kaskade successful. one of the most endangered species in the world once roam central africa in large numbers but decades of poaching and destruction of their habitat led to their extinction in the wild while the embryos raise hope the process of saving the northern white rhinoceros still faces many challenges including whether a car borne from this process would even survive so high that. you know without is there are these are our top stories hundreds of protesters have been arrested across russia as they demonstrate in defiance of police orders demanding the release of jailed opposition politician alexina valmy xander god is in moscow and says there are crackdowns happening across russia there is also reports of policing use of force to detain people in the siberian town of.

petersburg almost all the central streets are completely sealed of so it seems that the tortillas are better prepared to discuss this weekend and are ready to do their utmost to prevent people from coming in the ones that are coming to protest to detain as swiftly as possible. while health organization experts have visited the markets in the chinese city of war as they continue their investigation into the origins of the pandemic a live animal market is thought to be where the virus was 1st detectives. on a colombia argentina brewer the latest country to impose travel restrictions on brazil due to its covert $1000.00 variant and it comes as authorities in amazonas say say the health care system there is on the brink of collapse of hospital beds and oxygen. portugal says it's running out of intensive care beds as it struggles

with the world's highest coronavirus death toll per capita ministry data shows there are only 7 intensive care beds left on the mainland out of 850 former us president donald trump has parted ways with his lead impeachment lawyer a little more than a week before his trial that's according to u.s. media trump is accused of inciting the siege of the capitol building this month is aides say they plan to argue the trial is unconstitutional because he's no longer in office early indications are limited republican support for conviction and participants in libya's u.n. sponsored peace talks of approved a list of candidates seeking to lead the country's transitional government $24.00 a vying for 3 presidential council posts and $21.00 for prime minister they selected to be responsible preparing for a national election at the end of the year those are your headlines and back with another news bulletin off to talk to al jazeera. i'm counting the cost the world's

richest mamma and the protests to reform the institution how much is thailand's king worth is the u.a.e. the next day to exit bag and coffee farmers in colombia struggling to recruit. counting the cost on al-jazeera. to see if. we can p.t.o. according to wikipedia is an online free content encyclopedia project helping to create a world in which everyone can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. created in 2001 it recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and has grown to become the world's largest reference website with 55000000 articles and more than 300 languages which u.p.d. attracts 1700000000 visitors every month. the freely editable content project is supported by the we can media foundation as

a 2020 the foundation employs more than $300.00 people and has any will revenues in excess of more than $100000000.00 but at a time when truth is under assault like never before what role does wiki pedia play in the media ecosystem what steps is it taking to counter misinformation and when it comes to hate speech online should tech giants and social media platforms be the ones to moderate down these are some of the questions we put forward to the chief executive officer and executive director of the we can media foundation kathryn marc talks to al-jazeera. chief executive officer of the wikimedia foundation catherine marr thank you for talking to al-jazeera thank you for having me catherine i've heard you say in the past that wiki pedia is not meant to be truth what do you mean by that. well what i mean by that is that we keep pedia is a constantly changing record of what we agree on and find important it is full of

facts are facts that the idea of truth is something a little more complicated that requires us negotiated together and can change at a time when truth is under assault like never before what role does wikipedia play in this media ecosystem. i think it would compete offer is a place for us to negotiate our understanding of the world and that's what i mean when i say it's a little bit different than truth all of us have different experiences that we come to the world with and come to conversations with we could pedia is a place where volunteer editors bring those different experiences from various different and persuasions political leanings and have to negotiate to find some sort of consensus which is what we all agree on as a sort of matter of the general public and that's really over with pierre is the sort of space of common ground from your perspective what steps do you think internet based and online platform should be taking to counter misinformation and

this information oh i think this is one of the greatest challenges of our time as it's leading to fragmentation that's making it harder for us in society is to rise targets challenges what i'd like to see is internet i'm seeking a similar approach to the one that we could pedia has pioneered which is really being transparent about the ways in which they moderated information bringing their community of users into conversation around kind of community standards that we'd like to see and having a are. our policies around what the level of tolerance is for information that could be problematic or rise to the law. and danger to the public and what i mean by that is we saw social platforms take pretty clear standards around information when it came to the code 19 and emic viewing this is a public health issue a matter of life and death. but as we now know political information is a matter of life and death as well and so i would like to see them exercise perhaps

