Wikipedia is 20
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Wikipedia is 20
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Re: Wikipedia is 20
#2One reason Wikipedia was able to grow so quickly was because of its scale. Instead of relying on a few posh journal editors like Britannica, anyone could contribute. And while you have edge cases of people trolling and some misinformation, you also have a much larger labour pool of people dedicated to helping, not for a paycheque, but their own personal reasons.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#3 Wikipedia is my primary knowledge destination!
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#42017 - 'Researchers found that 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by 1 percent of Wikipedia editors, and they think this is probably for the best.'
https://www.vice.com/en/article/7x47bb/wikipedia-editors-eli...
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#5One reason Wikipedia was able to grow so quickly was because of its scale. Instead of relying on a few posh journal editors like Britannica, anyone could contribute. And while you have edge cases of people trolling and some misinformation, you also have a much larger labour pool of people dedicated to helping, not for a paycheque, but their own personal reasons.
Wikipedia was originally intended to be a smaller sandbox area for Nupedia, the expert-authored encyclopedia from Bomis (Jimmy Wales's company). Of course, Wikipedia turned out to be much more successful.
But there were other collaborative Internet encyclopedia projects that didn't do so well. Benjamin Mako Hill has a paper exploring what made Wikipedia succeed while the rest failed:
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#6Take note: The interface hasn't changed much, a good thing.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#7Take note: The interface hasn't changed much, a good thing.
It's because lots of people are using Wikiwand extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wikiwand-wikipedia...).
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#8Plenty of subtle agenda-pushing on Wikipedia if you're paying attention
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#9One reason Wikipedia was able to grow so quickly was because of its scale. Instead of relying on a few posh journal editors like Britannica, anyone could contribute. And while you have edge cases of people trolling and some misinformation, you also have a much larger labour pool of people dedicated to helping, not for a paycheque, but their own personal reasons.
Wikipedia was originally intended to be a smaller sandbox area for Nupedia, the expert-authored encyclopedia from Bomis (Jimmy Wales's company). Of course, Wikipedia turned out to be much more successful. But there were other collaborative Internet encyclopedia projects that didn't do so well. Benjamin Mako Hill has a paper exploring what made Wikipedia succeed while the rest failed: https://mako.cc/academic/hill-alm…
Yeah, it seems to be some sort of snowball effect. If you're lucky and have a few initial users, then you can grow faster, acquire more users, and beat the competition.
Re: Wikipedia is 20
#10I've been funding Wikipedia for years and use it several times daily. It has indeed grown into an amazing source of knowledge documenting this world. However there are insidious problems building up. For example, I've noticed that they are starting to encode a lot of biases into its articles, particularly on topics that are part of the political sphere. These articles often reflect a US progressive-left worldview rather than a balanced view that reflects differing opinions from multiple sides of the aisle. There is also a distinct Western and English cultural bias in how articles describe and frame other countries, other cultures, and other religions.
I'm not sure what the fix is for these issues, but it does mean that I seek out opposing perspectives elsewhere when I read articles that concern such topics. It'll probably always be important for readers to seek multiple perspectives, including ones they disagree with, instead of blindly trusting Wikipedia to be correct. After all, it is written by humans.