This page contains links to PDFs of articles about me and my work, as well as audio and video interviews, in reverse chronological order. Last updated September 2013.

PDF: Wikipedia fails to bridge gender gap (14 September 2013 South China Morning Post) “Search “abortion” on Wikipedia’s English version and you will find a page called “Abortion-rights movements”. It has been edited 40 times since it was created – mainly by men.”..

PDF: Chelsea Manning gets put back in the closet by Wikipedia (New Statesman 4 September 2013) “The Wikipedia page for Wikileaks leaker Chelsea Manning has been reverted back to its original location under the headline “Bradley Manning”, following continued protest from a collection of editors on the site after last week’s redirection.”..

Audio interview by Dick Gordon: The Story: Editing An Encyclopedia That Changes By The Minute “On April 16, 2007, Sue Gardner was following the news of the Virginia Tech shooting on every major web site she could find. The one where she learned the most was not a news site – it was the free encyclopedia Wikipedia. The content, she says, was more comprehensive. “It was better than CNN, and better than the CBC,” she says. “I found that fascinating. How could that be?””…

Audio interview by Richard Fidler: Conversations with Richard Fidler: Sue Gardner (Australian Broadcasting Corporation 15 February 2013) “Sue joined Wikimedia (parent body of the online, volunteer-built encyclopedia, Wikipedia) in 2007. The website is among the top five most-visited websites in the world. Sue’s background included 17 years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where she had been first a journalist, then manager of their news website, CBC.CA”…

May 15, 2013

Audio interview by Antony Funnell: Wikipedia — Dealing with Success and Adversity (Future Tense 17 February 2013) “Wikipedia was once the enfant terrible of the information world. Now it’s just part of the online furniture—establishment even. For most of its short but extremely successful life the site has been plagued by ongoing questions about the diversity of its enormous volunteer base and their motivations. We speak with Sue Gardner, the Executive Director of the organisation that governs the crowd-sourced encyclopaedia about the website’s struggle for plurality”…

Audio interview by Richard Fidler: Conversations with Richard Fidler: Sue Gardner (Australian Broadcasting Corporation 15 February 2013) “Sue joined Wikimedia (parent body of the online, volunteer-built encyclopedia, Wikipedia) in 2007. The website is among the top five most-visited websites in the world. Sue’s background included 17 years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation where she had been first a journalist, then manager of their news website, CBC.CA”…

PDF: Wikipedia flush with funds, short on volunteers (ABC News 13 February 2013) “The not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia and its related sites, says its group of web pages is the fifth most visited in the world, accessed by around half-a-billion people last year. Wikimedia says it is the only not-for-profit running a top 40 global website, so you would think money would be its biggest problem”…

PDF: Data plans ‘unnerving’: Wikipedia boss (The Australian 12 February 2013) “The federal government announced last year it was considering forcing internet service providers and mobile phone firms to store customers’ usage data for up to two years, with the then-attorney general Nicola Roxon saying it would help fight crime”…

Audio interview by Kai Ryssdal: CEO of Wikimedia on making a site useful for billions (Marketplace 31 January 2013) “So you’re at your computer. Try Googling something. How about…”Ben Bernanke.” Almost certainly, the first thing that you type for almost anything is a Wikipedia entry. Information written mostly by about 15,000 active users — not a huge group, when you think about it”…

PDF: Wikipedia the people’s encyclopedia (Los Angeles Times 13 January 2013) “Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can write and edit (yes, even you!), but most people don’t think much about who performs those tasks. With half a billion people around the world relying on Wikipedia for information, we should”…

Video interview by Sara Eisen and Tom Keene: Wikipedia’s Gardner on Growth Outlook, Strategy (Bloomberg 10 December 2012) “Sue Gardner, chief executive officer of Wikipedia, talks about the non-profit information website’s business model and outlook. Gardner speaks with Sara Eisen and Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance.”…

