Hi everybody. Um, welcome. Uh, I feel

that uh, thematically it's important

that we start like this. Uh Jimmy Donal

Wales brackets born August 7th 1966

closed brackets also known as Jimbo

Wales is an American internet

entrepreneur and former financial

trader. Most notably he co-founded

Wikipedia a nonprofit free encyclopedia

and fandom brackets formerly Wikia close

brackets a for-profit wiki hosting

service. He also worked on Bombis,

Newia, Wiki Tribute, and Trust Cafe

brackets formerly WT Social. Nishancuma

brackets born 1985.

I don't know where my birth date has

been redacted from Wikipedia [laughter]

about that's one of the things we'll get

into with Jimbo in a second. He's a

British stand-up comedian, television

presenter, and podcaster. He became

known as the host of the Mass Report on

BBC 2 and Dave. He's also presented

NewsJack on BBC Radio 4 Extra. That's a

[ __ ] deep cut.

Joel and Nish versus the world on Comedy

Central, the news quiz on BBC Radio

Report, and Hello America on Quibby.

RIP. Since May 2023, he's been the

co-host of the political podcast Pod

Save the UK. Welcome, Jimbo.

>> Thank you. Wow, that's brilliant. I uh

is that were you reading live? That's

Wikipedia today.

>> That's Wikipedia today.

>> I wonder a screen grab from Wikipedia

that I took

They've they've removed my bit.

>> They've removed my British citizenship.

It recently said uh British American.

>> Really?

>> And now it just says American. I'm going

to have to complain.

>> Well, if you need to complain, I

actually know a guy. [laughter]

>> Yeah.

>> And that guy won't help. [laughter]

>> He's useless.

>> Um Jimmy, there's so much for us to

discuss. I I am 40 years old and a

relentless user of the internet. And

what that means is I kind of come of age

through the internet with Wikipedia. And

I've watched Wikipedia go from uh a

website that at university I was

constantly told by my professors, never

use Wikipedia, [clears throat]

don't site Wikipedia to a situation

where um as you referenced in the book,

The Guardian uh said this, in a

hysterical world, Wikipedia is a ray of

light. Wikipedia has sort of completed

this journey from something that

university professors were scared of to

now being a kind of bastion of trust in

the internet era. Um [clears throat]

just so before we get into the book, how

do you reflect on the journey that the

site has been on

>> in that period of time?

>> I mean it it's been amazing. You know,

we've got this fantastic community of uh

people who are really really passionate

about Wikipedia, really really

passionate about getting the facts

right, uh getting all the details right.

I mean, we have, you know, arguments

that go on for like 75

screens full about whether to use a dash

or an M dash, right? Very detailed

things about punctuation and spelling

and the names of rivers in Poland and

all this stuff. And that kind of energy

and passion has been such a great thing

to be a part of that it almost

overwhelms like whatever is going on

outside and all the noise of the world.

>> We're just like, okay, we're just trying

to

>> make Wikipedia. So, yeah, it's been

fantastic.

>> So, with the book, the book is

fantastic. And I'm interested to know

what the inception of this was because,

you know, the the theme of the book is

trust and the seven rules for how to

sort of restore trust. Um in the book

there's an incredible line where you say

trust is the heart of the problem it's

lost is both the symptom and the cause

and so I want to get in the conversation

to the place that we're in now in terms

of trust and where you see it but just

in terms of writing this book

what's the starting point for you with

this are you sitting there thinking I

need to write a book about trust and

then slowly realize that your journey

with Wikipedia is if anything kind of

case study in how to win and maintain

ain trust with a readership. I I imagine

100% of whom are even tonight like this.

