CYBERA DECKSue Gardner | Banff | 25 September 2014

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"I love being Canadian. I think growing up in Canada gives you a world perspective that I certainly enjoy."

Wikimedia Audience Compared With Other Information SitesMeasured using global unique visitors, in millions. Data from comScore.

287WIKIPEDIA LANGUAGE VERSIONS

30 million

WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES

5RANK OF WIKIPEDIA IN TOP SITES, GLOBALLY (comScore Mediametrix)

505 million

PEOPLE READ WIKIPEDIA EVERY MONTH (comScore, September 2013)

0COST TO USE WIKIPEDIA

180PAID EMPLOYEES

80,000WIKIPEDIA ACTIVE EDITORS (5+ edits per month)

idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking

full of simmering controversies

the supremacy of

reason and goodness

Things I've learned at Wikipedia...

Most people want to help.Make it easy for them.1

Open systems are messy and embarrassing. Don't fight it :)2

You can't predict or control what people will do with your stuff, and you shouldn't try.3

bit.ly/1sRoUkz

Upshot.

Thank you.

After this slide is just residual -- stuff I thought I might use, but didn't.

"The promise of the Internet has always been that it was gonna be this unprecedentedly potent instrument of liberation and democratization. It would let you explore things and meet people who you wouldn't otherwise get to know, in completely free and unconstrained ways."

Wikipedia flourished because it's a

shrine to altruism --- a place for shy, learned people to

deposit their trawls.

Nicholson Baker, “The Charms of Wikipedia,” March 2008, The New York Review of Books

Wikipedia works because those who know the truth are usually more

numerous and committed than those who

believe in a falsehood.Cass Sunstein, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, Oxford University Press 2006

Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of

reason and goodness.

Daniel Pink, “The Book Stops Here,” Wired magazine, March 2005