[Foundation-l] Radio interview with Clara Long yesterday

[David Gerard]

Yesterday I did an interview for a prospective radio show with a young
woman called Clara Long, who is putting together something to sell to US
public radio. She's already interviewed Jimbo and Larry Sanger, then me (as
a Wikipedian who was in London) and after me spoke to Robert McHenry (the
public toilet guy from Britannica).

I rambled for about ten minutes - the community process, answering
criticisms of quality ("you're familiar with Larry and Robert's criticisms
of Wikipedia, how would you answer them?") by vaporwaring the planned
article rating feature (on hold 'cos Brion doesn't like the current code)
and criticisms of the process by pointing out that just because you can't
see inside the Britannica sausage factory doesn't mean it isn't as much or
more of one. The other question was whether articles always improve with
time - I said there is ever-more *detail*, and what tends to happen is that
you have a well-written article, people add stuff, it makes the article
clunky, then someone else edits it for flow. So articles may well be
middling for writing quality, but will tend to have lots of detailed
information.

I completely forgot to mention Wikinews (particularly egregious as she was
talking about Wikimedia, not just Wikipedia - so I didn't have a chance to
push our scoop on the London bombings!), but did consistently refer to en:
as *English* Wikipedia :-) I also pointed James Forrester at her. She says
she'll let us know when she sells the show somewhere.


- d.