Why Wikipedia Has Succeeded

Wikipedia has existed for about nine years and counting, and despite assertions that the Wiki is going to go bust soon, that's not likely the case. It's entirely true that the free encyclopedia anyone can edit is moving along on an uncertain path (see "The Future of Wikipedia"). And it's entirely true that while the "sum of human knowledge" can never be complete, and that much of the encyclopedia is incomplete, slanted, poorly written, and occasionally (though often less than people would expect) erroneous or libelous.

But to focus on what Wikipedia is failing to do or its weaknesses, we sometimes miss the information forest for the trees, as it were. Wikipedia has certainly succeeded in terms of volume-more than 3 million entries and counting on the English language project alone. The fact that people would even collaborate to assemble that much is nothing short of amazing.

Before Wikipedia, who would have supposed that you could get people to spend their free hours writing articles on topics for no benefit to themselves. It's a surprising blend of altruism and selfishness-people want to pread their knowledge, others want to impose their views or, alternatively, legitimize their extreme opinions by putting it in a public venue.

What many people don't know, however, is that in actuality, the bulk of Wikipedia's best work is actually produced by just a few people. Take for example "Featured articles" or FA, the only project-wide indicator of quality. Like most things on Wikipedia, the bronze star that appears in the corner of these FAs does not necessarily mean that they are perfect, but that at some point a team of reviewers found that it was well-written, comprehensive, and reliably sourced (earlier FAs often erode, or have not kept up with rising standards, but it's certainly a good thing that expectations of quality are increasing.) The top ten contributors of current FAs as posted at List of Wikipedians by Featured Article nominations have together amassed 324 FA credits to their names (or pseudonyms, as is often the case.) That's 12% of the total FA count to date (1).

The real success story, then, is that a few top editors either take the freely licensed work of 'the Wiki masses', or else write it themselves, and turn it into quality work (still dwarfed by the total number of articles, however.) With the wiki platform, these editors-amateur historians or science buffs, professors, down to callow youths and geriatrics-are enabled to polish and present their amateur work. People who could have written excellent books about the topic have instead continued to contribute it for free-and that's a boon for the rest of us. At the same time, while much of Wikipedia has not reached the best quality level possible, people seem to accept that; at the very least, it's an invitation to join in, which doesn't exist with many other projects. Little is expected of editors, and that low barrier to entry grabs all possible participants (whether they stay around is another question.)

Sure, there's plenty of issues with Wikipedia. But that begs the question-why do people use it, then? They know how unstable it is, and they might jokingly add vandalism such as "XX is gay" during school hours. But Wikipedia is still, according to Alexa, the sixth most visited site on the whole internet (2). Part of that popularity comes from Google searches-which, in turn, come from who links to pages on the Wiki. It's a self-fulfilling and positive feedback loop, but it started with ordinary people trusting the wiki's content.

Google juice isn't the only reason for Wikipedia's success, although it might have given it extra momentum. Since Wikipedia blew into an internet giant, mana wiki-based sites have risen to attempt to either recreate Wikipedia, or one-up it entirely. Citizendium, made its contributors use their real names and display their credentials to add a layer of professionalism often absent in the world of Wikipedia. MyWikiBiz allowed businesses and vested interests to write their own pages and share in Google Adsense revenues. There are also plenty of mirros that scrape Wikipedia and use it as a template for further additions. So why haven't these sites taken off? (As of writing Citizendium is ranked about 51,000 on Alexa, and MyWikiBiz is at around 89,000.) Even the might of Google could not propel its "Wikipedia killer" Google Knol into the mainstream; it attracts only around 350,000 viewers a month (3). There are various flaws with each competitor-Knols do not integrate into an easily navigable experience, and Citizendium's methods for account creation are against virtually any web usability guideline-but throughout its lifespan Wikipedia has continued to enjoy complete dominance.

Ultimately, the continued success of Wikipedia depends on its ability to monitor and quickly prevent bad edits, as well as finding a way to scale up peer-reviewed content creation-in short, it needs more of those editors who have guaranteed its success so far. But considering no meaningful competitors have stood up to challenge them, Wikipedia can afford to take its time.

Read David Fuchs' previous Wikipedia stories: "Will Wikipedia fail in 2010?" / "Memoirs of a Wikipedian" / "The Future of Wikipedia" / "The Giano Problem" / "The Media's Attitude Towards Wikipedia" / "Wikipedia's Treatment of Fiction" / "Wikipedia and the Death of Truth".