested in over the years, as the project matures, um, people have become less tolerant of just some random information that somebody writes down that they happen to know. Er, and really more looking for what's your source for that um, you know er, is it, do you, do you have a, a scientific journal or a well known newspaper and so on. And in fact we've gotten very sophisticated er, in the community with all of our policies around what counts as a reliable source of contact.

IntervÌý yea can you talk me through that actually because one of the, one of the guiding principles or rather what I've understood to be one of your inspirations for starting Wikipedia is to create an environment that almost breaks down this ivory tower notion that this idea that there is a hierarchy that anybody can contribute knowledge, yet what you're talking about here with this notion of reliable sources, the scientific journal, the peer reviewed, can you talk me through that juxtaposition that sort of, that, that ........ there?

Jimmy I mean it's interesting because um, Wikipedia in many ways does break down a lot of hierarchical assumptions that people have, but that was never the goal, it's not something I particularly care about one way or the other. What I care about is quality. Er, it turns out that it's easier to get quality when you have more people participating and when you judge er, the quality of someone's work on its own merits, rather than er, paying too much attention to their credentials. At the same time we really love when experts come er, we really try to have an environment that's very welcoming of people who know what they're talking about. Um, it's funny because we have this er, reputation for being very er, anti elitist but we're really not anti elitist, we're actually quite snobby within the community er, based on er, you know if you know what you're talking about, and you can back it up, that's honourable and that's really important to us. So our, our concepts about quality er, end up being very um, old fashioned in a certain way um, you know we er, don't regard ourselves as some kind of open free speech forum, where every opinion is as valid as every other opinion. Um, we really want good work, good quality work um, and when we think about what counts as a reliable source, um, it depends very much on the context um, you know if you're, if you're looking at some er, if you want to know what Yasah Arafat said er, you know in 2001 um, the New York Times is a very good source. Um, and er, that's perfectly valid. If you are er, writing some very detailed entry about some concept in physics um, you really want a physics journal. Er, you want some pure review material to back it up, not er, an article in Time Magazine you know um, if you want to write about a TV show then maybe a TV Guide is a good source er, you know, and again if you, you know if you want to write about um, you know er, the, something very scientific or there's something very detailed in history, then you wouldn't use TV Guide as a source. So it depends on the context and the communities er, been very, very thoughtful at really working through er, trying to figure out when is something of a reliable source, for what, and so on and so forth.

IntervÌý It seems that this is something that's evolved over the years?

Jimmy Oh yea I mean in the early days um, we didn't have a lot of policy just because it wasn't necessary. Er, you know when you start and someone is typing er, for the first time you know Africa is a continent and hitting save, and that's our first entry on Africa, you know. It's very simple um, you don't really need a lot of er, detailed er, policy to get started, but then the policy evolves over time, people er, begin to run into controversies er, and then they start to think about how do we resolve this controversy, how can we write Wikipedia so that it's neutral. Um, and one of the best ways is to say well lets, lets reach out to the sources, right let's just report on what the valid sources say. Um, so that's been, yea it's been something that's grown up over a long period of time.

IntervÌý It seems interesting to me that um the, the variation of the number of Wikipedia pages in the different languages, I mean in many ways by creating Wikipedia pages or allowing people to create Wikipedia pages in different languages, you're almost creating those silos that were, you know the web is trying to break down, is that not, how do you make sure that there's cross pollination between those ideas?