PDF: Canadian muscles onto Forbes list: Wikimedia boss among ‘most powerful women’ (The Toronto Star 24 August 2012) “What sort of things do the world’s most powerful women think about? If you’re Sue Gardner, you’re forever thinking about fundraising drives, bringing more women onto your team, and cooking up new ways to expand one of the most visited and best-known websites in the world”…

PDF: Canadian Sue Gardner one of the world’s most powerful women: Forbes (Canadian Business magazine, 23 August 2012) “You might not recognize her on the street, but according to Forbes magazine Canadian Sue Gardner is one of the most powerful women in the world. To be precise, the 70th most powerful, placing her eight spots ahead of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and 56 behind Lady Gaga”…

PDF: The 100 Most Powerful Women (Forbes 22 August 2012) “Sue Gardner leads the sixth-most-visited website in the world and has had great success increasing donations and expanding access for readers and contributors”…

PDF: Sue Gardner on ‘Herding Cats’ And Halting Wikipedia’s Editor Erosion (Forbes 22 August 2012) “Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner scored a place on the Forbes Power Woman list this year thanks in part to her role in increasing the dollars flowing into the world’s favorite free encyclopedia. Last year, Wikipedia brought in $27 million in public support and program revenue; this year, it’s on track to bank $36.1 million from its fund-raising efforts”…

Video interview by Kashmir Hill: Challenges for Wikipedia: An interview with WikiMedia’s Sue Gardner (Forbes 22 August 2012)

Video interview by Kashmir Hill: World’s Most Powerful Women Define Power (Forbes 22 August 2012)

PDF: World’s Most Powerful Women (Forbes 22 August 2012) “Wikipedia pre- and post-Sue Gardner are two completely different organizations. When she arrived at Wikimedia, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, in 2007, the organization had under 10 employees and was raising less than $3 million annually. In 2011, Wikimedia’s number of donors had increased ten times over, raising $23 million”…

PDF: Wiki Wonder: Sue Gardner, executive director of Wikipedia, on the power of information (Chatelaine 22 June 2012) “Sue Gardner has always had big goals. Her latest project? To contain and share all human knowledge, as the executive director of Wikipedia”…

PDF: Wikipedia executive speaks in Minneapolis about its reliability (Minnesota Public Radio 8 May 2012) “Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, says transparency is the key to building trust and accuracy”…

PDF: Wikinews interviews Sue Gardner on Wikipedia blackout (Wikinews 28 January 2012) “Today, the English version of Wikipedia is taking part in a 24-hour ‘blackout’ to protest two proposed U.S. anti-piracy laws, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act. The protest mirrors similar actions from other websites including Reddit and Boing Boing. The White House stated on Saturday that they “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global internet””…

Audio interview by Don Tapscott: Wikimedia Foundation’s Sue Gardner (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 22 January 2012) “The extended version of host Don Tapscott’s interview with Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation”…

PDF: SOPA protest by the numbers: 162M pageviews, 7 million signatures (Ars Technica 19 January 2012) “Tens of millions of Americans, and millions more overseas, had their normal Internet routine disrupted Wednesday as some of the Web’s most popular sites, including Google, Wikipedia, and Craigslist, staged protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The organizations that staged these protests are beginning to release hard numbers on the response, and they are staggering”…

PDF: Internet Users to Congress: We Hate SOPA (Mashable 19 January 2012) “With major websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit down Wednesday in protest of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), millions of social media users took to the Internet to express their own opinion on the two bills. And they don’t like them one bit”…

PDF: The Wikipedia blackout: A reminder we shouldn’t take internet freedom for granted (The Independent 18 January 2012) “It’s striking how you can take things for granted online. Since the Wikipedia blackout commenced, I have already hit its holding page well over 20 times while googling certain topics. I know I’m not alone – it’s been estimated that about 75 million people worldwide will be affected by the blackout today. Despite this irritant, however, I think we should all lend our support to the protest, seeing the blackout as a dramatic snapshot of what could happen far more often, should the trend towards ever-increasing regulation online continue”…

PDF: As Wikipedia goes dark to protest SOPA, media offer support (Yahoo News 18 January 2012) “Wikipedia and several other websites went dark for 24 hours on Wednesday to protest proposed U.S. legislation–the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the related PROTECTIP Act (PIPA)–they argue would effectively censor the free and open Internet”…

