Today, we publish Part III of my “Oslo Journal” — notes from the Oslo Freedom Forum. The first person I discuss today is Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia. I’d like to add a note here in the Corner.
Did you know Wales is an Alabamian? He is. But that’s not what I want to say.
Listening to Wales, in Oslo, I had a flashback to when I first heard about Wikipedia. A friend of mine contacted me. He said something like this:
“Jay, there’s this thing online that purports to be an encyclopedia. But it’s not written by scholars. It’s not written by responsible people. It’s written by just anybody, who can say whatever he wants. I just came across an entry that is full of falsehoods. You should really write a piece about this ‘Wikipedia’ thing. It’s a scandal and an outrage.”
I agreed. But I never got around to writing the piece.
I don’t think either one of us could have imagined that there would come a time when we used the thing pretty much every day of our lives.