This is a lot of people in this room who

I imagine use Wikipedia as a trusted

source. And at what point do you realize

that you've been sat on a perfect case

study for building and maintaining

trust? Yeah, you know, I mean, when I

when I started to write and I started

the book, I knew I had,

you know, I I the the world is there

there's this slew of misinformation,

disinformation, there's a culture war

going on. And then the internet has

turned toxic and all those kinds of

things. Meanwhile, I'm like, "Oh, wait,

hold on. But over here at Wikipedia,

that we live in a nice little place

that's very different from that." And

so, I started to write sort of about the

things I've learned along the way and

how to help. And then I only at that

point began to recognize oh actually the

theme that runs through all of this is

this question of trust. The fact that

Wikipedia is very trusting you know

anyone can come and start to edit. I

mean 99% of the pages or whatever are

completely open for editing without even

logging in which is mind-blowing even

today. And despite being so trusting, it

has managed to become trusted. Or maybe

not despite it, maybe because of it. And

so once I realized that, then that sort

of reformulated my thinking. I was like,

okay, right. So let's think about trust

and all the elements that went into it

in my experience and what are the things

that I've learned in in those areas and

u yeah ended up with a book. You so

initially your plan was to write a book

that just talked about your experience

with Wikipedia as a way of illustrating

a kind of you know utopian vision of

what the internet can be and then over

the course of this writing process you

realize the key theme here.

>> Yeah. And I you know I was very

insistent from the beginning. I'm like I

I don't want to write any kind of

autobiography.

Uh there elements of my story in the

book of course I can't write a history

of Wikipedia because I'm I'm embedded in

it. there's so many amazing people. If I

tried to write, I'd be I'd be in a

panic. I would leave somebody out who's

like important and meaningful and so on.

So, I'm like, I just can't do that. So,

it was really more, okay, what are the

ideas? What are the things that I hope

people can learn about Wikipedia, but

also that I think are useful and

practical for the rest of the world.

>> So,

and I mean, listen, there's a lot of

reasons why we trust Wikipedia. My

personal reason that I trust Wikipedia

is because I have seen firsthand how

effectively your page can be moderated

because in 2017 my Wikipedia page was

subject to a cyber attack by my

14-year-old cousin

who uh phoned me called me on FaceTime

and said, "You've got a Wikipedia page."

I said, "Yes." He wasn't really aware

loosely of what I did for a living. He

sort of was he's sort of vaguely aware

that I did something that meant I was on

television. But he was like, "You've got

a Wikipedia page." I was like, "Yeah."

And he went, "You know, anyone can edit

that." [laughter]

And what I then watched was a live

defacement

of my Wikipedia page. I've still got the

screen grabs here. It uh changed it to

Nishant Madame Lilykumar,

which is just a name his sister invented

[laughter] for me. They're Australian. I

assumed it was an Australian children's

TV character. No. Uh it said that I

weighed 7 billion billion tons.

Uh and it changed my website to a

website called buryme withmyoney.com.

I then [laughter]

uh discussed this on a podcast called

the bugle which is Andy's podcast and

has a very I would say like engaged

listenership a lot of whom I imagine are

Wikipedia editors. And so uh they then

got involved in changing the page. It

said in October 2017 uh the E4 channel

announced that Kumar was to front a new

chat show called Naked with Nish due to

air in February 2018. The format has

been described that a fully naked

Nishkumar will interrogate a host of

closed clothed celebrities [laughter]

about the more intimate aspects of their

private lives. Guests announced thus far

are Lily Allen, Steve Kugan, and Nigel

Farage. [laughter] The guest will be

scored based on how excited Nish gets.

I don't know why this was the theme.

Between 1999 and 2002, Kumar started in

a semi-nude stage production of A

Christmas Carol that ran for four weeks

every September. The show was cancelled

after its 2002 run when it was revealed

that Kuma had been using the production

as a front to launder money made in the

illegal [laughter] trade of Ivory

Colonel Gaddafi face mask.

Now the reason I trust Wik for

creativity

>> the creativity is unbelievable but the

reason I trust Wikipedia is because the

site it was it was very quickly removed

from the page [laughter] and there was a

sort of constant war going on between

listen the listenership of the bugle and

the Wikipedia moderators.