PDF: Google blacks out its home page in support of Wikipedia SOPA protest (National Post 18 January 2012) “Google placed a black redaction box over the logo on its much-visited U.S. home page to draw attention to legislation making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate that would give companies wide ranging powers to combat online piracy. This comes the same day that Wikipedia blacked itself out in the same protest”…

PDF: Websites go dark to protest SOPA, PIPA bills (Los Angeles Times 18 January 2012) “In the first strike of its kind, thousands of popular sites such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Boing Boing shut down for up to 24 hours Wednesday to protest a pair of federal antipiracy bills that they said amounted to censorship of the Internet”…

PDF: Wednesday’s Web ‘Blackout’ By Wikipedia, Others: Right Way To Protest? (National Public Radio 17 January 2012) “Now that Wikipedia has said it’s going to join other websites Wednesday and go black to protest anti-piracy bills being considered by the House and Senate, the backlash against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act has gotten a much higher profile”…

PDF: Wikipedia fights back (Halifax Herald News 17 January 2012) “Some Canadians are pledging to join Wikipedia and other prominent websites in going black today. The self-imposed blackout is a protest against proposed anti-piracy legislation in the United States that could have far-reaching effects for Internet users and companies around the world”…

PDF: Wikipedia 24-hour blackout: a reader (New Statesman 17 January 2012) “Q: What is happening? A: Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, will blackout its English version website to all global readers for 24-hours from tomorrow (18 January). On Monday 16 January, the non-profit, 501(c)(3) charity that operates Wikipedia –the Wikimedia Foundation– issued a press release announcing that 1,800 members of the Wikipedia community had together reached the “unprecedented decision” to temporarily shut down the site after 72 hours of consultation”…

PDF: Why is Wikipedia offline and what is SOPA? (National Post 17 January 2012) “Need to know about the Wikipedia blackout? In this occasional feature, the National Post tells you everything you need to know about the a complicated issue. Beginning midnight Wednesday, crowd-sourced knowledge database Wikipedia went dark and will be offline for 24 hours as a protest against proposed anti-piracy legislation in the United States. We give you the inside scoop on why the sixth most popular website on the planet has decided to turn itself off for a day and how you can access its pages even though it is offline”…

PDF: Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing to Go Dark Wednesday (Fishbowl LA 17 January 2012) “In protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), a number of websites are turning themselves off on Wednesday. The two bills, which are meant to stop copyright infringement of media on the internet, are strongly supported by the film, television, and music industries. But the legislation, which gives the U.S. Government the power to censor entire websites, has been widely criticized as infringing upon freedom of speech – an issue a little closer to our hearts than Hollywood’s bottom line”…

PDF: Wikipedia: Why it will black out tomorrow (The Mirror 17 January 2012) “Wikipedia will ‘black out’ tomorrow in protest at anti-piracy legislation under consideration in the US Congress”…

PDF: Wikimedia reaches funding targets, fights SOPA (Wired UK 3 January 2012) “Wikipedia users may have a respite from Jimmy Wales’ face appearing on articles after the Wikimedia Foundation hit its annual fundraising targets of $20m (£12.8m). This year’s banner campaign highlighted staff and volunteers who helped to create Wikipedia, including Jimbo as well as Senior Designer Brandon Harris and user GorillaWarfare. Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, says: “Our model is working fantastically well. Ordinary people use Wikipedia and they like it, so they chip in some cash so it will continue to thrive. That maintains our independence and lets us focus solely on providing a useful public service”…

PDF: Wikipedia raises record $20M in annual fundraising drive (Financial Post 2 January 2012) “Even a global economic downturn couldn’t put a damper on Wikipedia’s fundraising efforts this year”…

PDF: Looking for Powerful Canadian Women? Meet Sue Gardner (iVillage 23 September 2011) “This month, Forbes magazine posted a list of the 100 most powerful women in the world”…

