February 5, 2007
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Wikipedia
Courtesy of PatrickMcMullen.com
Gettin’ Wiki With It, Or, Judith Miller and Atoosa Rubenstein At The Same Event
Sven Hodges | Posted Monday February 5, 2007 at 02:47 PM
Interesting though he may be, moderating a discussion with Jimmy Wales, the amiable founder of Wikipedia, is not necessarily the first thing ETP would consider doing just days after testifying as a witness for the prosecutor who put you behind bars. But that’s precisely what former New York Times reporter Judith Miller did at Soho House last Thursday at an event sponsored by entrepreneur networking organizer The Glasshouse. Reflecting Wikipedia’s broad appeal, the evening brought together a lively cross-section of people from the VC, tech and media worlds (to mention nothing of English accents), including Robert Cantwell of Elevation Partners, Bono’s venture capital outfit, and Bessemer Capital Partners (who’ve invested in Wikia, Wales’ for-profit host of community-based wikis such as the Muppet Wiki, an ETP favorite) as well as Jessica Schell of NBC Universal Digital Media, Gary Ellis of MTV International Digital Media, crack ICM literary agent Kate Lee, Glasshouse director (and corraler of comedy shack Le Chuckle Hut) Caroline Waxler, Technorati’s Peter Hirschberg, blip.tv’s Dina Kaplan, Happycorp founder Doug Jaeger, and, notably, recently-departed Seventeen editor Atoosa Rubenstein, who recently announced her intention to create a giant, all-powerful social networking empire for teen girls. Rubenstein, incidentally, was the only magazine-world person in the room; it says something, too, that she was present alongside a clutch of VC types.
The pairing of Miller with Wales was intriguing, based not on their divergent old-media new-media backgrounds but for what they had in common: As Wales himself noted, “We share a fanaticism for the First Amendment”. Wales was referring to Miller’s decision to spend 85 days in jail “to defend a reporter’s right to protect confidential sources”, as the event’s brochure proclaimed, “twice as long as any other American reporter has ever been confined for this cause” (but, sadly, now overtaken by new
record-holder, imprisoned videographer Josh Wolf). According to Wales, the principle of free speech is precisely what underpins Wikipedia: Its design operates on the assumption that, with the exception of a few bad apples, users can essentially be relied upon to be well-intentioned, and that editorial oversight can therefore be left in large part to the users themselves. (Wow, imagine if Joseph Wilson had been able to wiki Miller’s WMD reporting!). Six million articles in more than two hundred and fifty languages support Wales’ faith-in-our-better-angels assumption — as does the fact that Wikipedia is able to sustain itself entirely on private donations (including, according to Wales, a two-dollar gift from a user in Thailand. Hey, every bit helps). It helps, too, that Wales runs a tight ship, with five employees and less than $800,000 in expenses for 2006. For six million articles, and counting. As Wales put it, his business plan was never to “burn through a lot of money and do an IPO before we go bankrupt” — which the VC types in the room undoubtedly appreciated. Not that Wikipedia won’t ever stand to make them any money; as Wales himself admitted, “as long as you make something good and useful, people will eventually be able to make money.” Cue the banner ads! For more photos check out Patrick McMullan.com.
This post has been corrected as some names on the guest list who did not, in fact, attend were mistakenly included. ETP regrets the error.
