Live blog of the Jimmy Wales lecture at The Sage

Asked what made him so into freedom of speech. Talked about small education system via his mother's private school. Mother had a stong streak of idependence. I don'tvthinknyou can limit political speech butvthere are boundaries and limits. What are the next mutual endevours? Cognitive surplus. Gee if I knew, I would go and build it myself. All the tech for wikipedia existed 6years before wikipedia. Noone really harnessed it. So what techs already exist today perhaps in video, animation that noone has worked out the social element. I don't know what thatvis. I keep thinking about it.

Question asked who the administrators? Wales says sat down for dinner with the English arbitration committee. They enormous influence. They are a bunch of geeks. They care deeply and passionately about getting it right. Paying edutirs of newspapers was no guarantee they were not biased. By and large they care more about being neutral that anything else. Keen to increase the diversity of wikipedia. Many are by profession from computer sciences. Doesn't point to what areas of knwledge are left out.87 % male. Average 26. Several approach we are taking - outreach to find more female editors. Big effort to make interface so you don't have to be a geek to use it.

Wales favourite book is the Fountain Head which he defends from being right wing. There are people who don't have right understanding. I believe that to achieve the things I want to achieve i need the supporrt of that community. Question now from Jesmond Local - is funding model sustainable. Wales says small donations make up vast funds and thinks that is sustainable. Last year had most succsesful fundraiser ever in 59 days. Bannersbwith his picture brought in twice as much money.19m dollars last year. This year found some more people's pictures who do as well.

In answer to question about publishers - doesn't lose any sleep. There are v. Different problems. Something like the disruption to the lighting industry. We still buy candles.

In the QandA session now. Wales defending the idea that internet has a 'dark side' by pointing out that there's no such thing as cyberspace and that people are basically nice. Within wikipedia we say it is not a democracy, there are people in wikipedia who have more power than others. You turn up unannounced you wil be put under a certain amount of scrutiny. Things I'm concerned about online are the centralisation of power in Facebook for example. Google allows for competition with Facebook I'm not so sure that's true.

We don't participate in their censorship but we can't stop them. There will be a Chinese spring, it's only a question of when. I hope the government will realise what they have been doing is no longer sustainable. Whole generation of bloggers, wikipedians, people on twitter. The moment has arrived whenit is time to demand their human rights.

Wikipedia community did not consider arandom twitter account a verifiable source. Waited for credible sources before publishing. We don't try to document every little bit of trivia coming down the line. There are many cases in parts of the world where freedom Of expression is under threat. Wikipedia entry on Pirate Bay would not be even able to post a link to priate bay - this is a ludicrius law. I am a carpenter not an architech. I was i. Qatar and interviewed by Al Jezera journalist interegated in Iran. On a particularly bad day they started to believe her story because guard had looked her up on wikipedia. Where will this all take us? Wikipedia was banned for 3years in China. We decided early on we would not co-operate. We were unblocked and are largely accessible in China.

Takenthe question of whether you can use a blog as a source. As an example a well known politician on their own blog is a valid source. The number of pages we've written is an editorial guidbook like no other in my opinion. To call back to original point, many policy makers have not understood this type of community. One example, question of superinjunctions and the response. Somebody realesed information on Twitter

Neutrality policy has been important as allowed people to work together. Becuase I've stipulated they are kind and thoughtful they came come together and present issues from each side. Another principle is to assume good faith. Instead of first thinking they are malicious or bad. Cite over and over to keep civial and interesting. Don't want it to be like the comments you see at the bottom of almost every newspaper article yelling at each other.

This talk will be broadcast on BBC3 at 10pm. yfrog.com/nui0pgpj

So far there's been a short reception with the BBC's Roger Wright introducing this year's Free Thinking Festival for BBC3. Next up is Jimmy Wales who will talk on the topic How the internet will keep changing the world. During the early sound check Jimmy was a little surprised that our photos for the blog were being done on an iphone!