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Welcome to ANI in the Air, Wondrous Wednesday, where I talk about something wondrous.
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Since this week's topic is kind of Wikipedia and all that nonsense,
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I thought I'd talk about the wonder of the creation of this thing by people.
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One of the things that's often worried about in our current culture is,
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you know, if you don't pay somebody to do something, they're not going to do it.
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If you don't require hard work of them, they're not going to do it.
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And, you know, that's not what we see here at Sudbury School.
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We see people working very hard at a variety of different things.
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Generally not necessarily something that's valued by the money,
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but certainly valuable to the people doing it and valuable to those around.
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And, you know, the same can be said on a larger scale about Wikipedia.
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It's an entirely volunteer-written effort, and of course there are some people
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who try to edit pages in a way that profits them by making them look better
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for someone who paid them to do so or for whatever reason.
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But that's generally kept to a minimum by the editors who work very hard for nothing,
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as far as I know.
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So, yeah, just thought, you know, it's just quite wondrous that, you know,
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six million pages, I think six million pages, articles have been created
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all through volunteer efforts.
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It's quite remarkable.
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And then, of course, there's YouTube.
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Again, you know, some people are doing it to make money.
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You know, people do make a lot of money on YouTube if you're very popular,
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but for the most part, people don't make a lot of money there,
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and they're just doing it because they want to put this out there.
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They can share knowledge with others, and, you know, it's really fantastic.
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So, you know, this is just one of those things to really kind of remember
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and understand about people that they will work hard at things that they value,
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that they think are valuable, and that, you know, generally you need to pay people
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for things that they might not value or just in order for them to survive.
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I mean, I have two jobs, and the job here at Arts and Ideas I love doing,
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and if I had plenty of money, I'd do it for free.
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I have another job where I'm teaching math for some grad students,
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and, well, I find it enjoyable, and, you know, like I certainly enjoy helping people learn math
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because I think it's an important thing for those who want to learn it.
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I would probably not do that job if I had lots of money.
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You know, it's particularly as, you know, that job I have to do a lot of grading for.
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If it was just being available to answer questions and whatever, sure, no problem,
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but grading, oh, that's a chore. That's a big chore.
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So, yeah, but, you know, I'm happy to develop math content.
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In fact, I'm hoping to create a site for such a thing,
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but, you know, it's interesting to think about what people will do and won't do
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and how it impacts and what needs to happen.
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There's a whole kind of free software movement out there,
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and sort of the core of the software, you know, the thing that actually solves the problem,
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that's generally done and given for free,
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but then it's that last bit where it's actually made usable to a large segment of people.
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That's where it often falls down because the people who create it,
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and I've created something of my own that helps me,
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and I can see that it would be rough for others to use.
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I put it out there, and some people do use it,
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but for the most part it's, you know, it's not finished.
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If I had been paid to do this, I would have finished it in a much better fashion,
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probably rewritten it. I've thought about rewriting this thing.
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And, you know, it's just not going to serve my needs,
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and I have other things that I want to do that I need to do that I do get paid to do.
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And so, you know, that's the curious endeavor of humans.
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Happy to share, but, you know, there's always priorities.
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So I'm personally grateful for Wikipedia to exist
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and to have remained free and reasonably pure over these past 20 years.
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I also find it remarkable that, you know, there are many projects that you even pay money for,
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and it falls to the wayside. It gets bought up, changed, whatever.
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So Wikipedia kind of not falling into that trap,
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and maybe the way they set it up legally they actually can't fall into that trap,
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which is nice if that's the case.
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But in any event, the fact that it's out there and working so well is great,
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and I think a great testament to the human spirit.
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So, yeah, that's all I have to say about it.
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I will see you when I see you.