User talk:Jimbo Wales

Hello, Jim. I've been listening to your recent interviews, like ones on podcast, and you seemingly have deep interests in politics and social issues. Enough about that, I've seldom or barely heard you discuss pop culture, famous figures of pop culture, and Wikipedia's handling of such unless it's related to Fandom... am I right? I think seeking one of your interviews about pop culture, especially on Google or WP:The Wikipedia Library, would be a slog, and I'm hesitant to ask for one at WP:REFDESK.

I know that "pop culture" is a broad term, but I think Wikipedia's handling of pop culture would be nice to hear in your interviews and more inviting, especially to potential listeners and editors. Generally speaking, why more on politics and less on pop culture? George Ho (talk) 09:25, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

I answer the questions I get asked is probably the main reason? You won't find me opining much on chemistry or ancient Egypt either, right? I try to only talk about things that I know about, such as for example Internet public policy.

But having said all that, I have no objection to answering questions about pop culture! Not as some kind of expert on it, but I can talk about what culture I consume, how Wikipedia handles such issues, etc.

I do sometimes talk about a few cases. For example, when Michael Jackson died we were perhaps surprisingly slow to report it, it was reverted and kept off the page for a few hours as I recall - because there wasn't confirmation in reliable sources. I think that's pretty good!Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:41, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Okay, the death of Michael Jackson was kinda seventeen years ago, wasn't it? Anything else related to pop culture in span of the last seventeen years that has crossed your mind?

Lemme guess... Gamergate, right? We all know how that turned out... Wiki-chaos, off-wiki talks, ArbCom case (which I read not exactly throughly but looked through long, long lists of stuff and all), etc. Not to mention the media coverage on Wikipedia's take on Gamergate... Still wanna go there, huh?

Besides Gamergate, anything else pop culture-related within the last seventeen years that has crossed your mind?

...Or, you'd still like to discuss Wikipedia's 2000s coverage of pop culture? Well, we've known already how Wikipedia itself had developed in the 2000s, right? George Ho (talk) 15:04, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Did you have a question about Gamergate? I'm happy to talk about it.

Besides Gamergate, what are you asking here? "Anything else pop culture-related within the last seventeen years that has crossed your mind?" do you mean with respect to Wikipedia or just in general? I really enjoyed Yellowstone and looking for to the sequel series Dutton Ranch that launches soon, but it seems like you might have something more specific in mind? Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:56, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Ooh... "Yellowstone (TV series)" and "Dutton Ranch"; that's a start. Did you read these Wikipedia articles about these shows yet? If so, what are your thoughts about these articles, and have they improved your knowledge about the shows you enjoy watching? George Ho (talk) 04:37, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

do you mean with respect to Wikipedia or just in general?

If Wikipedia were social media, I'd say the latter. (Speaking of social media, I read this Signpost piece about Massachusetts's ban proposal for minors.) However, my OP's point is mainly about Wikipedia's coverage of (wide range of) pop culture. Thus, how about Wikipedia's coverage within the past seventeen years (i.e. 2009–present), i.e. the former? George Ho (talk) 04:37, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

but it seems like you might have something more specific in mind?

Never intended to treat this user talk page like a complete forum, ya know. I just enjoyed your interviews, especially about politics and big issues, but couldn't find you discuss pop culture in your recent interviews, sadly. George Ho (talk) 04:54, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Crap... Almost forgot to ask about Wikipedia's coverage within its last seventeen years on popular culture, old (i.e. from more than seventeen years ago) and contemporary (i.e. within the last seventeen years). George Ho (talk) 15:08, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Oh sorry, you've answered part of the question I asked you above. Did you have a specific question or opinion of your own that I might react to on the topic of Wikipedia's coverage of pop culture since Michael Jackson died 17 years ago? I mean, I guess I have a lot of thoughts or none very interesting but I'm not quite sure what we're talking about here!

I just heard about the arrest of D4vd, a musician whose car was found to have a decomposing body. I never heard of the singer before very recently and I turned first to Wikipedia because I knew we'd have a clear article about him and about the situation (and we do!). Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:59, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Did you have a specific question or opinion of your own that I might react to on the topic of Wikipedia's coverage of pop culture since Michael Jackson died 17 years ago? I mean, I guess I have a lot of thoughts or none very interesting but I'm not quite sure what we're talking about here!

I think I made a reply above to your Yellowstone/Dutton Ranch reply.

I just heard about the arrest of D4vd, a musician whose car was found to have a decomposing body. I never heard of the singer before very recently and I turned first to Wikipedia because I knew we'd have a clear article about him and about the situation (and we do!).