Jimmy Right well I mean one of the things that we er, do er, sometimes people ask um, you know do you have a Canadian version of Wikipedia. This is silly right, we have English and er, there are many different varieties of English of course, but they're all together in English Wikipedia. Um, then we have the German and French and so on and so forth, and so now we have over two hundred different languages er, we now have like a hundred and seventy five languages that have a thousand articles which is small you know, but that's still a, a legitimate project that's getting started. ÌýAnd yea we do encourage people er, to make note of what's going on in other languages, but the only people that can do that are people who are bilingual er, who can read in multi languages, and there are people who do that. Now one of the reasons English is the largest er, language is that English is by far the largest language on the internet. And it's the largest second language all around the world. So we see a lot of things like people writing in their, in their native tongue and then they'll also put it into English. So sometimes people will say um, you know and, and there's almost nothing you can do to offend a German Wikipedian more than saying well how many articles have you translated into you know er, you know, so German Wikipedia, so it's a translation of the English. No, no, no it's not, they, they wrote it independently, er, translations are a small part of what people do um, and some people do, they take their time to go and like compare two versions and look for er, interesting er, contradictions er, you know one of the classics um, is um, you know for, well who invented the airplane.

Interv ÌýÌý Ìý Ìý ÌýWell I suppose in the western sense it would be the Wright Brothers.

Jimmy The Wright Brothers right, we were all taught, all English speakers are taught this when you're er, you know in second grade, the Wright Brothers invented the airplane, it's a simple and uncontroversial a fact as that you know the moon goes around the earth. Um, in France similarly they are taught, just as uncontroversially that some guy from Brazil who was in France, you know, he invented the plane, and, and in fact the, the true story is actually er, there's some validity to both accounts. And um, you know it's very complicated, you know this is, it's like many inventions, it was part of a spirit of the times and there were a lot of different people doing a lot of different things, um, and who you assign priority to depends on how you define the first flight and so on and so forth. And so it turns out that you know at some point, somebody from French Wikipedia noticed, they said wow what English Wikipedia and French Wikipedia are completely different on this point. And then in the English Wikipedia, people sort of went back and looked at it and er, studied the history more and now the English Wikipedia has a much more nuanced story er, in the history of aviation. ÌýYou know it sort of explains, there are many competing claims and er, here is the different achievements that different people did. And then you get a much richer um, idea, so I think that kind of cross cultural pollination er, is er, really important and really er, valid to help us all move beyond er, second grade.

Interv ÌýÌý Ìý Ìý ÌýÌýWell the danger though is that because there are so many um, English language accounts um, that these are the people who are actually contributing the knowledge that the people who own the knowledge, they're the sort of elites as it were on Wikipedia, because they have this knowledge. And if people first come to the English page, then they're only getting that information from that point of view, without realising that perhaps they themselves could contribute to it.

Jimmy Yea but I mean a lot of people do contribute and particularly for English Wikipedia as I said er, because English is the largest second language around the world, it tends to be very multi cultural. I once was in Lithuania meeting with a, I had a meeting with a head of parliament there, and he's a lovely guy who um, is really into encyclopaedias, he was on the board of a encyclopaedia project there, and when I went in, he had printed out er, some, an entry on a famous battle that happened some hundred years ago between Lithuania and Poland er, and he said um, er, he could read er, English, Lithuanian, Polish and German, he had printed off four. And he said er, that the German version was just quite small, there wasn't much to be said about it, the Lithuanian version was from the Lithuanian perspective, and the Polish version was from the Polish perspective, but then he said the English version was really fabulous and it looked to him like the, the Lithuanians and Poles had come together there to fight about it, and sort of reach some compromise. And then we later went and looked and that's exactly what had happened. Um, and then people, you know from there um, went back er, into the Lithuanian version, the Polish version, and those began to mature over time.

So these kinds of things you know er, English is an interesting language; it's kind of a melting pot language um. But we're really very focused on people writing in their mother tongue. Um, in India for example um, there's been a situation in India for a long time, where um, obviously English is a very important language for the elites in India um, there's you know over twenty different languages in India um, and the, in order to communicate with each other, they could use Hindi, Many people are English as the elites tend to do. And um, what's happening though is that a lot of the people there who er, are on the internet, they're using English a lot but they really have a great passion for their mother tongue, and so now they're beginning you know working in er, you know Canada, Bengali, all of the different languages of India. And those are growing very quickly, so that's something we're very um, excited about.