1119: Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales Shares the Seven Rules of Trust

Pete Mockaitis
Jimmy, welcome!

Jimmy Wales
Hello. Nice to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to chat with you and get some insight into trust. That’s something we’re big into here, so why don’t we start with, could you tell us your story of how Wikipedia came to be? And I know we could do that for hours. So, let’s do the five to 10-ish minute version of that just so we can get situated in context and piggyback off of some things.

Jimmy Wales
So, I had the idea for a free open source, freely licensed encyclopedia, written by volunteers more than two years before starting Wikipedia, and I was very excited to get started. I thought it was such an obvious idea, lots of people would be doing something similar. So, I just got started. I didn’t really know what I was doing.

And went out and hired an editor in chief and we set up a seven-stage review process to get anything published. And, in retrospect, I realize now the entire system that we built just screamed, “We don’t trust you,” because that seven-stage process, you had to send in your CV to prove you were qualified, and then we would take your draft and send it out for review to the most prestigious professors we could find and so forth. We were being more academic than Britannica.

And I realized it wasn’t going to work when I thought, “Well, I could try to write an article about Robert Merton who had just recently won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on option pricing theory.” And in grad school, I had published a paper on option pricing theory, the mathematics of it, and so I knew his work very well.

And when I sat down to write, I had this enormous feeling of writer’s block because it was very intimidating. They were going to take my draft and send it to the most prestigious finance professors they could. I hadn’t been in academia for a few years at that time, so even though I was familiar with his work, it was a very scary thing to contemplate.

And that was when I realized, like, “Oh, this isn’t going to work. Like, it doesn’t feel good. It isn’t fun.” So, one of my employees, Jeremy, came to me and showed me the Wiki, the concept of Wiki, which had been around for several years. So, a Wiki is just a website anyone can edit. And the word Wiki comes from a Hawaiian word wiki-wiki, which means quick. So quick collaboration is the concept.

And so, a Wiki is a website where you can just quickly write and share and so on, which was pretty radical. I mean, these days we have Google Docs and everything else so it doesn’t seem as radical but that wasn’t really a thing back then. And it worked. Within two weeks, we had more work done than we had in almost two years. It was really quick.

Pete Mockaitis
52x, there you go.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, because we had this community that had grown up for two years, and we had the mailing list, and we had spent two years talking about an encyclopedia, talking about how to build it, what it should be like, neutrality, all of the kind of values of Wikipedia. But we had created a system that didn’t trust people and, therefore, didn’t make any progress.

People were very intimidated, it wasn’t very fun, so even though people liked the idea, it didn’t really move forward. But that act of opening up and just saying, “Okay look, everybody just come and write. We’ll figure out as we go along. We’ll need to…” Well, in the early days, I assumed we were going to need to assign someone to be the editor-in-chief of the, I don’t know, the American history section. And I still had a top-down mentality in the early days.

But after a short period of time, it was like, “Oh, that doesn’t seem to be in any way necessary or even useful to have someone like that.” In fact, the community looks after each other and monitors each other, and so on and so forth. So, the whole journey there was really about realizing, like, you can trust people and that’s the way to make progress.

Pete Mockaitis
This is fascinating stuff and, boy, from seven stages of approval to seven rules of trust, that’s kind of a fun little parallelism there.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, the other day, I never thought of this, somebody the other day said to me, “Oh, so the first system was like the seven rules of mistrust.” I said, “Oh, yeah, I didn’t think of it that way, but that’s actually quite good.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so your book is called The Seven Rules of Trust. I’d love to hear, any particularly surprising or fascinating discoveries you’ve made about human beings and trust along your journey or in putting together this book?

Jimmy Wales
I think there’s a lot really. I think one of the keys is, I think, it’s rule four in the book, is give trust to get trust, that by being trusting, then people will trust you. And I think that’s a little counterintuitive or a little surprising to people, although it actually isn’t, I think, once you really think about it.

If you think about how you conduct yourself in relationships and things like that, if you approach someone and you trust them and you make it clear that you’re trusting them, they’re very likely to reciprocate because humans are like that. People are very pro-social and they like that kind of environment.