Neither had I until you mentioned him; reading the "D4vd" article.... Anyways, what can you say about that "D4vd" article? George Ho (talk) 04:47, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

I can't speak for Jimbo, but there are factors of pop culture that make it harder to.cover compared to other topics: reliable sourcing, and enduring coverage. The majority of sources that cover pop culture are of the clickbait variety, and rarely qualify as an RS for en.wiki purposes. Secondly most pop culture elements very much short term fads that come and go in days, failing the standard for notability and enduring coverage. Both make it hard to give serious encyclopedic discussion of these.

Mind you we have problems in areas like politics where there is far too much focus and detail coming from primary sourcing (newspapers and such), and editors write at a far too detailed level and not where encyclopedic summaries should be, so id not use politics as a metric. Masem (t) 12:45, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

To exemplify what you said, this reminds me of how hard covering the Cheers episode "The Gift of the Woodi" was when I started it... well, as a draft before an AFC volunteer approved it into the main namespace. Then I found out its prior AFD history, further showing how amateurish we were as volunteers when it comes to covering subtopics of pop culture. George Ho (talk) 14:44, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

After one point near the early days of WP we had an article for every known Pokémon at the time, but eventually we "matured" recognizing that wasn't well covered content for an encyclopedia, hence the WP:POKEMON test. That would eventually lead to notability and a means to determine, with a lot of gray space, when a topic was covered well enough to be a standalone topic. And through that much of the early pop cultural coverage was merged to more compact articles or deleted to reflect the coverage.

Now this is not saying we can't cover pop culture but we have to wait to make sure the element is enduring. Eg we have a standalone on the 6-7 meme as a recent example. Masem (t) 15:30, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Should've been Wikipedia:Pokémon test... George Ho (talk) 17:22, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

I hope Mr. Wales doesn't mind me leaving a reply here. Charlie Rose interviewed Wales twenty years ago and the predictions, based on my short 15 month tenure, are absolutely spot on. Regarding pop culture commentary, I feel if Wales were to commonly discuss those topics in interviews, those quotes could be placed in reception sections in Wikipedia articles. That could in turn introduce some issues. That's not to say Wales' opinions are invalid, we all have an opinion (and more importantly: the right to have one in most countries). Quoting Wales on a site he himself founded would need to be done the right way if those quotes aren't about Wikipedia itself (which 99% of interviews he has been in are). I would be interested to know if Wales considers himself a subject matter expert?

To comment on the Pokémon articles, WP:POKÉMON has some fantastic editors who have gone to great lengths to make sure every article meets the notability and reliable sources criteria. (I've authored a couple myself.) 11WB (talk) 23:47, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Also wanted to note, perhaps quite humorously, that Rose asked Wales to predict Wikipedia in 10 years, so that would have been 2016 when that interview was recorded. We now have the article: 2026 is the new 2016. 11WB (talk) 23:56, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Hi Jimmy, I am reaching out on behalf of the New Zealand chapter, Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand. We are excited to hear that you will be visiting New Zealand in May to speak at the Auckland Writers Festival. We have many members/editors based in Auckland, with a particularly strong engagement programme underway at Auckland War Memorial Museum, where there are currently two Wikimedians in Residence employed, and an annual internship that teaches tertiary students how to edit. If you're interested in visiting the museum, and/or speaking with our Auckland editing community, we would be thrilled. Please feel free to contact me on sophie@wikimedia.nz Hillmenco (talk) 23:14, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Awesome! Looking forward to it. My time in NZ will be sadly quite short but we'll definitely find a way.Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:58, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Fantastic, thanks Jimmy! Hillmenco (talk) 23:40, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

A few days late, but still: "The government on Wednesday gave the foundation seven days to register or face its services, including Wikipedia Indonesia, being blocked in the country of 284 million people." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:55, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Wikimedia and Indonesia reach compromise after threat to block Wikipedia Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:07, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Om Malik says:

Despite all the hoopla about AGI, and changing the course of human history (and it will), the fact remains that most of these big boys know one thing. Money is in automating software. Money gets the valuations. And valuations get the money.

In plain English, every tier-one AI lab, plus the guy building rockets to Mars, is pouring money, talent, and compute into one thing. Software that writes software. The holy grail (at present) is agents that can code and automate everything. Brin said as much in an internal memo. Anthropic’s own engineers say Claude Code now writes between 70 and 90 percent of their code. A recent analysis found that 4 percent of all public commits on GitHub are authored by Claude. That number was zero eighteen months ago.

... Meta will spend up to $135 billion on AI infrastructure this year, more than the whole company generated in cash in 2025.

Carlstak (talk) 00:33, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Long but interesting, from AI & Society. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:37, 28 April 2026 (UTC)