Jimmy Wales talks Wikis at Online Information 2007

I am just starting to catch up from the week that was Online Information 2007 and will be creating a few blogs from my notes.

First of all was the keynote speech ‘Web 2.0 in action:free culture and community on the move’, from Jimmy Wales of the Wiki Foundation on Tuesday 4 December

Jimmy WalesWikipedia is a registered charity which cost $1 million in 2007 and forecasted to cost $2-3 million in 2008 which is amazing considering it is now the 8th most popular website in the world. Even in Iran it is the 14 most popular.

It has expanded to over two million articles in English, but has over six million in total.  It has 14,000 articles in Hindi. But when you consider that there are 280 million Hindi speakers, it still has a long way to go.

Jimmy said that Wikipedia will remain true to encyclopaedia base and not include articles which you would not expect to find in a general purpose publication.

Minority interests are covered through the development of Wikis such as the Muppet Wiki with 15,000 articles and Wookieepedia (yes, Star Wars is the topic here).

For me the big story is the development of Search Wiki – an open source search engine will all decisions in the public domain. Fast Company Magazine in the U.S. described it as “Google’s worst nightmare”

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