As one of the most popular websites in the world, Wikipedia helps define our common understanding of just about everything. It’s the closest thing the internet has to a public utility. Founded in 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia has always operated as a nonprofit with a decentralized system of editing by mostly anonymous volunteers. There are rules for how people should engage on the site (cordially) and how changes are made (transparently). That has led some to call Wikipedia “the last best place on the internet.”
But recently, the site has become a favorite target of Elon Musk, congressional Republicans and right-wing influencers, who all claim that Wikipedia is biased. (Sanger now says the same.) In many ways, this tension is a microcosm of broader conversations we’re having about consensus, civility, shared reality, truth and facts.
Now Jimmy Wales has written a book titled “The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last,” which will be published this month. In it, Wales tries to apply the lessons of Wikipedia’s success to our increasingly partisan, trust-depleted world. I talked to Wales about what, in his view, makes Wikipedia great, the various threats it’s facing and his persistent belief that most people are acting in good faith. And a note: Wales and I spoke several weeks before a man with a gun walked up on the stage at a Wikipedia conference in Manhattan on Friday. You can read more about that incident here.
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This is a very tenuous moment for trust, and your new book is all about that. Big picture: How would you describe our current trust deficit? I draw a distinction between what’s going on with politics, journalism, the culture wars and all of that, and day-to-day life. In day-to-day life, people still do trust each other. People generally think most people are basically nice and we’re all human beings bumping along on the planet trying to do our best. But the crisis we see in politics — trust in politicians, trust in journalism, trust in business — is coming from other places and is something that we can fix.
One reason you can be an authority on this is that you created something that scores very high on trust. Wikipedia isn’t as good as I want it to be. And that’s part of why people do have a certain amount of trust for us, because we try to be really transparent. You see the notice at the top of a page sometimes that says, “The neutrality of this page has been disputed,” or “The following section doesn’t cite any sources.” People like that. Not many places these days will tell you, Hey, we’re not so sure here.
The post Jimmy Wales Thinks the World Should Be More Like Wikipedia appeared first on New York Times.
