Jimmy Wales: evaluation

Transcript context

…There’s something called Conquest’s Second Law, which I believe is itself on Wikipedia [nope]. It suggests that all organizations that are not explicitly right-wing over time evolve to become more left-wing. We’ve seen this with the Ford Foundation, Pew Foundation, Rockefeller. Do you think Conquest’s Second Law is essentially correct? I don’t know. I wouldn’t think so, although . . . I don’t know. [laughs] I have no idea. I think we definitely have organizations that I wouldn’t say you could easily categorize in contemporary terms as either left- or right-wing, I’m thinking in particular of the Catholic Church, which has maintained quite steady certain values and ideas for a very, very long period of time, with minimal shift over time. If you try to characterize religion as either right- or left-wing, typically, in the US, you would tend to say right-wing, but if you look at the current pope and certain elements of the church’s positions, you would say they’re pretty left-wing in other ways. I don’t think they easily fit into that, but the broader point is, can an organization maintain an explicit set of values over a very long period of time that is neither left- nor right-wing in its nature? I think so. Certainly, it seems possible to me. Let’s say, in the US at least, that politics continues to polarize along educational lines. Now, obviously, most Wikipedia contributors, people on the board, are going to be well educated one way or another, if only self-educated. Is it then really still possible for Wikipedia to maintain what would be seen as a neutral stand by people on the other side?…

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