The primary issue is how seriously we take our chosen obligations to people in the developing world who do not have Internet connections. … Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for us. It's for them. It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so..

A month ago, we were planning for the future. Today, we still are — just a different future than any of us expected... At Wikimedia, we live by a mantra: everything that happens in the world happens on Wikipedia. And when things happen, the world looks our way.

Wikipedia has come a long way since it started in 2001. With around 70,000 volunteers editing in over 100 languages, it is by far the world’s most popular reference site. Its future is also uncertain. One of the biggest threats it faces is the rise of smartphones as the dominant personal computing device. ... The pool of potential Wikipedia editors could dry up as the number of mobile users keeps growing; it’s simply too hard to manipulate complex code on a tiny screen.

Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal.

I know Wikipedia is very cool. A lot of people do not think so, but of course they are wrong.

Wikipedia is something special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the mind. It is a place we can all go to think, to learn, to share our knowledge with others. When I founded Wikipedia, I could have made it into a for-profit company with advertising banners, but I decided to do something different. We’ve worked hard over the years to keep it lean and tight. We fulfill our mission efficiently.

I love Wikipedia. I donated thousands of dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation.

There are a few core principles of Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia, that I think are important starting points. It’s an online encyclopedia. It’s not trying to be anything else. It’s certainly not trying to be a traditional social media platform in any way. It has a structure that is led by volunteer editors. And as you may know, the foundation has no editorial control. This is very much a user-led community, which we support and enable.
The lessons to learn from, not just with what we’re doing but how we continue to iterate and improve, start with this idea of radical transparency. Everything on Wikipedia is cited. It’s debated on our talk pages. So even when people may have different points of view, those debates are public and transparent, and in some cases really allow for the right kind of back and forth. I think that’s the need in such a polarized society — you have to make space for the back and forth. But how do you do that in a way that’s transparent and ultimately leads to a better product and better information?

It turns out a lot of people don’t get it. Wikipedia is like rock’n’roll; it’s a cultural shift.

Most have simply washed their hands of the problem, claiming that the bigotry or bias on Wikipedia is just an unfortunate side-effect that we have to accept. But this is not a trivial unintended consequence of an open source system; bias goes against the very principle of Wikipedia and must be addressed. I have to deal with this bias and misinformation every time a journalist interviews me and references my Wikipedia article. I need to spend the first 30 minutes of interviews to correct all the misleading information from my Wikipedia article... Most of the skeptic editors on my article believe me to be a very dangerous man — and believe that it is Wikipedia’s responsibility to warn the world of how dangerous my ideas are.

Wikipedia is essential infrastructure, almost like a utility that provides a trustworthy resource to the broader Internet.

The real challenges for Wikipedia are to resolve the governance disputes — the tensions among foundation employees, longtime editors trying to protect their prerogatives, and new volunteers trying to break in — and to design a mobile-oriented editing environment.

Wiki editing thrives on local knowledge, but 'local' in an epistemological sense, not necessarily in a geographical sense. For example, I personally know a lot more about world news on topics that interest me and could synthesize much better in those areas, than I know about local politicians where I live

So I think one thing that Wikipedia has to do as a culture is ask itself, 'Are we willing– to be this– this self-selecting– and– and be this small?' We can have many more people if we’re willing to be a more welcoming community.