Wikipedia

Meteoric Rise

A part of Wikipedia's importance stems from its very size and reach. From its founding, it grew rapidly to become the world's largest encyclopedia, claiming a place among the world's top 10 most visited Websites in the mid-2000s. Of those top 10 sites, Wikipedia is the only nonprofit. In 2009, approximately 6 million people—every 10th person online—viewed Wikipedia's main page on a daily basis. Increasingly, Wikipedia entries are seen as status symbols and crucial outlets for information on recent events (such as elections). With its 14 million articles (3.5 million of which are in English), Wikipedia acquired a lion's share of the encyclopedic market: Britannica trails far behind in the Internet's popularity rankings; at number 3,000, it reached only 0.05 percent of Internet users in 2009. Microsoft Encarta was shut down in early 2009.

Wikipedia's success gains new importance when seen in the perspective of those responsible for it. English Wikipedia has been created by the ongoing work of over eight million editors, a highly diverse and multinational group more numerous than the population of many states. The number of Wikipedians roughly doubles with the inclusion of more than 100 smaller Wikipedias in other languages, bridging the digital divide by bringing free encyclopedic content to speakers of languages from Xhosa to Swahili. It grows even more with the inclusion of editors of Wikipedia's sister projects, such as Wikisource, the project dedicated to the digitalization and transcription of public domain texts.

Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, although the Wikimedia Foundation was created two years after Wikipedia appeared, with a mission not to direct Wikipedia but simply to provide legal representation for a project that was quickly growing beyond what its creators expected. Governance of Wikipedia has been described as counterintuitive and even bizarre; unlike more routine collaborative projects, Wikipedia provides no gatekeeping function to control what is being published or by whom. However, content deemed unacceptable by other Wikipedians will be quickly removed. Wikipedia has no governing body, official or otherwise, that would tell editors what to do or be responsible for drafting policies. However, there are rules, developed and agreed upon by Wikipedians themselves, that are intended to bring order to the “anybody can edit” chaos. The entire governance structure of the site, necessary to effectively manage millions of volunteers working on millions of encyclopedic entries, evolved spontaneously in an ad hoc manner. Wikipedians can work alone, or they can join one of thousands of organizations focusing on different content areas or tasks dealing with issues such as mediation, vandalism, or copyright infringement. Editors are free to work on any content they wish, vote and voice their opinions on anything related to the project, and are empowered to change content of articles and organizational policies to an extent unthinkable in traditional organizations. The barriers to becoming an editor are low, with the most significant criteria the ability to master the wiki software (which is no more complex than mastering the use of e-mail or word-processor software). Anyone can become a registered editor of Wikipedia simply by spending a few seconds to create an account, and most articles accept contributions even from unregistered users.

...