So, in a workplace, the kind of manager who trusts the employees to get the work done tends to be rewarded with employees who are trustworthy and who work to get the work done because they’re like, they appreciate that. And if you approach the employees with a really, like, an aggressive sense of mistrust, well, they’re probably just going to work to rule at best. They’re not going to trust you in return. They’re going to say, “This person is really being a jerk.”

You see these stories from time to time, sort of post-pandemic stories about people working from home, and then some kind of software installed on your work computer to monitor whether you’re at your keyboard or not. And I’m like, “Man, quit that job. That is so toxic. Like, that’s completely absurd.”

And, actually, if you want employees to give it their best, the best way to get that out of people is to say, “Yeah, you’re to work from home? You know, we’ve got a lot of work to get done. That’s the important thing. Organize your day as you see fit. If you’re away from your computer, give me some time back later. Let’s be flexible. Let’s be trusting of each other.”

And I think people really respond well to that. And they respond the opposite way when you show them mistrust.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that really does resonate. And I’ve had that in my own experience. I heard a fun turn of a phrase. I believe it’s a malicious obedience or malicious compliance.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, malicious compliance. Yes, I’ve heard that.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, you know, you say they work to the rules, like, “Oh, this is a rule, huh? Okay. Well, I’m annoyed and irritated with you, and this is the rule. And I know this is going to cause a little bit of trouble, but I kind of like that. I’m taking some gleeful delight in obeying the rule but causing a little bit of trouble, like, ‘Well, I’m just doing what I was supposed to.’” And, yeah, that’s not what we’re going for.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, totally. Totally. And so, it’s a healthier way to live, among other things.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you mentioned one of the rules. I’d love it if we could, in fact, have perhaps a one-ish minute overview of each of the rules and then we’ll dig in a little bit from there.

Jimmy Wales
Sure. Well, I mean, I don’t necessarily have them all memorized in order, but I can do my best, or maybe we just start digging in.

Pete Mockaitis
I have your table of contents up.

Jimmy Wales
Oh, that’s cheating, you know. So, I’d say the first rule, “Make it personal.” And so, the idea here is that trust is won and lost in an individual human mind. And so, there’s a lot of different things I mean by that, but in particular, it’s about empathy, like thinking about that other person, thinking about, “What do they need from me in this situation? What will help them to trust me that I’m going to do the things I say I’m going to do?”

And it’s an encouragement that we maybe not think too much about statistical measures and playing the numbers. Certainly, because I come from the consumer internet world, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on A-B testing. You A-B test and you see, “Which of these two patterns gets us a higher checkout rate at the end of the visit to the website?”

Okay, that’s valid. I’m not saying don’t use A-B testing. A-B testing is super valid. But layered on top of that, you also have to say, “But how is somebody going to feel when they get through this? Are they going to feel like this is a great relationship, like we’re a good company to do businesses with? Or, are they going to feel like, ‘Oh, my god, this is a nightmare,’” even if you somehow got them to the checkout.

And where you really see this a lot of times is when you try to unsubscribe from something, there are so many dark patterns there, which I’m sure if all you do is A-B testing, you say, “Yeah, look, if we do it this way, make it clear, obvious, honest, simple, for people to say cancel their subscription, then when people start down that path, even though we give them some reasons along the way and we offer them a discount, we make it easy and 40% of them still quit.”

“If we send them in an endless loop and then force them to call us on a phone later, then only 3% quit.” And you think, “Oh, great, well, we’re going to do the difficult way.” No, you’ve just undermined trust. You’ve just undermined any chance of ever getting that customer back. You’ve undermined your reputation, the word of mouth. I mean, it’s just super toxic.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, they’ll hop on Reddit, trash you.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, people go crazy about that kind of stuff. I mean, I personally just can’t stand it, and I sort of have my own internal blacklist of companies I’m never going to deal with again. And so, that’s the kind of thing where, you know, don’t just look at the numbers. Like, make it personal. Make it personal. So, be positive about people, so assume good faith is a classic Wikipedia rule.