How much are you will h how how at the

start of coming up with something like

Wikipedia as a concept? How aware were

you that you would need this active

engaged audience to maintain the

integrity of the website?

>> Yeah, I mean at the beginning I knew

nothing. So it was an experiment. You

know, we're just trying something new.

It's actually uh really funny. People

come up to me and they they some, you

know, they've got a complaint about

other Wikipedia page or they've got a

story and sometimes it's more serious

and so on, but whenever somebody comes

up to me and says, you know, somebody

put something really crazy, you know,

that that I'm a poo poo head and they're

like, who would do that? I'm like, got

any teenagers in the house? [laughter]

But anyway, uh, no, in the in in the

beginning, I didn't know that it would

work. There was no way to know in

advance. And in fact, in the early days

of Wikipedia, uh you know, we had a a

small group of volunteers and we were

sort of editing and uh I would sometimes

get up in the middle of the night and

check the site because I was just

convinced like we'll go to bed one night

and somebody's going to go through and

trash the whole site. Uh and then pretty

quickly I realized like oh actually

there's this guy in Australia who seems

to be up when we're not up and he's

looking after the site and he's

reverting things and you know uh made

him an admin and you know that kind of

thing. And kind of what what it turns

out is that because the process to

revert to go back to a preit version is

so easy and blocking someone is so easy

that actually although we do have

vandalism and things like this usually

it's somebody's teenage kid or whatever

like you [clears throat] know or a troll

or whatever

>> or a couple of little shits from

Australia. [laughter]

>> Exactly. But what can happen is uh it

just isn't that fun. like you vandalized

Wikipedia, five minutes later it's

reverted. somebody gives you hopefully

you get a nice warning first like hey

you know we noticed your edit thank you

for trying and testing Wikipedia but

it's not really what we're after and

then you do it again you get blocked and

like actually it's not fun and there are

other places where you know trolling is

actually a lot more fun and rewarding

like Twitter where you say something

completely obnoxious on Twitter and

people yell at you and you get a rise

out of people and and then whatever the

algorithm goes oo engagement let's

promote this And so that kind of helps,

you know, it it's the fact it is open,

but [snorts] the temptation to to really

come and cause problems is kind of low

because we're just like, okay, one

click, it's fixed. One click, you're

banned. No drama.

>> You know, this is a line from the book.

Social media fermented tribalism,

extremism, outrage, hate,

misinformation, disinformation, and

plain old lies. These platforms are

where trust goes to die. Um, aside from

I imagine a deluge of hate tweets you're

about to get from Elon Musk, [laughter]

why was it why do you think the why is

Wikipedia different from social media?

Why why why does Wikipedia distinguish

itself? Is it as simple as there is a

kind of financial incentivization for a

conflict model in social media

platforms?

>> I mean, that's a piece of it. Um,

another piece of it, and this is where I

get a little bit um, sort of accepting

or or like understanding about the

problems of social media, is that

Wikipedia has a purpose. The purpose is

uh, imagine a world in which every

single person on the planet is given

free access to the sum of all human

knowledge. And that's what we're doing.

It's a free encyclopedia for everyone in

their own language. High quality,

neutral. So, we know what we're here

for. we know what we're doing. That

vision is quite exciting to people. Uh

it's like something like people, you

know, they're like, "Hey, that that

sounds like something that needs to

happen." Like that would be amazing if

we could do that. And so it organizes

all of our thinking. It makes all

moderation easier. So in social media,

so unlike social media, we don't have

like a box that says what's on your

mind.

>> Yeah. And in social media, if you've got

a box that says, "What's on your mind?"

or it's just very open-ended. As it

turns out, there are a lot of people in

the world who have something really

[ __ ] terrible on their mind

[laughter]

and and they spew it out and then other

people are like, "How dare you?" And

they scream at them and all that. So, it

makes the moderation issue a lot harder

in social media. You know, we have a

rule in in Wikipedia. One of our really

fundamental rules is no personal

attacks. like you're editing with

somebody and you know you don't agree

with them or whatever, you shouldn't

[clears throat] attack them as a person.

