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- [00:00]
Indiana University Announcer
Indiana University is shaping the future of healthcare. Advancing discoveries that become treatments for Alzheimer's, obesity and cancer. And training the providers trusted to deliver them. See how IU solves what's next iu. Edu Impact.
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Bloomberg Host
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Jimmy Wales is founder of Wikipedia. He has a new book out, the Seven Rules of Trust, A Blueprint for Building Things that Last. That book out tomorrow and lucky for he joins us right here in studio. Welcome, welcome. Nice to have you here with us.
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Jimmy Wales
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's like a spaceship in here. It's amazing.
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Bloomberg Host
Some call it the fishbowl, we call it home. This book about trust, when did you start writing it?
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Jimmy Wales
It was a couple years ago. I had had some ideas around this and yeah, just started and it's obviously turned out to be quite timely as have a lot of issues around trust in society. And, you know, I want to encourage people to, let's get back to society of trust.
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Bloomberg Co-host
You know, it's funny, Carol and I spent a lot of time talking about this ahead of the interview, because Wikipedia sort of seems. And look, it's had its challenges, no question, it's had its controversies, but for things that are online, it's kind of this weird utopia in the sense that.
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Bloomberg Host
It'S kind of remarkable.
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Bloomberg Co-host
Yeah, it's really remarkable. I mean, we know anonymous people online oftentimes are full of vitriol and hate. We can see that even when people use their names on social media platforms, we lock our doors when we leave the house. Why does trust work on Wikipedia but kind of seems like nowhere else right now?
- [01:42]
Jimmy Wales
Yeah, I mean, I think for me, you know, one of the seven rules of trust that is most meaningful in that regard is purpose. Like Wikipedia has a very simple purpose, which is to build an encyclopedia. And we make all our decisions around that and the rules about participation and so forth. And that's very different from social media, where there isn't a clear purpose other than free speech and openness. And therefore, that toxicity really creeps in quite a lot in social media. You know, people. People say outrageous things because they get rewarded for it. They get more followers, they get more engagement. And the algorithms love that.
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Bloomberg Host
We talk about clickbait all the time.
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Jimmy Wales
Clickbait all the time. And, you know, that's very different from the world of Wikipedia where, I mean, thank goodness our headlines are so boring. There's no clickbait. You know, it's like the article on Thomas Jefferson's called Thomas Jefferson, you know, but it does what it says on the 10 you know, that's a, that's a very British expression, I'm afraid. But yeah, I mean, I do think that, that having a simple purpose is a part of what keeps us focused and keeps our community focused.
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Bloomberg Host
How do you describe facts? How do you determine facts? And I am amazed. And I don't. I mean, I've been doing this a few years and I felt like when I started it was very clear fact versus fiction in terms of reporting and doing stories. And I feel like there's a lot of gray area and I just feel like a fact is a fact. So how do you guys determine what's a fact in an entry?
- [03:09]
Jimmy Wales
Yeah, I mean, we're really old fashioned. Like what we look for are reliable sources. So we want, you know, sort of academic research or quality newspapers, quality magazines, quality books, really old fashioned. And, you know, the idea that we should treat, you know, the New England Journal of Medicine as the same as social media influence online is obviously just wrong. Like, you really want facts and that's what people want from Wikipedia. They don't want.
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Bloomberg Host
Sources matter.
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Jimmy Wales
Sources really matter. Like having a good quality source is, is what it's all about.
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Bloomberg Host
But why don't sources matter to everybody? And other people will say, okay, I believe this source is reliable. So like, you know what I mean? Like, we are living in like different.
