Access the Complete Interview (via Silicon.com)

The interview runs three pages. Here are a few points that we found to be most interesting. However, the entire interview is a “must read.”

+ “One of the things that’s important to know about Wikipedia is that the entries that are edited by hundreds of people are really anomalies.”–Jimmy Wales

+ This small group mentality can be a blessing when editing articles but it is also one of the site’s biggest weaknesses: Wikipedia’s pool of contributors can tend towards the homogenous – or “a certain type of person”, in Wales’ words.

+ “Right now a lot of the Wikipedia editing is done by people who are very technologically savvy,” he says. “What we see is 20s and 30s computer geeks, mostly male – tragically 85 per cent male.

+ “We know there are geeks who aren’t computer geeks,” he adds. “We know there are people who are really knowledgeable about poetry, who might not really feel comfortable editing a template or figuring out our table syntax… but who have a tonne of knowledge that they would be happy to share with people, and they would love to meet other people from their community who are interested in discussing and putting up some knowledge and we sometimes aren’t addressing their needs very well so that’s one of the things we’re focused on.”

+ To this end, there will be a small grant of almost $900,000 from the US-based Stanton Foundation to improve Wikipedia’s writing and editing processes for first time users to help boost usability and accessibility.

Access the Complete Interview (via Silicon.com)

Source: Silicon.com

See Also: Rankings: Top 10 Countries by Engagement (Average Minutes Per Visitor Spent on Wikimedia Foundation Sites)

See Also: Complete List of Wikimedia Foundation Sites

See Also: Jimmy Wales Interviewed by Yale Daily News (October 9, 2009)

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 and is filed under Reference Tools, Resources, Social Media, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.