Katherine Maher, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
Hey, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
I remember a time, and I'm sure you do better than me,
when Wikipedia was really just a place
where, like, celebrities went to lie about how tall they were,
and now, it's become the place
that people look for information.
I mean, even if you talk to your Siri or your Alexa,
it'll say, "This is what I found on Wikipedia."
Let's start with that maybe.
How did Wikipedia become so trusted
as a valuable source of information?
Uh, well, it surprises us, too,
to be totally honest with you, Trevor.
Um, I think that part of the reason
Wikipedia has become so trusted is
that we're available for any question you might have,
and we never judge you for what those questions might be.
And so, to your point, we can look up,
like, "How tall is that celebrity?,"
or, "Is this movie I'm watching real?"
But we can also look up really important things
like, "What's going on in this coronavirus pandemic?,"
or, "What's the story behind this election issue
that people are talking about in the news?"
And I think that that's something
that's really appealing to people is just,
kind of being there for whatever they care about.
Yeah, I-I've always been fascinated
as to how you've successfully navigated away
from turning into, let's say, a Yahoo Answers,
where random questions are answered by random people
with incorrect information.
Wikipedia is, by and large, correct.
I mean, fact checkers have always applauded it.
It is a system that somehow manages itself,
and yet, anybody can come in
and make edits to these pieces of information.
So how-how did that come to be?
Well, it's always a little bit more complicated
than it sounds, of course, but,
I think, essentially, yes, anyone can edit Wikipedia.
But you actually do have to learn some core policies
that are behind all of the articles
that you read every single day.
Things like, Wikipedia has to be neutral.
It can't skew to one side or another in a polarizing debate.
Wikipedia has to be based on reliable sources,
which means that it's not just
whatever I think is true about a situation.
It actually has to be based
on, uh, maybe a newspaper that's written about it,
or a medical journal or an academic book.
Um, and coming back to these over and over again
over the course of 20 years or so
has really helped Wikipedians get really good
at fact checking and thinking about how to write
for a broad audience in a way that I think builds trust.
A few years ago, if you told me,
a website or a source of information is neutral,
I'd go like, "Yeah, that makes sense."
2021, though, nothing is neutral.
I mean, you know, a vaccine is not a neutral thing,
even how a vaccine works.
People are like, "There's microchips in them.
They control our brains." This is not...
You know, it seems, more and more that information
and facts themselves are being broken apart,
and people aren't saying that it is neutral.
There is no neutral.
So then, my question to you is, how do you make sure
that you still have accurate information
that is, as you say neutral, but then,
doesn't-doesn't shift with the Overton window
that-that, you know, like, let's say, social media has created?
The idea of neutrality is actually something
that we kind of hold collectively as a social body.
I think that Wikipedians, however,
really focus on couple of core things.
Like, I mentioned verifiability earlier.
So, verifiability has to come back to facts.
Those facts have to be researched.
If something's controversial,
it has to be cited in multiple sources.
Wikipedians just really come back to, like, the
"Just the facts, ma'am," sort of approach
to building information.
How do we present information in a way
that is both accurate and informative, but also neutral
is going to be the critical challenge
for Wikipedia going forward.
I do have a tremendous amount of optimism,
however, that this is something that can be done.
You know, Wikipedians are radical believers in...
Or they're believers in a radical idea that
upends everything that we've ever known about power
and knowledge in the history of the planet,
in the history of civilization.
Uh, if they have changed so much of the paradigm
in the last two decades, I know that this is something
that they can do as we go forward into the future.
There are two things that I've always known about Wikipedia.
Number one, I'm going to find the information
that I'm looking for, and number two,
Wikipedia's gonna ask me for money at some point.
I used to be very irritated by it,
and then at some point I was like, "Yeah, I'll help."
Because I started going, "How much would I buy
"an encyclopedia set for?
I'll just give Wikipedia this money."
Because it's hard to realize how much value
you derive from something when it's on a digital platform.
But I wonder if that has been part of the reason
you've been so successful in remaining neutral is,
when you don't have profits, you are now in a space
where you don't try to generate profits.
The downside of it means you often struggle
to have enough money to keep Wikipedia up and running.
So two parts-- one, is that true,
and how does it affect you, and then two,
why would you make the thing if it's not gonna make you money?
If it's gonna be a nonprofit?
So, I completely believe that the fact that Wikipedia
is a nonprofit is a big part of why we are trusted today.
We don't try to sell you click-bait.
We don't try to place ads
alongside sort of salacious headlines.
We're not collecting your data and selling it.
These are all choices we can make,
because we don't have to make a profit.
That's core to who we are.
We believe knowledge should be free for the world.
But there's also the truth that Wikipedia is something we do
in conjunction with hundreds of thousands of volunteers,
millions of people all over the globe over 20 years,
and most of those folks, the first thing they'll tell you is,
"I wouldn't do this
if someone was going to make a profit off it."
So it's something that we all sort of hold together and trust
that this is something that should belong to everyone
and not be a commercial enterprise.
With regards to the editing of the articles,
there are many people who contribute to Wikipedia,
but there's no denying that a lot of those people
who contribute are generally white and they're men.
Now, some people argue: chicken or the egg.
You know, they go: Well, a lot of things on Wikipedia
are based on books or on citations
or on stories or journals, and those have been written about.
So my question to you is: in a situation like that,
where there may be limited resources,
or where it may be harder to find a neutral fact
about what, you know, what was happening with Native Americans
or with South Africans or anywhere around the world
with indigenous communities or peoples,
how have you begun that journey,
and what do you think you can do in that regard?
You have nailed one of the biggest challenges
Wikipedia has on the head, right?
The fact of the matter is that most written knowledge today
has been written by white, colonial, European,
North American men.
And so one of the things that we're really focused on
is how do we think about correcting the record?
How do we think about writing people into history?
How do we think about writing people into the present
who haven't been represented in the same way?
Knowledge-- when we talk about knowledge for the whole world,
it needs to be reflective of the whole world.
And so one of the first things we do is,
we measure the gaps-- who is missing on Wikipedia?
Women are missing. People of color are missing.
People from the global south are missing.
Indigenous communities are missing.
The history of Black Americans is missing from Wikipedia.
Then we think about who's doing this work today,
and how can we support them?
And it's not just about, say, throwing money at the problem,
it's also about going directly to these communities
and saying: What do we need to change about ourselves?
You know, what about the experience of editing Wikipedia,
what about the culture of Wikipedia,
what about the policies of Wikipedia,
need to change? Because in reality,
the beautiful thing about Wikipedia
is it is changeable all the time.
It's edited 350 times a minute.
So if we want to change it, that's fully within our power.
So yes, we are cursed with a record
that is hugely biased throughout history,
but the power to change that, that agency,
lies with every single one of us who contribute to it.
Well, um, congratulations on what you've helped create.
Um, I wish you the best of luck for the future,
and thank you for helping me understand
how bridges are built over rivers.
'Cause that plagued me for a very long time.
Um, Katherine Maher, thank you so much
-for joining me on the show. -Thanks so much, Trevor.