SS: Russia recently tried to block Wikipedia for a description of drug-consumption techniques in a Russian-language article on marijuana. Should there be forbidden information, something which shouldn’t ever be published in Wikipedia?
SS: Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, right? With this in mind, its credibility, I mean the source, is quite low. People would usually laugh if you quote Wikipedia, however much they may be using it in their daily routine – is it possible to bring credibility level to what, let’s say, Britannica enjoyed, when it was the most-quoted encyclopedia?
SS: How do you know that today it’s at the highest quality it has ever been? How do you access that?
SS: Some say that easy access to information in Wikipedia teaches people simply to copy and paste Wikipedia articles instead of spending their time reading books in the library – what impact does Wikipedia have on reading books?
SS: But, so, who are the moderators of the source? Because I know that anyone can do the editing, but who monitors it actually?
SS: I looked myself up in Wikipedia before I was going to do this interview, just to see if was there, and turns out I’m there. There was a bunch of false facts about me and my life, which I edited, because editing is pretty easy, but it can come back tomorrow – I mean I won’t be able to follow it every day, I’m not going to go on Wikipedia every day and see if someone put something wrong about me and my life, so how does that happen – how [can we] control that?
SS:Do you think Wikipedia will ever be accepted as a valid academic source for scientific research and reference?
SS: Different nations have different views on history, and it’s not rare that the same historic event is described differently in Wikipedia if you flip through different languages, because I speak many languages. Is it possible to find a neutral version – is there such a purpose, at all?
