3 ms·

Wikipedia Co-Founder Jimmy Wales Was Educated in a One-Room Schoolhouse

9 points by Bostonian 5y ago

akolbe 5y ago
"From the start in 2001, I envisioned Wikipedia as a company with just one employee who did coding. The rest would be handled by those who volunteered to write and edit entries and monitor them." A lot of poetic licence here, given that Wikipedia was Larry Sanger's idea and the Wikimedia Foundation was not established until 2003 ... and today has over 500 paid staff.
codevark 5y ago
So was I. So what?
consumer451 5y ago
https://archive.md/BRtsI https://archive.md/BRtsI
- akolbe 5y ago
  Thanks for the link.
quacked 5y ago
A one-room schoolhouse--what a concept. I leave this essay here, on a low-comment HN thread, a similar method by which I found it several years ago on another post about older schooling methods: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html
akolbe 5y ago
The article asks Wales: "Worried about the accuracy of Wiki?" His reply: "We make it as good as we possibly can, but we know it isn’t perfect. On the other hand, it’s pretty good." Well, people need to understand that the Wikimedia Foundation – which Jimmy Wales founded and still is a board member of today – is a platform provider, just like YouTube or Twitter. As such, they don't really impact the quality of the content directly. That is all done by unpaid volunteers. By the way, there was a thread on the Wikimedia Foundation's wealth and the Wikipedia fundraising banners yesterday. (I think it's safe to assume that this homely WSJ piece coming out on the same day the fundraising banners went up on Wikipedia wasn't entirely a coincidence.) See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29402716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29402716 and https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais... for more Wikipedia financial info.
- akolbe 5y ago
  Just yesterday, someone posted on Twitter: "I'm never sure when is a good time to share that I made up a person on Wikipedia sixteen years ago and he is still there" https://twitter.com/aobate/status/1466101687773503493 https://twitter.com/aobate/status/1466101687773503493 The biography still exists today (though probably not for much longer, so here is an archive link as well): https://archive.md/BBRC4 https://archive.md/BBRC4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Farrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Farrow It reads: ---o0o--- Dr. William Henry Farrow (20 June 1805? – 17 November 1876) was a physician born and trained in England. Farrow practiced in Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario. He is most notable for providing one of the first detailed descriptions of synesthesia.[1] Farrow reported the details of the illness, (in this case temporary) in an article published in the Lower Canada Journal of Medicine.[2] Footnotes 1. New, Chester (1929). Lord Durham. Oxford University Press. pp. 374–376. 2. "An Analysis of Confusion Occurring between the Senses". The Lower Canada Journal of Medicine. The Medical Society of Lower Canada. 12: 56–62. September 1838. ---o0o--- It's always worth remembering that Wikipedia has different sorts of quality problems from conventional encyclopedias. Its quality control system, for example, is not systematic or methodical, but completely haphazard, because everything is done by volunteers. And volunteers volunteer for what they feel like doing.
- akolbe 5y ago
  Here's a few more historical "quality issues": https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday_fails/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday... Also: "The greatest movie that never was" https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/wikipedia-hoax-yuri-gadyukin-nitrate-movie/ https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/wikipedia-hoax-yuri-gadyuk...

9 points by Bostonian 5y ago

"From the start in 2001, I envisioned Wikipedia as a company with just one employee who did coding. The rest would be handled by those who volunteered to write and edit entries and monitor them." A lot of poetic licence here, given that Wikipedia was Larry Sanger's idea and the Wikimedia Foundation was not established until 2003 ... and today has over 500 paid staff.

codevark 5y ago

So was I. So what?

consumer451 5y ago

https://archive.md/BRtsI https://archive.md/BRtsI

akolbe 5y ago
Thanks for the link.

quacked 5y ago

A one-room schoolhouse--what a concept. I leave this essay here, on a low-comment HN thread, a similar method by which I found it several years ago on another post about older schooling methods: https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html

akolbe 5y ago

The article asks Wales: "Worried about the accuracy of Wiki?" His reply: "We make it as good as we possibly can, but we know it isn’t perfect. On the other hand, it’s pretty good." Well, people need to understand that the Wikimedia Foundation – which Jimmy Wales founded and still is a board member of today – is a platform provider, just like YouTube or Twitter. As such, they don't really impact the quality of the content directly. That is all done by unpaid volunteers. By the way, there was a thread on the Wikimedia Foundation's wealth and the Wikipedia fundraising banners yesterday. (I think it's safe to assume that this homely WSJ piece coming out on the same day the fundraising banners went up on Wikipedia wasn't entirely a coincidence.) See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29402716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29402716 and https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundraising/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais... for more Wikipedia financial info.

akolbe 5y ago
Just yesterday, someone posted on Twitter: "I'm never sure when is a good time to share that I made up a person on Wikipedia sixteen years ago and he is still there" https://twitter.com/aobate/status/1466101687773503493 https://twitter.com/aobate/status/1466101687773503493 The biography still exists today (though probably not for much longer, so here is an archive link as well): https://archive.md/BBRC4 https://archive.md/BBRC4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Farrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Farrow It reads: ---o0o--- Dr. William Henry Farrow (20 June 1805? – 17 November 1876) was a physician born and trained in England. Farrow practiced in Montreal, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario. He is most notable for providing one of the first detailed descriptions of synesthesia.[1] Farrow reported the details of the illness, (in this case temporary) in an article published in the Lower Canada Journal of Medicine.[2] Footnotes 1. New, Chester (1929). Lord Durham. Oxford University Press. pp. 374–376. 2. "An Analysis of Confusion Occurring between the Senses". The Lower Canada Journal of Medicine. The Medical Society of Lower Canada. 12: 56–62. September 1838. ---o0o--- It's always worth remembering that Wikipedia has different sorts of quality problems from conventional encyclopedias. Its quality control system, for example, is not systematic or methodical, but completely haphazard, because everything is done by volunteers. And volunteers volunteer for what they feel like doing.
akolbe 5y ago
Here's a few more historical "quality issues": https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday_fails/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday... Also: "The greatest movie that never was" https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/wikipedia-hoax-yuri-gadyukin-nitrate-movie/ https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/wikipedia-hoax-yuri-gadyuk...