I’ve talked about this a little bit already, that under rule four be trusting but here, you know, it’s like it’s a good bet if you meet somebody, and whatever they’re doing, they’re probably a decent person. If you meet a thousand people, 990 of them are going to be fantastic people. Probably nine of them are going to be annoying, but they’re still not malicious. They’re just like annoying people. And then maybe one in a thousand is somehow actually being malicious.

And so, it’s a very small number of people. And so, being positive about people and designing whatever your process is or your life or whatever around that premise of saying, “Oh, look, I’m just going to assume most people are going to be good. They’re going to do the right thing,” that actually works really, really well. And then we talk in rule four about the reciprocity piece of that. One of the reasons it works really well is because people like to reciprocate that.

Rule three, create a clear purpose. That one’s fantastic. So, this, really, when people say, “What do you think is the one rule of trust that has been really instrumental to the success of Wikipedia?” And I would say it’s this. Wikipedia, the goal of Wikipedia is a free, neutral, high-quality encyclopedia, and that’s what we’re here to do, and that defines everything about everything that we do.”

And what does that mean? It means when we come to decisions, we’ve got a North Star, something to guide us, we know what it is that we’re trying to do, we have a good purpose, and we’re able to follow that purpose. And it gives everybody an organizing theme. And a lot of times, people don’t sense that kind of clear purpose. And they’re not really sure what the point is of what they’re doing.

And, frankly, this is, I believe, one of the problems with a lot of social media is because the company’s purpose is, frankly, it’s just show as many ads as possible and get as many clicks on ads. And if that’s their core purpose, they lose sight of a lot of things about what users really want to need out of a social media platform. And they, instead, optimize for addiction, outrage, clickbait, etc., which, as we know, is pretty toxic and not very healthy.

And so, having that clear, good purpose is really important for success. Skipping four, because we did four already, rule five, I think this chapter is titled something like, “Your Mother Was Right,” and this is about be civil. Be nice, be kind to other people. Disagree respectfully. You focus on ideas. No personal attacks, is one of the core rules of Wikipedia. It’s just useless. It violates our purpose, which is to write an encyclopedia. And it isn’t practical.

And, obviously, we see this in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of places, in all kinds of businesses, that being nice to other people is actually a fantastic way to get things done because people are like, “Oh, yeah, this is a nice person. This is great. I’m going to do what I can to further this. It’s a relationship with this person or with this business that I like, and I’m going to cherish that.”

Be independent. So, this is, maintain freedom from undue influence to build credibility. In this case, the Wikipedia reference I would get is we’re not funded by governments, so governments have no influence over what we say and what we do. We aren’t funded by a handful of billionaires or one billionaire. I mean, you can imagine how that might end in tears. We’re funded almost exclusively by the small donors. The average donation of Wikipedia is just over $10. But we do have some…

Pete Mockaitis
I’ve seen your messages, Jimmy.

Jimmy Wales
Oh, yeah, you’ve seen the messages, yeah. And this is why it’s really important. It’s important for our intellectual independence that we have the ability to say, “You can come and offer Wikipedia a million dollars to change an article, and we’re just going to go like, ‘Sorry, that’s not what we do. We’re not desperate with that.’”

And the way it normally happens, it wouldn’t be that blunt or brutal. It would be, if we had one major donor who is funding 80% of our budget all the time, then, wow, you would have to really listen to that one donor, and you would really have to kind of worry about what they think about the content of the articles and things like that, in a way that I think could easily be unhealthy.

As opposed to we have to worry about what the general public thinks, that everybody thinks, and we need to appeal to the widest possible audience so that everybody can go, “You know what, that Wikipedia is a great thing. I love it. I should chip in.” And so, that independence is part of why people trust us.

When you’re reading Wikipedia, you know, for example, that no government can force us to change an article. And they’ve tried. We were banned in Turkey for three years and we fought all the way to the Supreme Court in Turkey and won. Meanwhile, for three years, we were blocked in Turkey and we didn’t give in. And that’s kind of just we’re very principled. We’re very independent in that way. Because for us, that value of independence, that intellectual independence is really core to our whole mission. We have to fight for that.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’d love to comment on that. I think it’s so wise and true that we should take a look at that. And, you know, I don’t think it’s conspiratorial to just assume that when there’s a substantial flow of money from a concentrated source, whether it’s an industry or an individual, that will influence the editorial choices of something.

