Copyright AL.com
The founder of Wikipedia, Huntsville’s Jimmy Wales, has a book coming out later this month that he hopes will provide lessons on civility for America’s increasingly partisan atmosophere. “The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last” is due in bookstores Oct. 27. The book is billed as “a sweeping reflection on the global crisis of credibility and knowledge, revealing ‘the rules of trust’ that transformed Wikipedia from a scrappy experiment into a global utility used by billions of people—and how those rules can help others build things that last.” Wales, a graduate of Auburn University and the University of Alabama, founded Wikipedia in 2001 with Larry Sanger as an online encyclopedia operating as a non-profit with thousands of anonymous creators and fact-checkers. He spoke about his journey with the website during a 2016 visit to Alabama here and here. Every month people view Wikipedia 11 billion times—just in the English language. However, to do that, the site stresses the need for civility and honesty. As Wales says, he doesn’t run the site, it runs him. In an interview with The New York Times, Wales responded to criticism - some of it from Sanger, some from billionaire Elon Musk - that Wikipedia is a repository for left-wing talking points. He also said the atmosphere in the media and online “In day-to-day life, people still do trust each other,” Wales said. “People generally think most people are basically nice and we’re all human beings bumping along on the planet trying to do our best. But the crisis we see in politics — trust in politicians, trust in journalism, trust in business — is coming from other places and is something that we can fix."
