The Seven Rules of Trust - the new book by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales
The Wikipedia founder has written a book tackling the global crisis on trust and knowledge – unveiling his own personally-gleaned “rules of trust” in the process…
Wikipedia has been described as the “last best place on the internet”; the closest thing the online world has to a public utility, like water or electricity. The reason why this user-generated online encyclopaedia has mushroomed from a techno-utopian idea Wales had as a PhD student in the 1990s into the world’s largest-ever compendium of knowledge read by 24 billion people every month (Wikipedia is the world’s ninth-most-visited website) boils down to two things: the quality of its entries, and just as crucially, the trust people place in it.
Now Jimmy Wales, who co-founded the platform in 2001, has written a book addressing the global crisis of trust at a time when public confidence in politicians, science, journalism and the mainstream media is eroding faster than ever. The Seven Rules of Trust: Why It Is Today’s Most Essential Superpower also arrives at a time when the very people lambasting these institutions are attacking Wikipedia too, from Elon Musk – who has called the website ‘Wokepedia’ and is attempting to start his own version called Grokipedia – to right-wing influencers.
Wales’s main thesis is that trust is essential for a healthy, functional society. Without it, we’re lost. Drawing from two decades of experience running Wikipedia and conversations with global leaders, he dispenses his titular seven rules. These principles, according to one promotional blurb, rules will help readers “become a trust-maker” as well as “build deeper connections with others so you can be a better neighbour” and a “more understanding friend” too.
All of which makes The Seven Rules of Trust sound like a self-help book aimed at the Davos set (it even comes garlanded with praise from figures such as Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari, Alistair Campbell and organisational consultant Simon Sinek).
There is a PR connection too. Wales is married to public relations executive Kate Garvey, a former director at Freud Communications, whose previous clients have included Make Poverty History, the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and Queen Rania of Jordan.
Whether The Seven Rules of Trust includes insights from Garvey (or Wales’s own observations about the PR world) is anyone’s guess (preview copies were unavailable). But Wales’s sage-like expertise on digital information, transparency and the media landscape have always been worth seeking out for anybody in PR. And given the importance of trust in PR (it underpins everything from media relations to crisis management), these seven rules just might resonate with anybody looking to craft an effective, ethical campaign in today’s “post-truth” era.
- Jimmy Wales’s book, The Seven Rules of Trust: Why It Is Today’s Most Essential Superpower, is published by Bloomsbury.
Christian Koch is an award-winning journalist, editor, content strategist and brand consultant.
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