Wikipedia opens up on '60 Minutes'

Get to knowWikipedia on "60 Minutes" this weekend.

Morley Safer and the CBS news magazine look at the online encyclopedia and the people behind it.

Founder Jimmy Wales acknowledges some errors but stresses that helping people is the priority for Wikipedia, which operates on donations.

"If we were ad supported, we would always be thinking these people reading about Elizabethan poetry. There's nothing to sell them, Wales says of the not-for-profit enterprise. "Let's try to get them to read about hotels in Las Vegas and we don't. We just don't care."

Wales tells "60 Minutes" he would rather do good than do well. "It just felt right that we should be a charity, free knowledge for everyone," he tells Safer. "That's always been our philosophy."

The report airs at 7 p.m. Sunday on WKMG-Channel 6.

Wikipedians explains their devotion to the information supplied.

"I do the editing because I love it. ... You have the satisfaction of feeling like you have participated in something," says Amanda Levandowski, a law school graduate. "You have the opportunity to help other people find information about stuff you're into."

The CBS news magazine highlights some astounding figures: 12,000 pages of Wikipedia are created each day. And 35 million articles are in 288 languages.

The news magazine visits a Wikimania conference in London, attended by more than 2,000. Safer also interviews Sue Gardner, the website's former No. 2 Wikipedian.

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Wikipedia opens up on '60 Minutes'

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