[brianwillis]

Not really a start up, but I thought Wikipedia was an extraordinarily dumb idea at first. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit - what could possibly go wrong?

I completely missed the value of having decent moderator tools (which no site had back in the early 2000's), and a passionate group of moderators who cared very deeply about the integrity of the site.

[roflmyeggo]

There have been a lot of startups over the past decade centred around the sharing economy that have helped to prove that humans can be civil in these situations where one might think that we would default to nefarious activity - Airbnb, Local Motion, etc. to name a few.

Humanity is continuing to prove itself as capable of dealing with each other harmoniously and we are seeing great businesses emerge that are benefitting the masses as a result.

[beeboop]

If you think Wikipedia is civil, I recommend looking at the talk pages for contentious articles. It's overwhelmingly full of pedantic bickering and passive aggressiveness. It also suffers from a lot of bias in articles where there's a vocal minority on the internet willing to spend hundreds of hours militantly editing and moderating. It's essentially a shouting match on the internet with the loudest group winning.