Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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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.
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Chapter 2: 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.
I think, and I think that's a huge problem. I mean, I do think, you know, it's really important. I mean, one of the problems that we've seen is that a lot of the media in response to the changing and very difficult financial model for journalism, they've chased after really partisan audiences. And so, you know, sometimes you read something and you're like,
Yeah, that was interesting, that was good, but I'm not sure I got both sides of the story there. I live in the UK and we have a, just an example, two quality newspapers, The Guardian and The Telegraph, left-leaning, right-leaning. They're both great newspapers, but I often
read one and I'm like oh but and then I go read the other and I'm like yeah you probably should have been somewhere in the middle both of you and it would have been I think a better story had you said well you know we got one side of the story but we actually had to go out and find somebody to tell us a little bit about the other side you know you can't be
to like the moon is made of rocks or is it cheese? Who knows? I don't mean that. But I mean, seriously, hopefully cheese. But, you know, like seriously thinking about like who are we talking to and are we getting to the bottom of this?
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Chapter 3: How does Wikipedia maintain trust in a digital age?
With media, with trust in media here in the United States declining and having declined over the last few years, In your view, is there something that we can do better, that the media can do better, that it can borrow from what has worked at Wikipedia, what has worked with the methods of trust that you've studied, that can make us build trust again with our audiences?
Yeah, I mean, well, the good news is that the financial press, like Bloomberg, is still among the most trusted. And I think that's because by the mandate of what you're trying to do, informing business people and investors, you kind of have to be like ruthlessly objective. You're not chasing after partisan audiences and things like that. But I do think that's a big data. Data is important.
Transparency. I think, you know, realistically, you know, one of the things that Wikipedia does that's kind of odd is we'll have a, you know, at the top of a page, the neutrality of this article has been disputed. And I always... We've all seen it. Yeah, we've all seen it. And I always say, you know, I...
I kind of wish sometimes the New York Times would put a banner up just saying, you know, we had a big fight in the newsroom. We weren't quite sure. So like we decided to roll this. But yeah, yeah. But here's a little bit of their inside thinking like we did want to report this. We're not sure we've got the full story yet because that pretending to be perfection all the time.
People see through that and they know, of course, and I think they're willing to say, yeah, like actually journalism is quite hard, you know, so a little more transparency is always good.
Do you get pressure a lot from companies, politicians, individuals to like change an entry?
No, not really. I mean, people, you know, I meet a lot of people and people often are like, well, you know, my Wikipedia entry. What about this? What about that? And I'm like, yeah, send us an email. Like, you know, we'll have somebody look at that. That's all fine. In general, no.
And actually, we're very... But you really just say, just send him an email and I'm not going to do anything about it.
Kind of, yeah. Okay. But no, sometimes people have a legitimate point. They're like, oh, well, I, you know, I did this thing and it was in the press and, you know, it's like, oh, okay, well, maybe we just overlooked it. And that's, that's great. But, you know, at a deeper level, one of the things that's really important is, you know, we aren't funded by governments.
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Chapter 4: What are the seven rules of trust according to Jimmy Wales?
We're funded by people giving their $20. And that makes a big difference for our intellectual independence. We're not worried like, oh, if we've got something negative about whatever, then we might lose our donation.
How is the fundraising going? Because I feel like I've gotten a lot of messages from you throughout the years.
Throughout the years.
Chapter 5: How does Wikipedia's purpose differ from social media?
Please, from Jimmy Wills on Wikipedia. We've all seen it. Yeah, we've all seen it. Is it going okay? Is funding going okay? It's okay, yeah. We've been, you know, we're stable. We're very cautious with money, so we always try to build our reserves and so on. And then, you know, recently, I don't know, Elon tweeted defund Wikipedia. I think we made about $5 million that day. Yeah.
So you can text Elon. I know you guys have been in touch. You can text him and say, tweet about us again when it gets to the end of the year. Well, you have had some conversations.
It's time to raise money. I'm Carol Masser. And I'm Tim Stenevek, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast.
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