As internet discourse has grown partisan, more aggro, and more all-consuming, Wikipedia still manages to reflect the utopian dreams of the 1990s web. The idea that a user-generated compendium of human knowledge could be reliable seems even more audacious today than it did in 2001 — yet it is widely (if not universally) acknowledged that Wikipedia works. It’s certainly as popular as ever; Wikipedia is the seventh-most visited website in the world, per Similarweb, and the only one in the top 50 run by a nonprofit organization, the Wikipedia Foundation. (Wikipedia has not minted any billionaires, unlike many of its tech brethren.) To understand how Wikipedia remains relatively above the fray, I spoke with its co-founder, Jimmy Wales, who remains heavily involved in the site’s culture. We discussed how Wikipedia tries to stay neutral about explosive topics, the threat and promise of AI, and why people shouldn’t edit their own pages.

We’re coming up on 24 years of Wikipedia in January. I wanted to get your sense of how you think it’s working right now. Is it as good as it’s ever been? Is it more challenging to maintain in our turbulent AI times?
I think it’s as good as it’s ever been. Just in terms of the information environment we live in — that is more challenging, I would say, in some ways than in the past. Though it’s not like it has dramatically changed overnight. It’s been changing for many, many years. Just with the rise of a lot of clickbait, low-quality media, things like that. And obviously the rise in divisive feelings, partisanship, culture wars, all of that — adds a lot of noise to the world.

I would say the decline of trust in journalism and politics is quite severe, which then, in some cases, translates into people feeling more angry and lost because they don’t know what to trust and what to believe. That’s all challenging, but the Wikipedia community, we just plug away, trying to be neutral, trying to be clear.

The internet seems like it’s defined by that partisanship, that instinctive vitriol, now in a way it wasn’t a decade ago. Wikipedia has managed not to be defined by that — though there are people who criticize the site for having a political bias, including Elon Musk and your co-founder, Larry Sanger. How have you avoided it? Is it just the tenacity of the volunteers who edit Wikipedia, who are able to stay above the fray?
The main thing I think about there is what I call “community health.” What that really means is, Is the community happy? Is it doing quality work, productive work? Is it feeling supported in that work? That’s obviously crucial because if you don’t have the right people, what things can descend into — and we see this all over the internet — is just a battleground. There’s a page on “What Wikipedia Is Not: Wikipedia Is Not a Battleground.” Some people have a model in mind that what you’re supposed to do is come and fight for your side in Wikipedia. What we found from the very earliest days, and it’s kind of obvious, is if you get two people who are there to try to win the argument and shape things to be consistent with their worldview, it doesn’t get anywhere useful. You just pound on each other forever.

What you really want is a spirit of saying, “Okay, look, there’s certain disagreements, and we’re never going to fully resolve those disagreements here and now, but we can describe that fairly.” I always say the best Wikipedia is one where you couldn’t even guess what the editors’ stand on an issue is. They’re just trying to write something that’s clear and acknowledges the different viewpoints out there. When people are new to the community, particularly if they’ve been sent by an angry tweet by Elon or something — I don’t know what we’re supposed to call them now if it’s not Twitter anymore, but —

I will call it Twitter forever. I refuse to change.
I can’t stop. People come in from a tweet. They’re new, and they start arguing and debating but pretty quickly they either get tired because the community isn’t that receptive to it or they’re like, Oh, I get it. This isn’t like Twitter.

Who filters out that stuff? A lot of times, the angriest voices on the internet do win out and are boosted.
This is where the community-health piece is so important. The way it works is the administrators are elected by the community. They’re subject to recall. Generally speaking, what the community’s looking for in an admin is adherence to the Wikipedia way of doing things and so forth.

Then the admins have to have sufficient power to actually block people if they’re misbehaving, but it’s not really just about blocking people. That’s a piece of it. If somebody just can’t pull themselves together and stop yelling at everybody, they will get blocked, but it’s also trying to turn people around, to say, “Oh, hey, take it easy. We’re here to try and write both sides of the story, and we want to do so clearly,” and so forth. That kind of thing is really important.

Have you ever agreed with the criticism that Wikipedia is too left wing, too resistant to more conservative sources? I saw an interview you did where you said, “When people try and come up........

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