- [03:59]
Jimmy Wales
Worlds, I think, and I think that's a huge problem. I mean, I do think, you know, it's really important. I mean, one of the problems that we've seen is that a lot of the media, in response to the changing and very difficult financial model for journalism, they've chased after really partisan audiences. And so, you know, sometimes you read something and you're like, yeah, that was, that was interesting, that was good. But I'm not sure I got both sides of the story there. I live in the UK and we have a, just an example, two quality newspapers, the Guardian and the Telegraph. Left leaning, right leaning, they're both great newspapers. But I often read one and I'm like, oh, but. And then I go read the other and I'm like, yeah, you probably should have been somewhere in the middle, both of you. And it would have been, I think, a better story had you said, well, you know, we got one side of the story, but we actually had to go out and find somebody to tell us a little bit about the other side. You know, you can't be too like, the moon is made of rocks or is it cheese? Who knows? I don't mean that seriously. Hopefully cheese, but, but you know like, seriously thinking about, like, who are we talking to? And are we. Are we getting to the bottom of this with.
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Bloomberg Co-host
With media? With trust in media here in the United States declining and having declined over the last few years, in your view, is there something that we can do better, that the media can do better, that it can borrow from what has worked at Wikipedia? What has worked with the. The methods of trust that you've studied that can make us build trust again with our audiences?
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Jimmy Wales
Yeah, I mean, well, the good news is that the financial press, like Bloomberg, is still among the most trusted. And I think that's because by the mandate of what you're trying to do, informing business people and investors, you kind of have to be, like, ruthlessly objective. You're not chasing after partisan audiences and things like that. But I do think we do some data. Big data. Data is important. Transparency. I think, you know, realistically, you know, one of the things that Wikipedia does that's kind of odd is we'll have a, you know, at the top of a page. The neutrality of this article has been disputed. And I always.
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Bloomberg Co-host
We've all seen it.
- [06:00]
Jimmy Wales
Yeah, we've all seen it. And I always say, you know, I kind of wish sometimes the New York Times would put a banner up, just saying, you know, we had a big fight in the newsroom. We weren't quite sure, so, like, we decided to roll this. Yeah, yeah. But here's a little bit of their inside thinking. Like, we did want to report this. We're not sure we've got the full story yet, because that. Pretending to be perfection all the time, people see through that. And they know, of course. And I think they're willing to say, yeah, like, actually, journalism is quite hard, you know, so a little more transparency is always good.
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Bloomberg Host
Do you get pressure a lot from companies, politicians, individuals to, like, change an entry?
- [06:35]
Jimmy Wales
No, not really. I mean, people. You know, I meet a lot of people, and people often are like, well, you know, my Wikipedia entry. What about this? What about that? I'm just like, yeah, send us an email. Like, you know, we'll have somebody look at that. That's all fine in general. No, and actually, we're very.
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Bloomberg Co-host
But you really just say, just send them an email that I'm not gonna do anything about it.
- [06:51]
Jimmy Wales
Kind of, yeah, okay. But no, sometimes people have a legitimate point. They're like, oh, I did this thing, and it was in the press. And, you know, it's like, oh, okay, well, maybe we just overlooked it. And that's. That's great. But, you know, at a deeper level. One of the things that's really important is, you know, we aren't funded by governments. We aren't funded by sort of major donors. We're funded by people giving their $20. And that makes a big difference for our intellectual independence. We're not worried like, oh, if we've got something negative about whatever, then we might lose our donation.
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Bloomberg Co-host
How is, how is the fundraising going? Because I've feel like I've gotten a lot of messages from you throughout the years.
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Jimmy Wales
Throughout the year, please.
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Bloomberg Co-host
From Jimmy Wills on Wikipedia. We've all seen it. Is it going okay? Is funding going okay?
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Jimmy Wales
It's okay. Yeah. We've, we've been, you know, we're stable. We're very cautious with money, so we always try to build our reserves and so on. And then, you know, recently, I don't know, Elon tweeted, defund Wikipedia, I think about $5 million that day. So you can text Elon.
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Bloomberg Co-host
I know you guys have been in touch. You can text him and say, tweet about us again to the end of the year.
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Jimmy Wales
Well, you have had some covers to raise.
- [07:58]
Indiana University Announcer
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