Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Jimbo interview/Questions

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Notwithstanding any other text on this page, the questions submitted here must be released under both the GNU Free Documentation License and the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. This will allow Wikinews to cover the interview as well.

[edit] Questions

Submit questions below (or anonymously e-mail them via this link, or to WikipediaSignpost@gmail.com)

  • What do you think are the biggest problems facing (and/or limiting the growth of) Wikipedia today? How do you plan to overcome it? Raul654 04:51, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Recently, there were revelations about organized attempts by US Congressmen to whitewash their articles. What is your take on this, as well as earlier reports of Corporate astroturphing? Raul654 04:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What kind of cool new features/announcements can we expect to see in the next year or two? Raul654 04:55, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
  • How has your life changed throughout the entire Wiki-expirience? WikieZach 00:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Given that you desysopped 5 admins and we now have hundreds of admins all with the same admin access, how do you propose that we stop wheel wars? - Ta bu shi da yu 03:44, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Further question: how do you propose to stop administrator abuse now that we appear to have adopted a 1RR rule in regards to admin actions? (in other words, noone can now reverse another admins decision, no matter how poor it might have been) - Ta bu shi da yu 14:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Where do you see Wikipedia in 10 years? Raul654 04:26, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Here's a big question: The values reflected in certain Wikipedia policies (anti-censorship, neutral point-of-view) are problematic in cultures where freedom of expression is limited, as the blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China and arguably the Muhammad cartoons controversy attest. As Wikipedia expands internationally, do you foresee Wikipedia becoming increasingly controversial in countries where "Western values" are seen as a potential threat? Do Wikipedia's policies, by their very nature, promote Western values? Do you think Wikipedia will become (or is already) part of a "Clash of Civilizations"? Considering the "Muhammad cartoons controversy", do you anticipate that Wikipedia and Wikipedians might become targets of violence in the future because of content considered offensive by some? --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 04:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • You've said that "Wikimedia's mission is to give the world's knowledge to every single person on the planet in their own language." But very few of the wikipedias in the languages of third-world countries are seeing as much activity as the first-world language wikipedias. Do you have any ideas on how this could be turned around? GeorgeStepanek\talk 07:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If you fell through a time warp and had to start Wikipedia all over again, is there anything you would do differently? A written Constitution, or stricter image fair use criteria? Anville 10:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What is the strangest article you've read on Wikipedia? Thryduulf 12:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What is your single greatest wish for Wikipedia? Thryduulf 12:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What single event do you consider will mark the definitive point when Wikipedia is seen as as respectable as a traditional encyclopaedia? Thryduulf 12:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • How can the wikipedia effectively explain to the public its open-contribution model without simultaneously scaring the public about innacurate information --Larsinio 17:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • How much of a role do you feel the Wikipedia community (and the communities of its sister projects) should have in the running of the Wikimedia Foundation? Do you see an increasing separation of the organization from the projects. If so, do you regard that as a beneficial or a potential problem? (Received via the anonymous e-mail service)
  • Over the course of the last million articles, what was your lowest or toughest moment as head of this encyclopedic experiment? Conversely, what was the most shining moment? —thames 21:10, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Most important decisions on Wikimedia projects are handled with consensus. However, we sometimes have to deal with legal issues, especially related to copyright law. For instance, we as a community may need to decide whether to consider a certain use "fair", or how to deal with conflicting copyright claims. Dealing with this through consensus is problematic, since we can't do something illegal even if there is widespread misguided support for it. In general, how can we as a community deal with these issues? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 21:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What kind of tools to improve and keep quality of articles can we expect in near future? Pavel Vozenilek 00:05, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Will Wikipedia ever go commercial, such as host advertisements, etc? --Vsion (talk) 02:36, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Is there any effort to address the PRC's blocking of wikipedia or to alleviate its effect? Do you have plans to visit Asia to promote wikipedia? --Vsion (talk) 02:36, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What can be done to encourage editors living on a shoestring budget to continue to volunteer their time and resources towards something which offers no real-world recognition or payment for their services? Alphax τεχ 08:46, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • The last fundraising drive was less successful than had been anticipated. Do you see a shortage of money holding back Wikipedia/Wikimedia in the short-to-medium-term, and are there any plans to bring in income from sources other than individual donations? --OpenToppedBus - Talk to the driver 11:33, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What ability do you consider to be the most important for a wikipedian?Image:Weather rain.pngSoothingR 18:54, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What has been your single biggest frustration with Wikipedia? And do you believe that the grievance will be diminished with continual growth? or be exacerrated? - Hahnchen 19:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Why did you make wikipedia? Jakken 19:23, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Do you ever just get tired of Wikipedia and wish it would go away? Seriously. Casey Abell 20:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If you had not founded Wikipedia, just got refered to it by a friend, how active a contributor do you think that you'd be? --Celestianpower háblame 21:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If you could start Wikipedia again from scratch, what would you have differently about it? smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 11:16, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If you could only keep one Wikipedia article, what would it be?--βjweþþ (talk) 19:54, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • How many Wikipedia articles have you read?--βjweþþ (talk) 19:54, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What would need to happen before you put ads on, for example, the search results page? How much money do you think that would raise? Would such ads have a legal impact on any other part of Wikipedia? --James S. 23:26, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