clear execution on those terms of server terms of service or community standards that all of them have and could wield marked so something significant to happened recently former president trump was banned by facebook by twitter by other online platforms you know there are those who have celebrated the move and who say that it was long overdue and then there are those who say it was a violation of free speech what's your take on this. it's a private forum so it's not really a matter of free speech one way or another that is a misunderstanding of the application and the responsibility of platforms as private entities i think that that's really a question for those who consider as they think about what role incitement plays on their pop arms and to the consistent application of those terms and use you know every single pop arm has them and we know that there have been brought in card out carve outs for certain political figures whereas those have not been applied to others it's very uneven cross the globe we'd like to see greater transparency about

when those are tied to which politicians but also greater consistency i think that would be the right path forward if we're talking about moderation when it comes to incitement and when it comes to hate speech what advantages does what pedia have when it comes to the issue of moderation and stopping the spread of misinformation that twitter and facebook and other platforms don't have i mean there's the fact that there's only one page for each subject and we keep on wikipedia make it easier when it comes to moderation but you make it easy for us yes absolutely the fact that we only have one page is the same. i absolutely everyone across the globe is really important and when it comes to being able to offer clarity and transparency about what kind of information it is that we can pedia is offer and we're not a social platform in the same way as some of these other ones you meant. and there are no homes of algorithmic pathways for you to fall down there's only one version of the information that's very transparent and where comes from it links out in

ways that allow individuals to be able to pursue their own interests we play a fundamentally different role in the end of information ecosystem and i think that's something that is really unique about what would be pediatricians to offer is here to set your curiosity but it's not here to sort of trigger our passions or impulses and deep in what we believe it's actually here with to expand what we believe so we can be is now 20 years old and many are now praising pedia for being a line of defense against misinformation that's really a far cry from how the site was perceived in the early days right absolutely have been an interesting moment for us as we celebrate our 20th birthday to see how far we've come one of the things that we have the size to be true is that part of the reason perhaps with a p.d.f. of trusted today is that it's always been so transparent about the fact that we actually ask you to read it with

a critical eye and not trust all the information that that's why we have citations that's why it's very clear the record of every single article that's ever been at it and you can go in and see for yourself and you can even read it if you see something that is a mistake i look at it is a work in progress we've been open about this since day one and i think that that almost is a place of humility or honesty that people are looking for in their sources of information and this challenging moment that we find ourselves you know when i ask you to expand on that answer a little bit because what one of the things is really interesting about wikipedia is that you can see the history of revisions for the entries which is something you were just mentioning you can read some of the back and forth between editors in the talk pages do the conversations that happen between wicca p.d.'s editors reflect the kinds of conversations that are happening privately inside news publications and tech companies. it's hard for me to say i only work at the comedian foundation so i don't know the inside conversations at news of the gages and tech companies i

would hope that those are the conversations that these different entities are out and we could be to have conversations and debate what is notable and what is newsworthy out in public and i think that that's actually a strength of the model is that transparency creates an accountability as to what could be editors are actually up to and you can always go back and take a look and say well why isn't this controversy a factor why isn't this news story on it could be to article and generally there's a good answer in that discussion space that that helps the reader understand why something might be included in an encyclopedia and why perhaps something has been held off for a later day as as information continues to develop or as we look for more sources to verify that in fact is the nature of the information so i want to take a so take a step back for a minute and look at how wicked p.d. monitors the content i mean could you tell us a bit more about the fact checking process how do you get to be a wikipedia volunteer and how many volunteers do your have shown so they're about

280000 people who get it we could pedia every single month over the 20 years that we've been in existence that's tens of millions of people who contributed to the competing there is a smaller group of individuals who are very active on a monthly basis and they do most of the monitoring that you just mentioned of course people who had it with p.d.f. on so many different topics truly just the complete range from pop culture to politics from the sciences to space exploration and the various articles that you see are monitored by different people based on the interest that they have from breaking news politics to the pandemic that we've all been living through any time and it is need to be competing articles people get notified about those attitudes there's a list of every single change that happens that it's happened. interview times minutes it's a fast running list but we support getting community with software that allows them

to flag what is likely to be a good at it helps increase the s. breadth and depth of the encyclopedia 1st let's likely to be vandalism or a malicious effort to undermine the quality of information in the encyclopedia and that the capacity to see everything that's happening in real time to get notifications when edits are made to sensitive articles like those about political leaders are critical health information is how we can be community stays on top of what's going on on wikipedia at all times it's not to say that sometimes mistakes aren't they are people and things that sporting events and the language but those are caught very quickly and what we say reverted back to the original more accurate arm of the process by which information is posted on wikipedia i've heard in the past interviews with you where you say that you don't consider that a form of journalism how do you describe it. it's complicated right it's pedia it's something that doesn't really have a parallel and the information space this idea collaboratively and it is

