Wikimedia Quarto/2/Radio4
On November 17, I did my first ever radio interview for Wikipedia. It was for BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme. I didn't realise it was going to be live when I first agreed to do it, but it turned out less terrifying than I imagined it might be. It was recorded at the BBC Suffolk studio in Ipswich since the BBC Essex ones, which are closer to me, were fully booked out at that time. I was invited to wait in the "Green Room" when I arrived, which wasn't as impressive as it sounds; it was a room with some sofas, drinking water, and a collection of press clippings about BBC Radio Suffolk. Shortly before the recording was due to begin, I was taken into a small studio and given some headphones where I could hear both the programme and the editor in Manchester talking to me. I was left alone in the studio during the recording.
Bamber Gascoigne started by giving a potted history of the encyclopedia, and then a recording was played of a family searching for facts in traditional encyclopedia compared to using the web. [http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/eng/staff/profile.php?id=158 Michael Schmidt], an English professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, then talked about how his students were nowadays more likely to use computers rather than books for their research. The presenter, Liz Barclay, asked me to distil how Wikipedia works and I explained how the site is editable by any visitor, and how vandalism is quickly discovered and reverted. Bamber was at a studio in London and talked about his HistoryWorld site. Bamber and Michael both felt that Wikipedia articles should be "arrested" at some point to prevent editing, but I suggested that instead of locking them permanently, a version marked as stable could be given to users who wanted that, whilst still allowing editing to happen on the live article. This section of the programme lasted just under 20 minutes and concluded with Bamber saying "the idea that encyclopædias printed are reliable is nonsense".