As Wikipedia marks its 25th anniversary, the collaborative online encyclopedia faces grave new threats. Running to 30bn words in more than 300 languages, it is shedding readers and volunteer editors while sitting at the center of an escalating culture war. AI also poses an existential threat, according to Australian journalist Richard Cooke in his new book, "The Last Best Place on the Internet."
The site traces back to Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, who founded Nupedia in 2000 before launching Wikipedia in 2001. After early volunteer defections over potential advertising, the bosses backed down and ran it as a non-profit. Wales has called that decision "either the smartest or the dumbest thing that I ever did."
Wikipedia's quirks include Cebuano as its second-largest language with 6m articles—mostly about insects—uploaded by a Swede's bot. A user named Giraffedata has spent 15 years removing "comprised of." Yet the editor base remains skewed, with most editors men and content reflecting that imbalance.
Today, febrile politics fuel "edit wars" over pages like Israel, Jesus and Donald Trump. Cooke argues Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia ever written by humans—and likely to hold that title forever, since any future rival will surely be made with AI.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing