Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia

We gathered in our overcoats. There was snow on the mountain for the first time this winter.

Inspirations were excited science pupils, Wellington aiming for carbon-neutral, herons spotted at Kawaroa, wiser earth.org...Antona played us John Martyn's "He's got all the Whiskey" and "Excuse me Mister".

We watched Jimmy Wales and talked about the radical aspects of an encyclopedia for everyone on earth and compared it to the big vision of William McDonough "for all the children, of all the species for all time."

We attempted to comprehend the implications of "open-sourcing" and the wonder of having passionate voluntary contributers that create the entries "by a thousand tweaks." We were impressed that the veracity of wikipedia compared to traditional academic written encyclopedias which are so sonn out of date and so dependant on the views and vagaries of an individual writer compared to the collective wisdom of wikipedia. We wondered about the implications of copyright and how people might earn a living and make such enormous contribution. Only one wikipedia worker is paid. We thought about the level of commitment and the integrity it evokes when effort is collective and voluntary.

We revisisted "Don't reform unless you can reform with equity. Innovation is not reform" and we thought about how the contributors require that entries be reformed only if value is added and neutrality protected. We thought about these contributers as stewards of neutrality and the commons of wikipedia.

We laughed about Jimmy Wales retaining a monarchist position over a voluntary kingdom of wikipedia stewards in order to protect their creation from the attacks of democracy in the form of bloc voting by advocacy groups from the left or the right. What was his expression about this? We finished with a check out round and another bit of John Martyn.

You can visit John Martyn's website here
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