Ryan Merkley on Why Wikipedia Works
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2020
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of our Arbiters of Truth series on disinformation, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic spoke with Ryan Merkley, the chief of staff to the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. We’ve spent a lot of time on this podcast discussing how social media platforms have handled issues of disinformation and misinformation. But what about Wikipedia? It’s a massive online encyclopedia written and edited entirely by volunteers—so, not a platform, but still an online service grappling with a wave of untruths in an uncertain time. Ryan, Evelyn and Quinta talked about Wikipedia’s unique structure, how the site has managed to become a reliable resource on an often untrustworthy internet, and how readers, writers and editors of Wikipedia are navigating the need for information amidst both the pandemic and ongoing protests over police abuse of Black Americans.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | I think it's fair to say that the pandemic has drawn out what is the best about the community |
| 0:39.5 | and the work that we try to aspire to. |
| 0:43.3 | An interesting stat, which I did not believe until I saw the study, was that there was a |
| 0:48.0 | Harvard study in 2016 that showed that editors' contributions tended to become more neutral |
| 0:55.7 | over time, which is to say the longer and more someone contributes, the more they learn |
| 1:01.8 | to write in the way that tells the neutral story. |
| 1:05.8 | So people all come with their biases, but the more you contribute, the more you learn |
| 1:09.8 | to see those biases and contribute in ways that are in that style of presenting the verifiable |
| 1:17.8 | facts and not bias. |
| 1:19.9 | I'm Quintajerusic and this is the LawFair podcast June 4th, 2020. |
| 1:27.5 | This week on our Arbitus of Truth series on disinformation, everyone do I can speak with |
| 1:32.4 | Ryan Berkeley, the chief of staff to the office of the executive director of the Wikimedia |
| 1:37.4 | Foundation. |
| 1:39.5 | We've spent a lot of time on this podcast discussing how social media platforms have |
| 1:43.5 | handled issues of disinformation and misinformation. |
| 1:47.8 | But what about Wikipedia? |
| 1:49.0 | It's a massive online encyclopedia written and edited entirely by volunteers, so not |
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