So, for like TV news, I mean, I’ve noticed a pattern of who tends to advertise a lot on TV news, and I don’t want to, you know, be a tinfoil hat conspiracy person, but I got to imagine that has an impact on what stories they choose to pursue and which ones they don’t. I will tell you, I have, you know, a couple major customers, and when I’m getting pitches, that say, “Oh, hey, we’re going to totally make fun of one of your major customers. Would that be sort of a fun little episode?’

It’s like, “Well, maybe,” but I already don’t want to do that. I mean, I also don’t think it’s valuable, but I will admit, like, my financial influence is impacting what I choose to do, at least a little.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, that financial influence over the content. Now there are ways around that. I used to be on the board of The Guardian newspaper here in the UK, and that’s a really interesting structure because The Guardian is owned by a non-profit trust.

I was on the commercial board, so the operating company that actually runs The Guardian, but the editor-in-chief of the newspaper is hired by the other board, by The Scott Trust, by the non-profit board, and we, you know, the commercial board, had no authority to fire the editor-in-chief or to change any editorial policies.

And so, that was a really strong firewall, backed up by the legal structure, there just wasn’t any way. Now that doesn’t mean that the editor-in-chief completely doesn’t care about the commercial situation. They have to. I mean, newspapers are in dire straits and all of that. But I kind of like that, that sort of independence. And so, when we say be independent, that doesn’t necessarily mean, “Oh, well, anything done for money is bad because it’s all going to be corrupt.” I don’t believe that.

But I do believe that there is that potential, right? Then you do have to think about, “Okay, how do we design this situation so that it’s quite clear that, you know, our…” A typical kind of example, like Google has always been good about maintaining the independence of the search results from the ads. So, you can pay money and get to the top by paying for an ad, and it’s clearly marked as an ad.

Or, I mean, good luck, like the algorithm is the algorithm, and they don’t really, you know, and they keep those teams very separate and they’re quite ideological about that, and I’m glad, and I think they should be. If they started to break down and say, “Well, actually, we’ve decided that in our organic search results, we’re going to start favoring our biggest partners,” I think they would lose a lot of trust, and I think that would be damaging to them in the long run.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, well said. So, that’s independence. What’s next?

Jimmy Wales
So, the seventh rule is be transparent, and this one’s kind of obvious. I mean, I think it’s one of the things people first think of when you say what makes an organization more trustworthy. And one of things you say is, “Yeah, transparency. Like, I want to understand how it all works, how are decisions made.”

I’ve been encouraging the news media, and there’s a lot of proposals out there, not just from me, from lots of people, and I’m like pointing at those, and going, “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” which is, when you’re writing a story, don’t just adopt that voice of God, voice of the New York Times, “We’re going to tell you like it is. You can trust us. We’re the New York Times.”

You need to show your work. You need to tell us who you interviewed. You need to tell us all the details of the story. If you’ve got multiple sources, you need to talk about that. If there is a source, I mean, this is my personal pet peeve, and some organizations are better than others about this, it’s like, “Okay, there’s a Supreme Court case, okay, it just came out yesterday.” I’m just making this up, but just hypothetically.

And I’m like, “Ooh,” and I see a headline, like, “Ooh, that sounds like an important Supreme Court decision. I’m really interested in that.” And it’s so annoying, it’s like, “Oh, here’s their interpretation. Ah, this will destroy democracy,” or, “Finally, this decision will save democracy.”

