The Lawfare Podcast: "Wikipedia, Ref-Working, and the Battle Over Reality"
Date: December 9, 2025
Host: Renee Diresta, Contributing Editor at Lawfare
Guest: Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia and author of The Seven Rules of Trust
Episode Overview
This episode dives deep into how Wikipedia navigates the modern information landscape, the ongoing battles over reality and sources, the challenge of trust and ref-working, and the impact of AI and political pressures on the Internet’s most influential open encyclopedia. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, joins Renee Diresta to discuss the collaborative platform's role as information infrastructure, threats from misinformation, government intervention, and how Wikipedia’s principles translate into trust, neutrality, and openness amid crisis.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Wikipedia’s Evolution into Information Infrastructure
- Wikipedia’s Growing Importance: Once seen as unreliable (“wikiality” jokes), Wikipedia is now integral to global knowledge, AI training, and search engines.
- Turning Point: The John Seigenthaler incident and public scrutiny highlighted Wikipedia’s mainstream impact (03:04).
- Cultural Validation: References to the Stephen Colbert joke as signaling public acknowledgment of Wikipedia’s significance (02:25).
- Visibility of Process: Wikipedia’s open editorial process, debate, and correction mechanisms are core to building public trust and legitimacy, contrasting with traditional journalism’s hidden “sausage-making” (05:27, 06:41).
2. Neutrality, Transparency, and Institutional Trust
- Transparency as a Model: Wales highlights how visible disagreement and correction build trust, and how more institutions—media and government agencies—could benefit from similar openness (06:41).
- “I always wish the New York Times would just put a note at the top of an article saying, ‘We had a big fight in the newsroom…’ That’s actually amazing.” — Jimmy Wales (07:49)
- Limits and Backfire of Transparency: Sometimes radical transparency leads to misinterpretation or manufactured controversies by outsiders, e.g., journalists misunderstanding Wikipedia talk pages (08:46).
- “Same two trolls who are always complaining about everything… not a real controversy.” — Jimmy Wales (08:46)
3. Wikipedia vs. Social Media: Community Governance Over Chaos
- Wikipedia’s Guardrails & Anti-“Flood the Zone”: Unlike social platforms, Wikipedia blocks mass manipulation (bots, coordinated sock-puppets), relying on policies and consensus, not voting. Sheer numbers or dog-piling don’t sway Wikipedia debates (11:32, 43:08).
- “You can have 10,000 bots all saying similar things and just flood the zone with it. That’s going to get you nowhere in Wikipedia.” — Jimmy Wales (43:08)
- Community Notes and Neutrality: Discussion of how X (formerly Twitter) Community Notes operate as a neutral, consensus-driven correction and the emerging role of AI in generating neutral explanatory text (14:07, 15:39).
4. Artificial Intelligence: Tool or Threat for Knowledge?
- AI as an Assistant, Not Author: Wales is open to AI supporting human editors (e.g., finding dead links, suggesting sources) but rejects AI-generated encyclopedia content due to hallucination risks (16:35).
- “We are not envisioning AI producing content that goes directly to readers… but I’m interested in how AI might help us do certain things at scale.” — Jimmy Wales (16:35)
- Cross-Language Checks and Content Health: AI can help surface discrepancies between articles in different languages or flag neutrality warnings, supporting volunteers (19:09).
5. Alternative Platforms and the Battle Over Sources: Grok/Grokipedia
- Comparison with Grok/Grokipedia: Wales and Diresta critique Grokipedia for over-emphasizing controversies and relying on marginal or conspiratorial sources (28:20–32:23).
- “A significant percentage of the sources are things that the average person would not consider to be reliable… I mean Stormfront, Infowars…” — Renee Diresta (31:08)
- Wales underscores the essential need for source evaluation, not both-sides-ism (32:23).
6. Ref-Working, Political Pressure, and Source Wars
- Internal & External Pressures:
- Congressional scrutiny—often from Republicans—and threats to Wikipedia’s independence.
- Foreign government censorship attempts (Russia, China, Turkey).
- Attempts to manipulate content or force Wikipedia to reveal editor identities (37:50).
- Wikipedia’s Response: Wikipedia resists government censorship and pressure, relying on its non-profit model and global community (40:13).
