It may not stir up international outrage like its semi-1
namesake WikiLeaks, but Wikipedia sparks debate. The free
online encyclopedia, which celebrates its tenth birthday on
January 15th, is a symbol of unpaid collaboration and one of the4
most popular destinations on the Internet, attracting some
400m visitors a month. It also faces serious charges of elitism.
Wikipedia offers more than 17m articles in 2477
languages. Every day thousands of people edit entries or add
new ones in return for nothing more than the satisfaction of
contributing to the stock of human knowledge. Wikipedia10
relies on its users’ generosity to fill its coffers as well as its
pages. Recent visitors to the website were confronted with
images of Jimmy Wales, a co-founder, and a request for13
donations. The campaign was annoying but effective, raising
$ 16m in 50 days.
With its emphasis on bottom-up collaboration and the16
broad dissemination of knowledge, the online encyclopedia is
in many ways an incarnation of the fundamental values of the
web. But Wikipedia also reveals some of the pitfalls of the19
increasingly popular “crowdsourcing” model of content
creation. One is maintaining accuracy. On the whole,
Wikipedia’s system of peer reviewing does a reasonable job of22
policing facts. But it is vulnerable to vandalism. Several
politicians and TV personalities have had their deaths
announced in Wikipedia while they were still in fine fettle.25
Some observers argue the site should start paying
expert editors to produce and oversee content, and sell
advertising to cover the cost. Problems with accuracy “are an28
inevitable consequence of a free-labour approach”, argues Alex
Jannykhin, of WikiExperts, which advises organisations on
how to create Wikipedia articles (the very existence of such31
outfits hints at Wikipedia’s importance, as well as its
susceptibility to outside influence). The encyclopedia’s bosses
retort that such concerns are overblown and that taking34
advertisers would dent its appeal to users.
Wikipedia. The promise and perils of crowdsourcing content.
In: The Economist, January 15th-21st, 2011, p. 69 (adapted).