Wikipedia is up (2001)

[karaterobot]

I was in library school around this time (a couple years later, actually), and I remember that Wikipedia was a hot topic: can it be trusted, and why is the answer "no"?

Bucking that trend somewhat, I was in the cautiously optimistic camp. By that time it was already more useful to me than the Encyclopedia Britannica, and getting better all the time. The trajectory was clear.

It seems like, of all the exciting things from the early web, Wikipedia has been one of the only things that actually panned out the way it was intended. It didn't get commercialized, but it didn't go broke either. It didn't become a cesspool, or try to consume all of my attention. It just does the thing it's supposed to do. If there was a fire on the internet, and I could only save one website, it would be you Wikipedia.

[paulz_]

A few months ago Tyler Cowen had Jimmy Wales on the Conversations with Tyler podcast[0].

He spends some time talking about why he thinks Wikipedia turned out the way it did and avoid some of the potential traps you pointed out.

Really enjoyed listening to it and made me think a lot of about structure of organizations.

[0] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jimmy-wales/

[young_unixer]

It still can't be trusted for articles related to politics, specially if you're reading it in a language different from English.

[jll29]

> If there was a fire on the internet, and I could only save one website, it would be you Wikipedia.

Well said, I concur, and I'm borrowing your quote for my fortunes file.

[ghaff]

Yeah. While there are plenty of things to criticize, in general, it works. And a number of different approaches to a crowdsourced encyclopedia, e.g. Google Knol, have clearly not worked. There are big incentives to game anything like this--see also Quora.

[phyzome]

Mmm, it's still best taken with a small pile of salt. If you spend much time editing in any topic area, you will quickly find a few editors with a lot of time on their hands and a particular bone to pick. These people can be exhausting and tend to get their way, so particular biases don't get corrected.

It's still "the world according to people with the most free time (and sometimes strong opinions)". Which mostly works out, but... yeah. Keep that salt handy.

[stefan_]

Has it? Wikipedia is primarily edited by an insulated, slowly dying clique of mostly ignorant people who would rather nothing be written at all than a domain expert outsider article.

Meanwhile, the foundation is some sort of self-perpetuating money vacuum expanding at a great rate while expenditures for actually running Wikipedia is stagnant, if anything getting cheaper. It turns out a wishy-washy NGO save the world mission is a lot more exciting than the daily struggle of community building, and with the foundation all these do-gooders don't even have to forgo the competitive salary.

Obviously a bit exaggerated, but there is a lot of truth here.

[la_fayette]

Openstreetmap fits IMHO also into this category. Personally, if I could save one website, I might choose OSM ;)

[caturopath]

Yeah, it's difficult to remember just how audacious an idea Wikipedia was. Even as an earlyish contributor, I thought it was an impossible dream. It has turned out to be a really great tool.

[valyagolev]

The moment the question is “which resource can I unreservedly trust”, you’re already duped. Encyclopedias are written and edited by real people, with real agendas, and no collaboration or editorial model will get rid of those.

There’s a difference in “how exactly should I not trust this or that resource” though.

[fumblebee]

AFAIK a large part of why it hasn't yet been corrupted has been the total lack of greed on behalf of founder Jimmy Wales.

Kudos to you, Jimmy (and team). Keep up the great work.

[mclide]

Wikipedia articles related to politics should have warning labels about bias and potential disinformation when linked from google/twitter/facebook. Entrenched activist admins and editors sabotage its ability to self-correct entries towards a neutral point of view.

[2Gkashmiri]

i would save scihub too.

[chris_wot]

If you think it isn’t a cesspool, do t go to the admin’s Noticeboard, and certainly do not change categories.

[stjohnswarts]

Yeah I knew it wasn't a legit "cite" but it was a good entrance to rabbit hole from.

[zinckiwi]

If there was a fire on the internet, and I could only save one website, it would be Hamster Dance. But if I could save two the other one would be Wikipedia.

[convery]

Worth noting that the whole "can it be trusted" mainly revolves around political or otherwise controversial topics. Where entire pages can switch from "freedom fighter helping the world" to "literally Hitler" overnight with news articles/interviews being blacklisted for not being reliable while sourcing random blog-posts. For a good example, check the edit history of the Gamergate page, well known editors even got banned for wanting accuracy rather than pushing narratives.

[xNeil]

Wikipedia is one of, if not the best thing(s) to happen to the internet. It achieved basically what the internet's aim was: to democratize information.

Even when I have to learn something, ANYTHING, I'll go to Wikipedia, after which I read the sources of the article for in depth research. And while I dislike their political articles a lot, the science, math, history and arts articles are genuinely incredible to read.

[rvnx]

Information is like internet. It should be organized, but decentralized.

Wikipedia is a place of ultra-centralization where a handful of influential contributors have most of the power and will enforce the content they want using administrative processes (or arbitrary locking of pages) until you give up.

Otherwise don't be disappointed the day you disagree with the Wikipedian "neutral" point of view.

