"An encyclopedia should be radical."

> Mr. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikimedia Foundation.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and Wikia, started his presenation in the new theatre with the statement, "An encyclopedia should be radical." This statement was indeed the founding statement of the free encyclopedia that more than a billion users all across the globe have access to today.

He spoke about how the Wiki Foundation works, the functions of the Wikipedia, and how much it has grown over the past few years. What interested me most about his presentation was the growing and expanding connection between languages, cultures, and the global(izing) network. Wales suspects--and on many levels, I agree--that in the next decade we will be witnesses to a radical, "cultural shift," where an additional billion people will come online to join the internet community. These people are the people in current developing countries who do not have adequate internet access to make use of what Wikipedia (or what the internet as a whole) has to offer. In the next decade, 'these people', whom we only hear about in CNN and BBC when a catastrophe occurs, are exactly those people we will hear directly from--in their words, of their thoughts, of their lives.

> Wikipedia as a radical encyclopedia

Wikipedia today boasts 1,000 articles in 128 languages, and its aim is to have 250,000 articles in over 300 languages worldwide. I didn't even know 300+ languages existed, but hell, Wales dreams big. He dreams of free access to knowledge on the truest standards, where people are free to copy, modify, and redistribute information commericially or non-commericially. This is "free" in every sense of the word, and it is great, but it also brings to the forefront those who question Wikipedia's contents for its accuracy. Even here, I often hear teachers placing an unofficial, but definitely outspoken, ban on the use of Wikipedia, and in fact, the school's IP address has been blocked by the Wiki administrators for our students' perpetual, adolscent vandalism.

"Vandalism of articles don't last long on the Wikipedia," Wales laughed. His adminstrators are constantly monitoring changes of all types--the useful, harmful, humourous, and the scandalous. To show how accurate Wikipedia could be--and in fact, how inaccurate other well-accepted sources could be--Wales gave a telling example of a project that British magazine of scientific prestige, Nature published on 29 March 2006. The article (access to subscribers only) titled "Britannica attacks (...and we respond)" concluded that, according to 50 experts of various scientific fields who surveyed 50 articles of similar length from both Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, Britannica articles contained an average of 3 errors per article, while Wikipedia articles contained an average of 4 errors per article. Statistic shmatistics, but that should still say a lot. Viva free knowledge! I say.

The Wiki Foundation, indeed, runs on a sort of motto that questions how information today is distributed by whom, and it is now seeking to manifest this political statement by launching "Wikiasari," a wiki-search engine, this year. Labeled by Fast Company in its most recent issue as Google's Worst Nightmare, Wales challenges the editorial statement made by modern search engines that 'hide' how their searches were produced. He, in turn, seeks to bring some transparency in the searching process itself. As The New York Times recently stated,

The Wikia search engine would allow users to see how the results were generated and modify those rankings using their own knowledge of the Internet. Any changes could be reversed by a different user, and, as in Wikipedia, long discussions could ensue over the decisions.

Today, he revealed his initial forecast: "It's going to suck, at least for the first little while." But I think the demand is definitely there, considering the cult-like following he had in the theatre today.