And it’s like, “Yeah, but you didn’t link to it. Like, how do I, you know?” Like, now it’s super irritating. Now, it’s not like they’re hiding it from me. I can then go off and Google and find it myself. But that’s like a little small thing of like, “Hmm, if you really believed your interpretation was accurate, wouldn’t you link straight to it and link straight to the quote that would prove what you’re saying?” And that’s the kind of transparency that I think would help to build trust in news and other types of publications.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I feel the same way in terms of, because in some ways reporting on a news article can be endless. Like, there are so many people you could talk to, so many rocks you could overturn. But when the story is about a document, or a book, a Supreme Court decision, or a court ruling elsewhere, it feels to me, and maybe it’s just too high a standard, that the bare minimum is, “Did you read the thing that you’re reporting about?” because that’s really kind of finite and approachable, assuming it’s not thousands of pages and all that.

So, yes, I’m with you in showing the work. And I’d also love to get your take on, in some ways, some of these things feel commonsensical, although not always common practice for sure, are there any kind of hidden, mysterious, easily overlooked ways you think that professionals are losing trust, they’re just squandering it, and they don’t even know it?

Jimmy Wales
I think one of the things that we know, just looking at the data, is that there has been a significant decline in trust across most of the world, decline in trust in journalism, politics, business, to some extent to trust in each other, and that this is having some negative impact in society.

One of the examples that we talk about in the book, the question of masks in the pandemic. And, basically, we quote health authorities very early when the pandemic, when the news first started to break, and they basically said, “Don’t bother with masks. Please don’t rush out and buy a lot of masks.”

They gave two reasons. One, they really need it in the hospitals, and, two, they don’t really do any good for you at home anyway. But then, a month later, everybody’s like, “It’s mandatory. You must wear a mask every time you’re outside,” right? And so, suddenly, “When you go out of your house and you’re in any public place, you must wear a mask.”

Well, like that flip-flop caused a lot of people to lose trust. And, in fact, one of the reasons they first said don’t bother with masks is they didn’t trust the public to follow that first warning. They were afraid people were going to panic and buy up all the masks, there’d be a mask shortage in hospitals. And it’s like, no, trust the public, say, “Actually masks are effective if worn properly, etc.”

And at the end of the day, where I get to on masks is like a proper N95 mask, worn properly, by a professional in a hospital setting, they are effective at reducing transmission. I live in London and the number of people who are riding the Tube in London, very crowded, with their masks half-ass on, half-ass off, “Hey, was that really helping? I’m not so sure.”

And that’s what the data seems to suggest, it’s like, “Yeah, good strong effect in hospitals, less so elsewhere.” So, where do you get to on that? That’s a complicated question. But my point here is really about that failure to trust the public resulted in a loss of trust. And I think an example of this, you could also look at a lot of environmentalists who have lost trust by over-hyping concerns.

They don’t trust that the public will believe that there is a problem unless they make it sound worse than it actually is. And then when that’s found out, I remember once there were some emails leaked that were quite, it’s like, “Oh, that’s really awkward. Like, you’re really talking about how to make a scaremongering story, and you’re a scientist. Like, you’re not trusting the public to be straight with them.”

And if you believe, and I think they do believe and I think they’re probably right, like if you’re really straight about climate change, it’s a serious issue and we need to really do something about it. And the best way to convince people of that is not to over-egg the case and create scare stories but to be straight, and say, “Well, look, here’s the problem, here are some mitigations, here’s the most likely scenario, here are some worse scenarios, here are some better scenarios.”

Because I think people just do respond to that and they then trust the scientists. And I think if people feel like, “Oh, the scientists have become politicized,” then they’re less trusting.

Pete Mockaitis
And I’m thinking about just the notion of, as humans, we like certainty and we like our experts, our authorities to just say with clarity and confidence, “This is the thing.” Like, “Oh, okay, that guy really seems confident. I guess I should follow that.” And yet, like, the science suggests that there’s very little relationship between the confidence with which someone asserts something and the truthiness of that something.

And yet, if someone’s coming out, it’s like, “Well, you know what, here’s what we know. Here’s what we don’t know. Most likely it’s probably like that.” That nuanced balanced, hear the uncertain elements, kind of a presentation, over time I’ve come to appreciate that person more. It’s like, “Okay, I feel like it’s more likely they’re telling me the truth. And so, I should latch onto that.” But it seems that the masses go like, “Oh, this guy doesn’t know Jack. Let’s go to someone else who has more confidence.”