[poisonborz]

Someone prove me wrong, but I think of Wikipedia as one, if not the largest cooperation of human beings on a very specific project. Most of the criticism it recieves is true, but it's a wonder that it could remain, and even grow in the state like it is.

I wish more organisational involvement would happen on the editorial level - companies, governments, or education. I wish academia wouldn't despise it. There is so much untapped potential still.

[rossdavidh]

I think that the fact that so many of those organizations haven't (in the past) jumped onto it, is probably part of why Wikipedia turned out as well as it did. It's run by those who mostly care about Wikipedia, rather than some other organization.

But as to your first point: definitely. It is the equivalent of the Library at Alexandria in ancient times; a step function rise in the information actually available to people.

[marcodiego]

I agree. It is something I often say: "Wikipedia is probably the biggest collaborative project in human history."

[Egidius]

It’s fantastic to see the impact Wikipedia still has. Jimmy Wales and his team can be proud of what they have achieved.

[rattray]

Very fun browsing the links… one of my favorite is [the article](https://web.archive.org/web/20010409192226/http://www.wikipe...) on Larry Sanger, who's listed as co-creator of Wikipedia and CEO of Nupedia, a predecessor project. To be honest I hadn't heard of him before. A fun quote:

> Presently living in Las Vegas for a few months and then it's on to Russia for a few more months; possibly Ireland after that… Larry can move around like this because he works online. You should be envious. He would be if he weren't he.

And here's the less flavorful [Jimbo Wales article](https://web.archive.org/web/20010412200157/http://www.wikipe...), in which he mentions this in the comment thread:

> [druglady.com is] my mom and dad's pharmacy. I made a website for her. It's on the same machine as wikipedia. That will probably change soon, as we are rearranging things.

> I have many websites.

[gumby]

A nice idea, but depends on the good will of other people. A fatal flaw. And encyclopedias depend on experts to sift through the dross and figure out what’s worth it. That costs mone. This wiki may fill up with articles about star trek episodes but who’s going to take the time to write about hard biology topics or medieval history?

Also: English only. There are other languages you know!

[MayeulC]

Most people I know are experts on one topic or another. Some do contribute to Wikipedia in their fields. I know I do.

I wish Wikipedia counted as "publishing" works. Maybe they should start accepting papers?

[rvnx]

150+ million USD is spent per year by the organization while most of the work is done by volunteers. Quite a serious money-making engine.

[zamadatix]

You're a bit off on the number (maybe you were thinking net assets?).

For those curious of the breakdown https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Statistical_analysis_of_Wiki...

[nearbuy]

For the employees and contractors? It's a bit strange to describe a non-profit as a money-making engine.

[superasn]

Speaking as someone who has absolutely no knowledge of how Wikipedia is run.. what is the biggest expense? Is it the hosting, bandwidth, or maybe HR.. I mean the stuff that takes the lion's share of this $150M?

[marban]

Having enough disk-space to install all Encarta CDs your grandpa "borrowed" from the office: Priceless.

[grensley]

> Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes.

What a perfectly phrased ask. How can you read "Humor me." and NOT add an article?

[maxcan]

Ah yes, the day a few softcore porn peddlers decided to create the greatest repository of knowledge in all of human history. One thing I love about the internet..

Yes, I'm aware of the flaws and criticisms of wikipedia but I stand by my assessment.

[rattray]

Very impressive how much they did before launch: 6,000 articles, several languages, many features (flexible categorization themes, even!), etc.

[kiba]

I found google doesn't lead me to wikipedia as often anymore. Also wikipedia is kinda stagnant in quality.

These are of course, my own personal experience. Still a very useful resources whenever I want to learn about a given subject.

[uncletammy]

> I found google doesn't lead me to wikipedia as often anymore.

Ive also noticed this. Wikipedia used to always be in the first few results for any Google search I made. It was amazing becauase it was frequently the exact thing I was trying to find.

Now I have to add 'wiki' to the search terms or it wont even show up in the first page.

[cpach]

Fairly often I simply go to https://en.wikipedia.org/ and type my query in the search box there instead of googling it.

[_joel]

.. and lo, countless hours were lost going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole.

[rvba]

Can someone explain to me the recent trend to add long quotes in Wikipedia articles?

Very often the article starts with a concise definition, some additional explanations and then it has some random long quotation. For example some random critic's opinion about a book.

Those quotes often do not provide much information - a concise text would simply be better.

I have a feeling that the idea is to make Wikipedia easier to use, when in reality it becomes harder to use

In fact those quotes often look like a hidden vehicle to try to promote the quoted person (if person X was quoted, but person Y was not quoted, then you could come to a conclusion that X is more important).

[ChrisArchitect]

here is the post where the idea of making a wiki was proposed 7 days earlier

https://web.archive.org/web/20030414014355/http://www.nupedi...

"Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not."

Good idea Larry.

[ChrisArchitect]

related then from today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27097494

obviously a ton of wayback links could share

[alfonsodev]

just curious, is the css missing, or was released like that ?

[meibo]

This is a mailing list from 2001, they mostly still look like that nowadays.

[truth_]

(2001)