information general public information source or general information source we give media and has it as a symbiotic relationship with journalism it depends on journalism journalism is very important much in the same way it depends on research and the sciences and humanities and other other areas of knowledge production i think what we offer instead is a place of contacts for the general or people in common in general information about a topic that they're interested in and in the world it helps them go deeper on for example news stories of the day by getting the background on text the history and one place so that they can be a better news consumer and more important news consumer so it's really a symbiotic relationship that i think helps elevate both of both the areas of knowledge production but it's not quite the same it serves a different goal i want to go back to something you mentioned in the previous answer when you talked about trying to get information across in a time of

a pandemic you know in an attempt to stop the spread of misinformation about covert 19 the world health organization partnered with wikipedia how is that collaboration going to get it's going really well thank you for asking as soon as the pandemic hit we knew that we could p.d.s. articles about health information were going to be a front and center we saw this during the west african bowl of crisis in the previous decade so our medical editing community was quite keen to get the best information possible out in we could be articles of course what made this very different from casts of the health issues is that this was a novel virus we didn't know anything about it when in 1st stopped across the globe and back result of it about it and began articles or updating all the time we decided that we wanted to work with the best in public health space communications and. of course i had already had been in contact with w.h.o. about other initiatives around improving public health information so it was really

just a matter of strengthening those informal and actually into our own partnership and today you can find more than 7000 articles about the code in 1000 and democratic of p.d.f. many of which are illustrated with information on the w.h.o. in graphics about public policy everything from social distancing to hand washing to more of the particulars of the virus itself and we're proud to play a role in helping the w.h.o. and other health institutions get this really critical and permission out in a way that people have access to particularly since it's now in so many languages competing articles about the code in 1000 pandemic are in more than 120 languages many of which would not necessarily perhaps you know the front of the list for for public health translations even for an institution like the human body how much has readership increased and how much has user engagement increased during the pandemic and it's increased a lot by double digits and we are at the beginning of the pandemic actually didn't

expect this we were mostly wary about the health and safety of our readers and contributors and didn't know if people would have the time to contribute to it as it turns out during shelter in place lots of people did and we saw those readership numbers and numbers that we've never seen certainly not mine and my time here at the media. and double digit increase in terms of her ship now of course you know the world has continued to evolve and adapt to what's going on and some of those numbers have gone down a bit but we still see sort of a sustained increase across the board so it turns out that when we are in a time in which nobody unprecedented we don't have good models for information really is the thing that people turn to catherine we could be a probably wouldn't exist in the form that it is without search engines like google google of course alongside the conglomerate known as alpha bit which is one of the 5 tech giants the domino. the internet is the fact that there is a monopoly when it comes to search traffic a problem. i mean i think i'm going to say that i'm not

a scholar of antitrust and certainly it's perhaps a little bit outside of the remit of that we can media and to comment on i think what we would say is that an open web is tremendously important and it is important that people are able to have access to services that meet their needs. it is and i think a reality that when you have single services that serve the close it's very difficult to be able to know for all countries all languages all communities whether those do impact is the ins and so ensuring that we have a web that is open both in terms of standards and open competition is really sort of the basis that ran up and let me ask you this since we compete is not ad supported it means you don't really have to worry about maximizing in gauge manner worry about presenting content that goes viral that makes it much different than the other platforms that are out there that depend on the click right l absolutely

it's one of the reasons that we are really proud to be a nonprofit charitable institution defacto as of the matter is that we just want to serve people's knowledge needs in the best way possible and so that's going to look really different for everyone having the flexibility to be an institution that is singularly focused on that mission and knowledge of the world allows us to meet different decisions when it comes to what software we develop and roll out allows us a longer term horizon in some difficult decisions such as how we deal with censorship for example and i think that that's a great place for an institution with a mission like ours what are the biggest misconceptions that you encounter that people have out there about wikipedia. i mean i think the biggest one of course is can you trust it and what we usually say is well we we want you to be a critical reader we want to be the place that you start but not the place where you vanish that's why we have all. citations that's why i have a model of verifiable information is what we could be built on the one thing that i