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, but you know what, I think the evidence shows the opposite. I think the evidence shows that the mass public doesn’t trust people just because they’re overconfident. And, in fact, that, oftentimes, they see right through it and they see this is a blowhard who’s blowing smoke. And sometimes they don’t care because they don’t trust anybody.

But I think it’s sort of, like, you can get some headway in the short run maybe by doing that, but you’ll be found out pretty quickly because people, I mean, like I trust, like people aren’t stupid, people can see, like, “Oh, actually, you made these claims, but they seem overstated to me. And then I looked into it for five minutes and I’m like, yeah, overstated. And now I don’t trust you.” So, it’s an interesting thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Maybe that gets back to that dark pattern example, in terms of, yeah, that might get you the short-term results of the thing, like, you don’t cancel your subscription or you go, “Wow, check out this YouTuber. Let me forward and share their hot take. They’re fired up.” And then afterwards, you go, “Ooh, actually, oops. Hmm, maybe not so much that person.”

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, like one of my favorite examples of this is Netflix in the olden days, when Netflix was all about sending you DVDs in the mail. And I think everybody before that, and I’m showing how old I am, but it was a super toxic issue. You go to Blockbuster and then you would return your movie late, and you’ll get these massive penalties.

And, heaven forbid, like the worst thing that could happen to you is you’re cleaning your apartment, and under the sofa, you find, “Oh, yikes here’s a blockbuster tape. How long has that been under there?” And now you’ve got like, basically, the fine is so high, you’ve just bought the tape. It’s $80 or something, and you’re like, “Oh, my God, this is terrible.”

And then when I first heard about Netflix, I’m like, “Oh, that’s going to make me nervous, having three out and you’ve got to send them back, and what if I lose one?” “You can keep it as long as you want it.” “Oh, there’s no late fees?” “Yeah, no, just take three, you can have three. When you send one back, you can get another one.” “What if I lose it?” “Just tell us and we’ll send you another one. Like, that’s it. Nothing bad’s going to happen. Like, we trust you that you’re not scamming us.”

Obviously, if you report, I don’t know what their limit was, but probably after about five lost DVDs, they’re going to go, “You know what, actually, you’re losing too many, so we’re going to cut you off.” But broadly, they were just like, “Yeah, we think most people are going to be honest. Nobody likes a late fee. Have three out as long as you want. And if you lose one, just let us know and we’ll replace it. No problem.”

Wow, like I feel seen, I feel trusted. And that was a big part of why they succeeded, even though sort of ordering DVDs by mail was less convenient than sort of popping by Blockbuster on the corner.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, it is. It is a good feeling. And I think that, in a way, that’s one of the trickiest potential root causes of this stuff is that there are some things that are very easy to measure, like the behavior that I desire. And then there are other things that are much harder to measure, “How much folks are trusting us and digging our vibe as a brand, as a professional?”

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, definitely.

Pete Mockaitis
And the former is easy to measure, the latter is hard to measure, and so we may optimize for the former at our own expense.

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, and that’s exactly it. So, there’s a very famous management research paper that, everybody learns about in grad school, on the folly of rewarding A while hoping for B. And one of the reasons people reward A while hoping for B is that A is easy to measure. And so, then you reward A, but frankly, then everybody starts to care about A, because that’s what they’re going to care for.

And if A can come at the expense of B, fine, that’s what people will do, because you’ve signaled very strongly. And so, sometimes, you’ve got to have a little more discretion and a little more sort of judgment around these things, which only really works if you’ve got a culture of trust, which is to say, your bonus as a salesperson.

“Your bonus is going to be based on sales, but also this kind of indefinable thing of your customers, how happy are they, are you building the right relationships. Maybe you haven’t closed as many deals as somebody else, but you’ve built relationships, so a part of your bonus is going to be, like, you’re building the base for future.” Okay, how do you judge that?

