Independent UK: Wikipedia shows the internet at its best

[marmar]

Wikipedia will celebrate its 10th birthday later this month. And its users will celebrate with ad-free pages, because the annual Wiki fundraiser has been a record-breaker this year. The Wikimedia Foundation plastered its pages with pictures of co-founder, Jimmy Wales, staring moodily at the reader and asking for cash. Although it provoked ungenerous criticism from some parts of the blogosphere (mocked-up Wikipedia pages with Wales's face superimposed on woodland creatures, for a start), it worked. The banner ads sporting his face received three times more clicks than the ones without him, and they received higher average donations.

Operation JimboStare, as the campaign became known, raised over $16m (£10m) in 50 days. Its donations are the perfect illustration of Wikipedia's strength: 500,000 donors in 140 countries gave an average of $22 each. The democratic nature of its financial arrangements is a mirror of the site's administration – volunteers contributing what they know or can find out on almost every subject you can think of. Wikipedia is the fifth most-visited website in the world, but it only has about 45 people actually working for it. The other 100,000 editors are all doing it for nothing.

Plenty of people dislike Wiki in principle – for its inaccuracies, its bias, or its occasional inability to cover in-depth subjects that teenage boys won't be interested in. In my experience, those people rarely visit the site, dismissing it entirely because they once found a ropey article. And as someone whose Wikipedia entry – written by someone I have never met and whose name I don't know – once compared me (favourably) to a Sesame Street episode, I could easily be among them. At least, I would be if I hadn't been delighted – who doesn't want to be like Sesame Street? Idiots, is who.

But Wikipedia's critics have been slow to give them credit for trying to make the site better, and more accurate – introducing delays to any changes made on sensitive pages, using established editors to keep tabs on them. Of course, rogue elements get through: if you really wanted to make a false claim on an obscure topic, you might get away with it for months. But at least it could then be changed, which is something that can't be done with a massive volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/natalie-haynes-wikipedia-shows-the-internet-at-its-best-2177011.html