Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales visits the IIT Tech Fest
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The Internet is changing culture - we are moving from a culture of competition to a culture of collaboration.
WATBlog visited IIT’s Techfest this weekend – we attended Jimmy Wales’ lecture where he spoke about Wikipedia and a lot more. We also caught up with him after the session – Watch out for that on WATShow soon!
“The ideal encyclopedia should be radical, it should stop being safe”
- Head at Britannica in the 1960’s
In the Words of Jimmy Wales, Britannica is anything but radical today.
Wikipedia, officially launched on the 15th of January 2001 started off with a vision – Free access too all –free access of the sum of all human knowledge.
Here’s a physical representation of the content on WikiPedia
Wikipedia is a freely licensed encyclopaedia written by thousands of volunteers in many languages.
It is now the 9th most popular website in the World. It has based itself on the philosophy that free information and co creation is in the interests of every human being.
What is the WikiMedia Foundation?
It’s a charitable organization and is responsible for WikiPedia and all its sister projects.
Wikipedia spent only $ 2, 000, 000 in 2007 – a small amount to manage the 8th/ 9th most popular website in the World – pretty impressive.
Wikipedia gets most its money from charity and partnerships with companies such as Yahoo!
Wikipedia is not an archive – it’s a an encyclopedia. It’s not a textbook – it’s an essentialized summary of a topic – any topic.
WikiPedia wants to go global – and it is doing that by getting more people from more corners of the World – in more languages to write article on Wikipedia.
Here’s a list of Wikipedia’s Progress in Languages other than English – which by the way has 2 million + articles now.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesArticlesTotal.htm
To get students in different countries to update WikiPedia, Wikipedia trains students by setting up specialized centres – students are trained on how to edit Wikipedia. Thus the hope is that Wikipedia will be updated more by cultures all over the World – and that the Internet can move beyond English.
Jimmy Wales was asked why translation tools cannot be used to make Wikipedia more ‘Global’ – his answer was simple. If there is a translation tool that is good enough, then he would encourage it. As of now the translation tools he has seen are pretty ordinary. They cannot understand the finer nuances of language and culture.
Wikia, Wales’ current pet project is a separate organisation from Wikipedia
How is Wikia different from WikiPedia? Well to put it in Jimmy’s words – Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, Wikia is a Library!
A Wikia wiki is a compilation of information on a subject – it has a variety of information – it’s ‘long tail content’. So its diverse information, beyond encyclopaedia on anything from Puppets to the Ford Motor Co and Forgotten Realms (see the picture below)
Wikia search is a search engine – it’s a community controlled search engine with PRIVACY as a key – along with quality of course.
When one says community search, one is looking at building a community that modifies search, just like they modify Wikipedia – users have a profile as well – they can write short write ups for websites. So essentially Wikia search is an extension of citizen media. It’s also important to note that Wikia search looks to streamline search in such a way that search is optimized by the collective wisdom and tastes of people – rather than an engine. It is Social Centric Search.
Jimmy Wales’ Philosophy on How to design Things Online:
- He does not believe in creating restrictive social networks and limiting audiences.
- He believes in letting audiences freely behave and then social networks can be customized and adequate boundaries can be created – but essentially he does not believe in restriction and creating boundaries.
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I too attended the session, sitting in the last row…and noted few words from him:-
1. Internet is a consumer media.
2. Collaboration work is future.
3. Only News reporting won’t help.
4. He gave emphasis on “Information Vs Knowledge”.
True Rupesh,
1. The Internet is a consumer media and that is why we are now moving towards social search. Search as of now is a 1 way flow. Consumer media on the internet is typically 2.0. So that’s why he’s trying to making search 2.0 as well!Amazing!
2. Collaboration work is not the future - i would say its the present
3. Yes, news reporting won’t help - thats why he seeks to create online Libraries. He also stressed on the fact that consumer collaboration as of now cannot really match up to news media properties. I think that might change with http://www.theviewspaper.net
4. Wikipedia is information - an Encyclopedia, Wikia is a library - KNOWLEDGE!
Thanks Rupesh, you’ve made the post a whole lot richer!
Waiting for WatShow
I was told that even John “Maddog” Hall , the Open Source guru also attended this session
Srivatsan - WATShow will be up pretty soon
Raseel - Im not aware about John Hall Attending the session!
Thank you Harshil.
He was there. Check out the Video interview by the tech2 guys :
http://www.tech2.com/india/videos/tech-talk/check-out-the-new-open-source-cell-phone-the-openmoko/27371
yes jon hall (maddog) was there… waiting for jimmy in the background for Jimmy as the interview was conducted …
he spoke about viruses on linux… hehe
yea - correctly stated Ankur - he was there in the background! Btw guys the show is up!
http://www.watblog.com/2008/02/01/watshow-episode-12-exclusive-interview-with-jimmy-wales-wikipedia-founder/
Check it out - also do let me know about the editing - id love some feedback!