Talk:Wikipedia founder speaks at US law school/Notes

These are the notes that Pingswept took during the speech:

Crappy transcript: 6 self-described Wikipedians and 1 Wikinewsian 20 people have edited WP

German and English wikipedia RC running rcbirds

"Wikipedia and the Digital Divide"

"Flying without a net" did not prepare slides.

50 people

Freely licensed (4 freedoms of free software) "We adhere to that."

"We can't just do our work in a website."

And in their own language.

Everyone can get an encyclopedia in a langiage that they are comfortable reading.

5th largest Wikipedia? You'll never guess.

6 million speak Swedish. People in Sweden do speak a lot of English. It's a very wired country.

Chinese-- 25000 articles. "not so strong where we really need to be" "Hindi, Arabic."

"Over 20 languages now have 10,000 articles."

Over 50 languages have over 1000 articles.

"Economic wealth" "degree of penetration of internet" "the number of people who speak english"

Hindi: English keyboards. "Not used to typing Hindi" "I don't know how to help with that."

Question: "Can anyone start a new language?"

Artificial languages: "Next to go is going to be Klingon. The only reason it hasn't gone yet is that I am afraid of Klingons."

Bambara Wikipedia effort Kasper Souren in Mali with Geekcorps

$0.20 per article. "I'm actually a little skeptical of it."

The idea of paying academics to work on Wikipedia might be disruptive to the volunteer community.

Q: How much original vs. translated?

A small sample of the Hungarian Wikipedia was 20% translated, 80% original.

Q: how can we get the information to nonliterate people.

Sending illiterate people CDs "Might as well send them frisbees."

"We want to empower local entrepreneurs . . . to distribute Wikipedia content."

"There are a lot of people in the world who can't afford Britannica, but they can afford the printing. If we can provide the content for free . . ."

Q:Distribute in an audio searchable form?

Angela's report: cellphone penetration in Africa is high. They could call in and have a machine read to them over the phone.

Also, Wikibooks.

Q: "People call in and add new content?" "Gives new meaning to edit war-- people can call up and scream at each other."

Q: Why isn't the arabic wp working? An interesting case study. Very low publishing rate.

"OSI funded creation of a Russian language encyclopedia. . . . They hired a bunch of Russian academics to write" "They're interested now in the Arabic world."

They're thinking of how they can effectively spend money. Study: in the arabic world, there is not an encyclopedic tradition, but they do have biographies. Exception: Encycs for kids in Jordan.

Early seeding -- 1911 encyclopedia, CIA world fact book, Larry's text

Now the best way to seed it would be to start the English WP.

"Scholarships for students in exchange for articles written." "Maybe the way to finesse that would be to use that for seeding."

Q: Experts in field vs. populist? We just don't worry about it much.

Q: Talk of endowment? Catastrophic event?

"Really wonderful success with our fundraising."

"We are starting to get support from other types of institutions." Yahoo servers in Asia

Belnet, gov't ISP in Belgium

Kinesnet in Holland

Yahoo: "Few hundred thousand [dollars] of bandwidth is nothing to them"

"Red Cross for information, meaning large, international and independent . . ."

there is always the *possibility* of ads, but jwales is opposed.

"I wouldn't be where I am today if I weren't perversely and pathologically optimistic."

Q: Dave Brower how do you control Are there mechanisms to control for misinformation?

Q:Contact with the United Nations?

Dinner with Dutch Minister of Education.

"We have to mature into an organization that can interface with those organizations."

Event in Tunisia?

Editing Jimbo Wales user page? http://members.cox.net/huagen/test.html

Q: what about China?

More worried about Hindi.

"Maybe I could give a talk at Harvard at night and get a bunch of Harvard people excited about it."

Q:What is the utility of WP in 10 years to people in, eg Botswana?

People need their own local knowledge. Translated English wikipedia is not good enough. There has to be some localization.

"Just translating--I don't think that's really what people need."

"Something like the moon is fairly universal to all planets."

Q: Machine translation?

They suck.

"But now it's gotten exciting . . . but go ahead, go home . . . you're not going to offend me if you leave."

Q: what about China?

More worried about Hindi.

"Maybe I could give a talk at Harvard at night and get a bunch of Harvard people excited about it."

Q:What is the utility of WP in 10 years to people in, eg Botswana?

People need their own local knowledge. Translated English wikipedia is not good enough. There has to be some localization.

"Just translating--I don't think that's really what people need."

"Something like the moon is fairly universal to all planets."

Q: Machine translation?

They suck.

"But now it's gotten exciting . . . but go ahead, go home . . . you're not going to offend me if you leave."

Q:(j Tobacman) What motivates people to contribute? Widely reported to be addictive. It's fast, the rewards are inconsistent.

Early hype of the internet Then popups and porn spam

People sharing information.

"People are really captivated by the big-picture goal."

Explanation of rcbirds edit summary, user name or IP, flags on bottom, article, characters +/-

Q:Censorship?

Blocked twice by China. Once around the time of Tiananmen Square. One other time. Never any explanation.

CAn't necessarily vouch for it.

Chinese wikipedians went down to the ISP to get a form, and there was no form because no one had ever done it before.

---

Note about the notes: I actually paid 1 US$ per article that I deemed acceptable for the Bambara Wikipedia. Guaka (talk) 23:20, 23 June 2009 (UTC)