Well, you’re going to have to trust, and we have to have a culture of trust where I’m trusting you to do all right things, and we’re going to succeed together more if that’s our attitude, if that’s our team attitude of like, “Okay, yeah, of course, we’re a sales team, we got to make the sales, we got to make the numbers, but we’re not overly obsessed with the numbers at the expense of thinking about how do we build the broader growth of our customer base and things like that, even if we’re doing some activities that aren’t going to result in sales this quarter.”

Pete Mockaitis
And this reminds me that my first home purchase was through a Redfin agent, and he informed me that a substantial piece of their compensation is all about the reviews, like what we have to say about the agent. Whereas, if you think about real estate, it’s all about, “Hey, how many deals can be closed and at what price, and get the percentage and move, move, move?” And so, it was a different game. And, sure enough, I was having a different experience in terms of, “Wow, this guy, Michael Linden.”

Jimmy Wales
That’s great. I didn’t know about that. I’m going to read up on that. That’s quite interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
“Michael Linden is really over-delivering. He gave me a ride in the rain one time. This guy rocks.” And that was a pretty cool first-time experience. Well, Jimmy, we’re coming up on time. Tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear, rapid fire, about some of your favorite things?

Jimmy Wales
I know, I mean, it’s an exciting time. I’ve been super busy promoting the book, and I’d appreciate it if anybody thinks it sounds interesting, if you take a look. And it’s going to be a fun year for me because we’ve sold the book in 20 languages. So, I’m planning to travel all over the world this year, talking to people about the book. So, yeah, great.

Pete Mockaitis
Could you share a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Jimmy Wales
I think my favorite one from the book, and it just comes to mind because I nearly talked about it already, is research that showed that when newspapers endorse political candidates, it not only reduces trust with the people who disagree with the endorsement, they also lose trust among people who agree with the endorsement because now they feel like maybe the paper is always just shilling for their candidate. And I thought that was super interesting. Actually, one of the more optimistic things is like, “Oh, yeah, people are pretty sharp.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Jimmy Wales
One of the books that was really transformative, and I’m thinking because this is How to be Awesome at Your Job, Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. That’s probably why I settled on “The Seven Rules of Trust,” I just like the seven thing.

But that book really taught me a lot and had a big impact on me at a point in my career when I needed to be effective, highly effective. So, I love that book.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Jimmy Wales
My favorite tool right now is local LLMs, which I’m using for all kinds of fun projects and experiments and things like that, so, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so intriguing and we could have a whole other episode about this. But, if I may, can you tell me what is a local model you’re digging and a piece of hardware that folks would need if they’re going to embark down this route?

Jimmy Wales
Yeah, so I’m digging GPT OSS 120B.

Pete Mockaitis
Classic.

Jimmy Wales
So, this is the latest model, free model released by OpenAI, which has gotten a lot of criticism for not releasing very much. And I bought the most expensive laptop I ever even thought of buying in my life, which is the M4 Max MacBook with 128 Gig of RAM, which can run that model quite well. It’s fast and it runs it really well, and it’s quite a smart model.

I’d say just one step behind, not a half step, a full step behind the cutting edge models in the cloud. But it’s really impressive what you can do on a local computer. And I actually think, looking forward for the next several years, there’s going to be an enormous growth and demand for compute on local computers because it’s so possible to do such amazing things that everybody’s going to want it. So, I think that’s a big thing that’s going to happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear quoted back to you often?

Jimmy Wales
My signature quote, I guess, is, imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That one puts a spark in people’s eye because they’re like, “Yeah, that’s what the internet should be about. Give everybody access to free knowledge. That’s fantastic.” And obviously that’s the goal of Wikipedia.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jimmy Wales
So, I’ve got a little pilot project called Trust Cafe, TrustCafe.io. It’s a social network, but it’s very much a work in progress. I’ve just got a couple of developers working on it, a small community. I haven’t really promoted it that much. I mention it from time to time, and I’m on there. You can come and say hi to me.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jimmy Wales
I would say, take a trust inventory. So, think about all the different aspects of your work life, your home life, all of that. Think about, “What are the things that I could do to help people trust me? And what are the things I can do to encourage other people to be trustworthy?” because I think it will pay huge dividends.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jimmy, thank you.

Jimmy Wales
Great. Thank you.