  • How do you feel we will be able to reach Wikipedia 1.0? A WikiProject I am involved with would like to vet articles related to our subject area in order to start thinking about a specific WikiReader, however the tools we have for vetting our articles are crude at best. The Featured article process seems too slow, and the article validation feature seems to have died a quiet death. Are you planning a big push on this front? Jacoplane 12:01, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Important question - I would love to see an answer to this question! Wikipedia:Stable versions also seems to have died. What are our plans with pushing to 1.0? What's your take on this? - Ta bu shi da yu 11:59, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
  • People of many political and cultural backgrounds seem to be able to collaborate here with a relative degree of harmony—certainly more than one would expect from watching, say, prime-time debate shows on American TV. Do you think your attitudes about Wikipedia and your drive to work on it in the first place would be different if you had grown up with a different political outlook? Anville 13:07, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Budget permitting, are there any plans to increase the number of wikipedia servers, specifically into the less developed countries? =Nichalp «Talk»= 14:07, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Do you consider wikilawyering dangerous to the functioning of Wikipedia? Specifically, is Wikipedia's resistance against malicious users weakened by a domination of bureaucratic proceduralism over common sense? If so, what can be done about it? Kosebamse 17:32, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • As of currently, Wikipedia is a very popular website. Do you feel Wikipedia, one day, could become as big as Google or Yahoo! is, becoming a common mention around the world or in the news? - Enzo Aquarius 03:04, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Classic Barbra Walters question: If you were a tree, which tree would you be, and why?-Ravedave 21:57, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • As the wikimedia foundation grows how do you see your role changing and evolving?-Ravedave 21:57, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • If you had unlimited developer time and hardware resources what feature would you add to wikipedia? -Ravedave 21:57, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Many editors including some who have many good edits have quit wikipedia because of edit disputes and are being replaced by many editors who haven't read much of wikipedia policy at all. Edit warring has also become necessary for many editors trying to keep articles npov and encyclopedic. Many say that wikipedia will end because of this. How can you fix this problem?--a.n.o.n.y.m t 22:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • To date, the development of Wikipedia has been by a community that has followed a political model, with citizens of various classes; laws; and a judiciary. In essence, a micronation. Can you comment on whether changing the model to be that of an NGO or a publisher would give Wikipedia more respect and authority? Indeed, are respect and authority aims that Wikipedia should strive for, or is gathering and disseminating knowledge enough of an end in itself? User:Noisy | Talk 11:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Does the fact that Wikipedia is hosted in the United States pose a problem with relation to Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias, since Wikipedia operates under U.S. law? Would you prefer to see Wikipedia hosted on United Nations territory, and operating under international law and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights? User:Noisy | Talk 14:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • As the founder of Wikipedia, what do you think the main goal to improve Wikipedia should be this year, and how can it be achieved? Carcharoth 14:27, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Why do you feel it necessary for the Wikimedia Foundation and yourself to respond to so many everyday outside complaints about article content? With Wikipedia's dramatic growth, might it not be advisible to position itself as a content provider like an ISP or web server and insulate itself from the increasing potential liability? Tfine80 15:55, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia is now probably the biggest and most popular body of GNU licenced text on the internet. Do you think this will help to promote the goals of the Free Software Movement and the GNU project in general, especially in their push for liberalisation of copyright law and abolition of software patents? Longbow4u 20:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Is some kind of copyright reform inevitable to re-align common usage in Wikipedia with current US copyright law, especially with a view to "Fair Use"-Images or representation of trademarked names and images. Longbow4u 20:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Would you be opposed to call Wikipedia also "GNU/Wikipedia"? Longbow4u 20:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Did you talk with Richard Stallman of Free Software Foundation about reform of GNU FDL, for example to make it two-ways compatible with certain similarly free Creative Commons licenses? Do you think such a reform is desirable, e.g. to allow distribution of Wikipedia in other forms than books or software, like sound or newspaper? Longbow4u 20:44, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • As work in and for Wikipedia fosters trust with other Wikipedians, even internationally, and engenders strong identification with the project, do you think there will, in the long term, one day a kind of "United States of Wikipedia"? Longbow4u 20:55, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What is Wikipedia's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness? How can it make best use of that strength, and overcome that weakness? -- ALoan (Talk) 22:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • English Wikipedia is approaching 1 million articles, but less than 1 in a thousand are Featured articles. The List of featured articles English Wikipedia should have has few featured articles, and surveys of articles chosen at random (1 2 3 4) show that many articles are poorly written. How can we get from here to an encyclopedia of well-written articles? Or should be not worry too much about coverage and content? -- ALoan (Talk) 22:04, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • When will Chinese Wikinews be set up? It has been requested by many willing contributors from among the tens of millions of Chinese speakers not on the mainland, and all the infrastructure has already been made ready at Meta for at least half a year. The rationale (and it is obvious that you meant well in this) that it would endanger Chinese Wikipedia has become a bit lame, since that has been censored anyways. Not setting it up for so long seems to be a very negative precedent for freedom in the Wikimedia projects. Will there be any change in your position in the near future? (Received via anonymous e-mail)
  • How do you think we can encourage more contributors to cover areas (history, literature) which are lacking? r3m0t talk 14:55, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
  • The GFDL is not very useful for documents that are not very long as you have to attach about three pages of legal text to everything. If you did it over again would of you choose a license which made it easy to distribute wikipedia in smaller forms, like CC-BY, or CC-BY-SA? Bawolff 21:15, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • As we near our millionth article, do you have any special plans. For example, maybe a special logo, or a banner akin to the You have new messages banner but saying We have reached our millionth article? ςפקιДИτς ☺ ☻ 23:01, 20 February 2006 (UTC)