Like that's just first of all it's a

fallacy, a logical fallacy um to you

know uh attack the speaker rather than

the idea.

But it it's like okay we're here to

build an encyclopedia. Like that's what

we're here for. You couldn't have a rule

for social media that says no personal

attacks because, you know, people want

to criticize crooked politicians, you

know, like negative commentary is a

perfectly valid thing to do. But for us,

it's just like, okay, this is not the

place for that. Like if you go to the

talk page for uh Donald Trump and you

start ranting against Donald Trump,

people are going to go, "Hold on a

minute." Like, this is the talk page.

We're talking about how to improve the

article. We're not here to really just

broadly discuss Donald Trump. There's

social media for that or start your blog

or whatever it might be. So that purpose

uh which is one of the rules, you know,

have a purpose and stick to it. Um is

part of what makes us able to make clear

simple decisions which then of course

boosts the trust in Wikipedia. Do

>> and is that because do you think there's

also partly

the fact that Wikipedia is a not for-p

profofit? Is that a big part of it?

because there's no the problem with a

lot of these other websites is there is

a financial incentive for them to become

the only way you interact with the

internet and that's what we've seen with

all of these social media companies you

know if you look at Facebook when it

started it was essentially supposed to

be a way of I mean when it started it

was a way of comparing women to farm

animals which I think we could all

[laughter] agree was very classy and in

no way important of everything that was

to come but [laughter] at its inception

the purpose of Facebook was essentially

you have you it's a way of you staying

in touch with your friends right like

largely when you were at un like I I

joined Facebook probably in 2005 or six

whenever it first came to the UK and it

was essentially a way of me staying in

touch with my friends on school break

right and that was the purpose of the

website it was the same as and Twitter

was essentially micro blogging but there

was a financial incentive for them

essentially to become the only portal

>> through which you engaged with the

internet so Facebook tried to become a

news source it tried to make TV shows At

one point, Twitter as well is sort of

bringing in news content, bringing in

sport content, bringing in entertainment

content is partly the fact that

Wikipedia wasn't trying to completely

essentially colonize your attention.

>> Is that partly why it hasn't done that?

>> Definitely. And I I I would attribute it

mainly uh not so much to that sort of

desire to monopolize, but to like the

advertising only business model.

um very easily if unless you're being

very very careful, which if you're

trying to make as much money as

possible, maybe you shouldn't be very

very careful. You should be as reckless

as they are. Um you want engagement. You

want people to stay on the site for

longer so they see more ads. And as it

turns out, and we all know this, every

time you you are stuck in a traffic jam

because there's been an accident and

everybody's looking to see if there's

any dead bodies or whatever, you know,

like horrible things do attract people's

attention. Uh, and you can keep people

on the site. There's a famous uh web

comic XKCD, which is really great and

fantastic. You should look it up. Uh,

and one of their most famous panels, uh,

has it's two people and one person's at

the computer and the other person says,

"Come on, honey. It's time for bed." And

the person at the computer says, "I

can't. Someone is wrong on the

internet." [laughter]

And we've all experienced that kind of

thing like you're you're engaged in some

sort of discussion or, you know, and

half the time you're like, "Right, I

thought I was speaking to a sensible

person. And as it turns out, I was

absolutely wasting my time and energy

because uh there's no chance in this

context. Also, arguments in that kind of

context, if you're arguing with someone

on Twitter, it it's quite performative.

>> Yeah.

>> And so people have a hard time kind of

backing down or like saying, "Oh, I see

your point there." Which would, you

know, like normal people, if you're

having a debate with your friend and

they make a valid point, you probably

go, "Oh, yeah. Well, I hadn't thought of

that. I mean, I still don't agree, but

that's an interesting point that very

rare to see on Twitter. It's just like