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Jimmy Wales on why Wikipedia will outlast Elon Musk [1]

['Ellsworth Toohey']

Date: 2025-10-31  

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder, is defending the platform against Elon Musk's cartoonishly vapid attacks. In a recent New York Times interview, Wales dismisses Musk's accusation that Wikipedia is "woke" by pointing to the site's actual mechanisms for transparency. "You see the notice at the top of a page sometimes that says, 'The neutrality of this page has been disputed,' or 'The following section doesn't cite any sources,'" Wales explains. "People like that. Not many places these days will tell you, Hey, we're not so sure here."

Wikipedia's strength lies in its commitment to presenting multiple perspectives without editorial judgment. Rather than declaring abortion a sin or a human right, Wales notes, Wikipedia presents both the Catholic Church's position and how critics have responded. This approach — facts and attribution, not ideology — has made Wikipedia resilient against accusations of bias from any direction.

Wales acknowledges the threats: editor harassment, government pressure, and coordinated attacks from political groups. "All the noise in the world and all these people ranting, that's not the real thing," Wales told the Times. "The real thing is genuine human knowledge, genuine discourse, genuinely grappling with the difficult issues of our day."

When asked about Musk's power to damage Wikipedia, Wales waved if off: "I don't think he has the power he thinks he has, or that a lot of people think he has, to damage Wikipedia. We'll be here in a hundred years and he won't."

Previously:

• One man's search for the least-viewed article on Wikipedia

• Wikipedia losing traffic to AI

• UK Law would force Wikipedia to unmask anonymous editors

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