Wikipedia seeks broader editorial base

Jimmy Wales outlines future strategy for online encyclopedia

Collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia is looking to broaden its base of editors by recruiting more academics and working with museums and galleries, said its founder Jimmy Wales today.

But the site won't be diversifying from its central mission to provide "free knowledge for everyone in their own language", Wales said.

Speaking at Bristol University, Wales told the audience that for Wikipedia to add quality to its 3.5 million entries, it needed to expand its editorial base beyond the "predominance of techie male geeks".

The current editors have an average age of 26 and 87 per cent are male, said Wales.

To this end the online encyclopaedia will be "reaching out" to academics, galleries and museums to recruit editors with broader knowledge than is currently reflected in the editorial pool.

The German Wikipedia chapter already tours universities recruiting academics. "Consequently it has perhaps the best reputation for quality," said Wales, adding that other chapters would use this model.

He admitted that Wikipedia's arcane editing tools would have to be made more intuitive if editors from outside the technology community were to use them easily, "but without sacrificing the powerful features," he added.

Although he aims to further broaden Wikipedia's appeal - it currently receives more than 408 million visitors a month - that would not be at the cost of diversifying from the encyclopedia's core aim.

"We could make Wikipedia even more popular than it is by offering webmail or social networking like Facebook… but we are mission-driven, and that mission is to provide free knowledge for everyone on the planet," he said.

Wikipedia is often accused of promoting a slacker's approach to knowledge, with students tempted to look no further in their research than its entries. But Wales said that although the received narrative is that society is dumbing down, the gradual transformation from traditional broadcast models to participatory - exemplified by Wikipedia - meant culture was becoming richer and more complex.

By way of example he compared Lost, a long-running, multi-layered and some would say confusing TV series, with early simplistic soap operas, such as I Love Lucy.

Wales also looked forward to a time when China's government no longer censors internet access for its citizens.

"Let's call them access issues, because if you say ‘censorship' the Chinese officials reply ‘but there is no censorship'," said Wales.

Wikipedia is broadly accessible in China, but the government restricts access to entries on sensitive issues such as Tiananmen Square and Taiwan.

"It won't happen overnight," said Wales. "But there is a geek culture that transcends national culture."