PDF: Sue Gardner on Wikipedia’s Gender Gap (CBC Radio 12 September 2011 “Gender gaps in technology are nothing new. For instance, online men outnumbered online women for years”… Unedited interview is here, entire program is here

PDF: Message from NOLA: Sue Gardner wants you on Wikipedia’s front lines (American Libraries magazine July August 2011) “At her President’s Program, ALA President Roberta Stevens interviewed Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. Some 400 million people use Wikipedia every month, and Gardner said the non-profit survives through donations but remains radical in its believe that people have the right to access information”…

PDF: Sue Gardner Calls for Librarians to Dive in to the World of Wikipedia (American Libraries magazine, 26 June 2011) “The folks at Wikipedia “are lovers of the institutions of knowledge” and definitely libraries, said Sue Gardner at ALA President Roberta Stevens’s special program Sunday at ALA in New Orleans. The executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, said that the wiki is not opposed to traditional media and, in fact, “we want you as Wikipedians.””…

PDF: Librarian to the World (Fast Company April 2011) “Wikipedia director Sue Gardner has transformed the site’s broken business into a growing hub with global ambitions. Can a fast-talking iconoclast outthink Silicon Valley’s gurus?”…

PDF transcript of interview with Brooke Gladstone: 10 Years of Wikipedia interview with Sue Gardner (On The Media, 14 January 2011) “Wikipedia, the free, web-based, crowd-sourced, multi-lingual encyclopedia, turns 10 years old this month. Brooke talks to Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, about the challenges of maintaining an online democracy that doesn’t descend into chaos, and also about what it’s like to be targeted by Stephen Colbert’s horde”… Audio version is here.

PDF: Wikipedia at 10 a web pioneer worth defending (The Guardian 13 January 2011) “Ten years ago, Jimmy Wales typed “Hello world” into a wiki, and Wikipedia was born. Like all new enterprises, nobody knew exactly what to make of it and its goal – to create an online encyclopedia that anyone could edit. In fact, in its early years Wikipedia’s philosophy of openness made it an easy target for jokes and criticism – Stephen Colbert famously exhorted his viewers to vandalise it for fun, and teachers, journalists, and other cultural gatekeepers routinely warned the public it couldn’t be trusted”…

PDF: We’ve seen America’s vitriol. Now let’s salute Wikipedia, a US pioneer of global civility (The Guardian 12 January 2011) “Wikipedia is 10 years old this Saturday. It is the fifth most visited site on the internet. Some 400 million people use it every month”…

PDF: A Decade of Wikipedia, the poster child for collaboration (Wired UK, 10 January 2011 “As Wikipedia celebrates its 10th anniversay, Wired.co.uk speaks to Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation about the collaborative encyclopaedia’s role in the web and its plans for world domination”…

PDF: Wikipedia a des ambitions planetaires (La Presse 1 January 2011) “”Quand j’ai appris la mort (du tenor Italien) Luciano Pavarotti j’ai immediatement voulu mettre a jour sa page, mais quelqu’un ‘avait fait 17 minutes avant moi”, resume dans une interview a l’AFP Sue Gardner, directrice generale de cette entreprise a but non lucratif, creee un peu par hasard le 15 janvier 2001 et qui repose sur le volongtariat de millions de contributeurs”…

PDF: Wikipedians do it for love. Really (Globe and Mail) 26 July 2010 “Before meeting Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, I look her up on, well, Wikipedia. The bare-bones entry in the global open-source encyclopedia tells me she is 43″…

PDF: HuffPost Game Changers: Your Picks for the Ultimate 10 (Huffington Post 19 November 2009) “Media: Sue Gardner. Current status: Wiki wizard. Changing The Game By: Taking the people’s online encyclopedia to the next level”…

PDF: Wikipedia censorship highlights a lingering sting in the tail (The Observer 13 December 2008) “‘Scorpions’, says Wikipedia, ‘are eight-legged venomous arachnids. They have a long body with an extended tail with a sting.’ Staff of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the self-appointed monitor of ‘child sexual abuse content hosted worldwide’ and of ‘criminally obscene and incitement to racial hatred content hosted in the UK’, may well find themselves in rueful agreement about the sting. Except that what they’ve discovered is that Wikipedia also has one”…

