Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Talks New Book
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome. This is The Michelle Hussein Show. I'm Michelle Hussein. I speak with people like Elon Musk. I think I've done enough. And Shonda Rhimes. That's so cute. This will be a place where every weekend you can count on one essential conversation to help make sense of the world. So please join me, listen and subscribe to The Michelle Hussein Show from Bloomberg Weekend, wherever you get your podcasts. You certainly ask interesting questions.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Jimmy Wales is founder of Wikipedia. He has a new book out, The Seven Rules of Trust, a blueprint for building things that last, that book out tomorrow. And lucky for us, he joins us right here in studio. Welcome, welcome. Nice to have you here with us.
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's like a spaceship in here. It's amazing. Some call it the fishbowl.
We call it home. This book about trust, when did you start writing it?
It was a couple years ago. I had had some ideas around this and yeah, just started and it's obviously turned out to be quite timely as we have a lot of issues around trust in society and I want to encourage people to let's get back to a society of trust.
You know, it's funny, Carol and I spent a lot of time talking about this ahead of the interview because Wikipedia sort of seems, and look, it's had its challenges, it's had its controversies, but for things that are online, it's kind of this weird utopia in the sense that- It's kind of remarkable. Yeah, it's really remarkable. We know anonymous people online oftentimes are full of vitriol and hate. We can see that even when people use their names on social media platforms. We lock our doors when we leave the house. Why does trust work on Wikipedia but kind of seems like nowhere else right now.
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, you know, one of the seven rules of trust that is most meaningful in that regard is purpose. Like Wikipedia has a very simple purpose, which is to build an encyclopedia. And we make all our decisions around that and the rules about participation and so forth. And that's very different from social media where there isn't a clear purpose other than free speech and openness. And therefore, that toxicity really creeps in quite a lot in social media. You know, people say outrageous things because they get rewarded for it. They get more followers, they get more engagement, and the algorithms love that. about clickbait all the time, clickbait all the time. And, you know, that's very different from the world of Wikipedia, where, I mean, thank goodness, our headlines are so boring.
There's no clickbait, you know, it's like the article on Thomas Jefferson's called Thomas Jefferson, you know, but it's it does what it says on the 10. You know, that's a way that's a very British expression, I'm afraid. But But yeah, I mean, I do think that that having a simple purpose is a part of what keeps us focused and keeps our community focused.
How do you describe facts? How do you determine facts? And I am amazed. I mean, I've been doing this a few years. And I felt like when I started, it was very clear. Fact versus fiction in terms of reporting and doing stories. And I feel like there's a lot of gray area. And I just feel like a fact is a fact. So how do you guys determine what's a fact in an entry?
Yeah. I mean, we're really old fashioned, like what we look for are reliable sources. So we want, you know, sort of academic research or quality newspapers, quality magazines, quality books, really old fashioned. And, you know, The idea that we should treat the New England Journal of Medicine as the same as Social Media Influencer Online is obviously just wrong.
What inspired Jimmy Wales to write 'The Seven Rules of Trust'?
You really want facts. And that's what people want from Wikipedia. They don't want... Sources matter. Sources really matter. Having a good quality source is what it's all about.
But why don't sources matter to everybody? And other people will say, okay, I believe this source is reliable.
Mm-hmm.
So like, you know what I mean? Like we're living in like different worlds.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:50
2
What inspired Jimmy Wales to write 'The Seven Rules of Trust'?
3:50–5:22
3
How does Wikipedia maintain trust in a digital age?
5:22–7:25
4
What are the seven rules of trust according to Jimmy Wales?
7:25–7:42
5
How does Wikipedia's purpose differ from social media?
7:42–9:14
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Bloomberg Talks
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