- “We were banned in Turkey for about three years and… fought all the way to the Supreme Court… now we’re unblocked in Turkey, and it was a landmark decision.” — Jimmy Wales (37:51)
- “If we started to, in Turkey, block a certain page to appease the government… Once you start, they come out of the woodwork.” — Jimmy Wales (39:08)
7. State-Sponsored Edit Wars & Propaganda
- Risks from Government Troll Farms: Wikipedia’s process and vigilance make large-scale manipulation difficult, but small-scale, especially in less familiar language contexts, remains a risk (43:08–50:14).
- “Try to fool English-speaking Wikipedians about English language media, you’re not going to get very far… but try to fool any of us about news sites in Thailand—it might be trickier.” — Jimmy Wales (49:24)
- Community Defense Mechanisms: Reliance on seasoned editors’ skepticism and consensus policies thwarts most manipulations, but vigilance against fabricated news domains and LLM-generated fakes is an evolving challenge.
8. The Crisis of Trust in Institutions
- Failures in Officialdom: Recent CDC missteps, such as a page claiming “vaccines cause autism,” exemplify institutional trust erosion (50:35).
- “We now have a page that says vaccines cause autism on cdc.gov…” — Renee Diresta (50:35)
- What Can Be Done?: Wales calls for depoliticization, scientific independence, and process transparency in public agencies, emphasizing the cost to trust among both critics and supporters when institutions are perceived as political actors (51:13–54:09).
- “Endorsements by news organizations not only lower trust among people who disagree… they actually lower trust among people who do agree with the endorsement.” — Jimmy Wales (52:36)
9. Future Challenges:
- Decline of Local Journalism: It is increasingly difficult to maintain high-quality local content as news deserts grow (54:16).
- Community Health Over Culture Wars: Wales decries claims that Wikipedia has become “Wokepedia,” arguing such narratives drive away moderates and thoughtful contributors which undermines the project (54:16).
- “What we want are people who care more about the values of Wikipedia than about the culture wars.” — Jimmy Wales (56:19)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- “The only hard part about community management is managing the community.”
— Jimmy Wales (13:05) - “If you care about improving Wikipedia, being a kind, open-minded debater is more important than which side you come from.”
— Paraphrased from Jimmy Wales (56:19) - “We always have to take the risk of state manipulation seriously… but I think we’re okay, because of our open process and community vigilance.”
— Jimmy Wales (46:45) - “Our incentives are aligned with our values. That’s really, really wonderful.”
— Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia’s donor-driven nonprofit model resisting censorship (40:56) - “Being transparent about your process is at the core of building trust… I wish more institutions did that.”
— Jimmy Wales (07:49)
Important Timestamps
- 03:04 — Origin story: Wikipedia rises as newsworthy infrastructure
- 06:41 — On transparency and trust-building
- 08:46 — Transparency’s pitfalls and media misunderstanding Wikipedia disputes
- 11:09 — Diresta and Wales on X/Twitter’s Community Notes and neutrality
- 14:07 — Google DeepMind’s “Habermas Machine” and AI for neutral language
- 16:35 — AI’s role as assistant, not author, on Wikipedia
- 28:20–32:23 — Grok/Grokipedia vs. Wikipedia and the fight over controversial sourcing
- 32:23 — Source wars: Evaluating legitimacy, political pressure, and editorial independence
- 37:51–41:04 — Wikipedia vs. state censorship: Russia, China, Turkey
- 43:08 — State-sponsored edit wars and how Wikipedia’s model resists manipulation
- 50:35 — CDC.gov crisis and broader institutional trust challenges
- 54:16 — The decline of local journalism and Wikipedia’s future
- 56:19 — Keeping Wikipedia’s community healthy beyond culture wars
- 57:14 — How listeners can help: edit, donate, and support Wikipedia’s principles
Actionable Advice & Final Thoughts
- For Institutions: Value transparency, protect independence, and avoid politicization to maintain public trust.
- For Listeners: Consider becoming a Wikipedia editor to contribute directly—or support Wikipedia’s mission through donations and advocating its core values of openness and neutrality.
- For the Digital Ecosystem: Learn from Wikipedia’s successes: open debate, transparency, and source scrutiny are vital defenses against misinformation and ref-working.