PDF: IWF does u-turn on Wikipedia ‘porn’ blacklist (IT Pro 10 December 2008) “Web watchdog the Internet Watch Foundation(IWF) has overturned its decision to blacklist – and as a result block access to – a Wikipedia article that was deemed to be hosting an indecent image of a child”…

PDF: IWF backs down over ‘child porn’ Wikipedia page (PC Advisor 10 December 2008) “A Wikipedia page blacklisted in the UK over child pornography concerns has been unblocked, a decision that also fully restores the ability of UK residents to edit articles on the online
encyclopedia”…

PDF: U-turn on Wikipedia ‘Child Porn’ Ban (The Metro 9 December 2008) “A ban on a ‘pornographic’ image on the cover of a 1970s rock album which appeared on the Wikipedia website was last night overturned”…

PDF: Censorship Group Removes Wikipedia Blacklisting (Wired magazine 9 December 2008) “Wikipedia’s functionality was returning to normal Tuesday after an internet watchdog group removed the online encyclopedia from a child porn watchlist”…

PDF: ISPs censor Wikipedia over child porn pic (IT Pro 8 December 2008) “A number of internet service providers (ISP) in the UK have blocked access to a Wikipedia entry that allegedly contains child pornography – in a move that could have farther-reaching consequences for users of the site”…

PDF: Censorship row has begun over the Scorpions’ 1976 album cover (BBC 8 December 2008) “Several British Internet Service Providers have blocked access to part of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, because of an album cover by the Scorpions”…

PDF: Kiss of the Spider Woman (San Francisco magazine November 2008) “Since taking over Wikipedia last year and moving the company from Florida to an office near San Francisco’s South Park, the diminutive Sue Gardner, a 41-year-old recovering goth and former journalist, has worked to help the online encyclopedia to -in her words- “grow up.””…

PDF: Wikipedia’s tin-cup approach wears thing (Los Angeles Times 3 October 2008) “The new headquarters of one of the world’s most popular websites is 3,000 square feet of rented space furnished with desks and chairs bought on the cheap from EBay and Craigslist. A sheet of printed paper taped to the door says the office belongs to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia”…

PDF: Wikimedia values education, not advertising (San Francisco Chronicle 24 August 2008) “Google has its Googleplex, Craigslist has a Victorian flat, and the seventh-most-popular Web site in the world has this: a 3,000-square-foot nondescript loft situated in San Francisco’s South Park below Interstate 80″…

PDF: The Wiki Business Plan (the Globe and Mail 26 May 2008) “Sue Gardner was watching CNN the day Luciano Pavarotti died. As news of his death crawled across her television screen at the Wikimedia Foundation last September, she instinctively turned to Wikipedia to update the web page devoted to the Italian tenor”…

PDF: Wikimedia’s New Boss (Canadian Business magazine 12 May 2008) “Last December, Sue Gardner became executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit behind online encyclopedia Wikipedia, now one of the Top 10 most visited websites in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. Toronto-raised Gardner, formerly head of CBC.ca, is charged with helping the largely volunteer-run organization grow up”…

PDF: Chatelaine’s 80 amazing Canadian women to watch (Chatelaine May 2008) “The former head of CBC’s online division, Sue Gardner is executive director of Wikimedia, the organization that runs Wikipedia, the user-generated online encyclopedia”…

PDF: Wikipedia takes business approach (BBC News 15 April 2008) “Wikipedia started as a hobby with noble aims and in just six short years has turned into a global brand headed by a founder who is both a guiding light for devotees and a lightning rod for critics”…

PDF: Public broadcaster clicks online (Toronto Star 19 June 2006) “Music is pumping, cappuccinos are flowing, and bigscreen TVs are flashing memorabilia. Sue Gardner, head of CBC’s website, takes the podium, and faces the crowd of CBC employees who have been lured by iPod giveaways and lavish spreads of food to come celebrate the website’s tenth anniversary”…