think i would say is for all the teachers in the world to have perhaps rightly had sort of a critical eye or pedia is that our students are using it anyway people are using it to learn and it actually offers a great opportunity to talk about the production of knowledge on line who contributes to the production of knowledge whether you know where does the information come from how do you read it critically all of the sides of it had a g. around being an informed media consumer that could be that can be a great learning experience for that was students because we know they're using it anyway so we want them to have the best possible to use it well and catherine i want to look for a moment of some of what you bring from your past experiences into your role as c.e.o. of the way comedia fast bring in even before that the you've got involved in working within the space of using technology for the development of human rights and democracy this is when you were working with groups like unicef and the national democratic institute i remember reporting from countries like yemen during the arab spring when i spent a lot of time there you know activists were so full of hope about the democratizing

effect of the internet and mobile technology a decade on when you see how technology has been used to repress societies to intimidate activists how does that make you feel. i feel naive i think but i was very optimistic of course about the way the technology could be used but even in 2011 it became clear very quickly that technology could be used for great armaments while we were aware that internet shutdowns were tools and troll that surveillance was widespread in many countries surveillance of activists using their phones and their and their internet connections and their networks that other other individuals defending human rights and and so i think that you know it is always then a double edged sword it and say can perhaps some time press to see that so clearly as we do today technology is very powerful but it is of course with anything our

all it can have its downsides well and i think that is actually one of the reasons that perhaps if anything and it's strengthened my own belief in projects like wikipedia that are community controlled that start on the basis of some fundamental values around the right to freedom of inquiry and freedom of information and that really do you come from the basis of having a mission to make the world a better place no matter where you come from no matter what language you speak is the idea that someone has something to contribute it's a fact of it could be a that it's only 280000 people or planet of billions which means that there are many places that are not well documented there are many histories traditions culture is communities that could really benefit from your contribution your photographs your knowledge your familiarity with your country and your home. and your experience we get media has struggled with ensuring there is diversity

among editors it's been reported that they have skewed largely white and male especially when it comes to english language in trees one of the efforts that are in place right now to try to fix that going forward i think this is a very an acura. concern of the 80 percent of our editors and i as male as we don't have specific detail numbers because we don't actually track this information we have a strong privacy policy that is related to our belief that people should have the freedom to explore the information that's important to them without us knowing what that is it's means of protecting our readers and in countries and places where information can be a concern. to those who are political environment that they live and we would like to see more about app. we'd like to see more women write about topics that are interested them not just about women but just about the world and the increased

representation of peoples and increase diversity of perspectives ensures that we have a better and more comprehensive understanding of the world in which we live rather than simply servile white male european or north american perspective and so at the big media foundation we're investing in growing our communities house the global investing and efforts that support women both in terms of writing women's history into it could be via but also increasing the number of women participating we could be and we're making it easier to end it with a cavern you wrote an op ed for the los angeles times that was headlined wikipedia mirrors the world gender bias is it doesn't cause them what did you posit in that piece and what was the response. yeah i think what we could p.d.f. really does is it's a important to think about it as a a tertiary source that is it is a source that's built on secondary sources such as what's reported in the news what's written about in history books that's written about in academic and

scientific journals and the like and so what we were saying is that we could be has long considered itself reflective of the knowledge that exists in other places a summary of that knowledge and that means that if we. don't have a great history of women if we don't have great histories of countries that have been colonized as written from the perspective of those who who are from those countries then we are missing out on the perspectives the understanding of the world from a great majority of people and back probably the global majority of people one of our contributors often says we can be is a mirror held up to the biases of the world and we can't write about the things that i have not been written about yet and so we encourage that everyone takes an active responsibility and thinking about what does representation like what is inclusion look like in the knowledge space whether it is thinking about the number of women that are interviewed for an article or the perspectives that go into

talking about issues to ensure that these are really in compassing of minority perspectives and marginalized communities that haven't always been able to have in the mainstream understanding of the world what does the future look like who are competing. i'm really excited about what could be a future one of the things that has been true is that we've seen an increase in contributions to it could be to in the readership of wikipedia even at a time when we are told that there is an information crisis i think what that speaks to is the fact that information is something that everyone values and everyone needs to see this across you know 300 language versions of we could be. contributors on every continent of the globe and yes including antarctica which speaks to this universality of our need our knowledge this is something that we all have something that every culture community country cherishes and so for us with

a good idea we want to be able to serve the world and so really thinking about what that means to truly have more content more great greater depth and diversity and more enlightened which is. greater a thriving communities of knowledge creek. hers and in all countries and then really also the flip side is you know we are both that knowledge community and technology side and so our goal is to ensure that we can be a remains as relevant simple and accessible as ever or whatever that action there's certainly a lot of engineering in our future as we think about how to end it what it means to be in everyone's pocket or or wherever actually that whatever that my chief executive officer of the wiccan media foundation catherine moore thank you for talking to just thank you so much for having me.

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