[WikiEN-l] wikipedia interview

[David Gerard]

On 17/08/06, Martin Uhlíř - týdeník Respekt <uhlir at respekt.cz> wrote:


You asked for a picture - I don't have a good press photo of myself! I
need to arrange one ... In the meantime, I hope you can use this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/David_gerard_and_akardy_at_london_wikimeet_sept_05.jpg

It's Arkady Rose (another Wikipedia user) and me at a Wikipedia meetup
in London in September 2005. The photographer is Caroline Ford and the
photo is freely reusable under any of GFDL, CC-by-sa 1.0, CC-by-sa 2.0
and CC-by-sa 2.5 - so if you note the photographer's name and that
it's licensed under Creative Commons by-sa 1.0, 2.0 and 2.5, that
should satisfy all copyright requirements at no cost to you.

(cc'd to Caroline)


> If you have time, please allow me one or two more questions:
> Do you think that Britanica considers Wikipedia to be serious competition?
> Are they afraid of Wikipedia?


I think they behave as though they are afraid of Wikipedia. This is
unfortunate, because they spend a lot of time and effort fighting
Wikipedia rather than working on and selling their own encyclopedia.

They don't have to act this way - compare to Brockhaus, which is the
German encyclopedia with the same quality and reputation as
Britannica. Brockhaus seem unsure of what to make of Wikipedia, and
don't seem to like it much, but they are at least talking to people
from the German Wikipedia and from Wikimedia Deutschland (the
German-based Wikimedia nonprofit).

The Encyclopedia Britannica reallly is the best in the English
language for both quality and consistency of quality - those of us who
work on the English Wikipedia are big fans of Britannica and aspire to
being as good as Britannica. It's the gold standard we work to.

It would be in the best interests of the readers for the high-quality
encyclopedias to continue to exist workably and coexist with the
Wikipedia model. And Britannica is very cheap on DVD now - they had a
special offer earlier this year where US customers could get the
DVD-ROM for US$25. Imagine that shelf of books for US$25!


> Then I would need to know you role in Wikipedia to characterize you. You are
> described as sysadmin, but I think that it is not your only role in
> Wikipedia. Is that right?


I'm a sysadmin in my day job, but I'm actually not one on Wikipedia!
My work on Wikipedia is editing and organisational.

My user page lists all my different jobs around Wikimedia:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard

* I'm an editor and administrator on English Wikipedia, and I
administer several en:wp-related mailing lists.
* I'm a UK press contact for the Wikimedia Foundation.
* I'm one of the people working on starting Wikimedia UK - to be a
UK-based nonprofit for furthering the aims of Wikimedia. Wikimedia UK
has put in its application for charitable status and is currently
waiting to hear back from the Charity Commissioner.


- thanks, David.