A Celebration of an Astonishing Achievement, and A Few Worries
THE internet’s omniscience is one of its most useful and transformative features. Whether you want to look up an obscure word or phrase, get a quick briefing on an historical figure or dig into a little-known scientific or political concept, help is just a click away. In part this is because of the power and reach of Google’s search engine; but search is only as useful as the information it retrieves, and for many common queries the top match will be an entry in Wikipedia, an online, user-generated encyclopedia which celebrates its tenth birthday this year.
Wikipedia started life as an offshoot of Nupedia, a free, online encyclopedia being written by experts. To speed up the production of articles, two members of the Nupedia team, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, had the idea of allowing anybody to edit entries, using “wiki” technology. The result quickly eclipsed Nupedia.
It is an astonishing success story. On paper, the idea that volunteers could collectively produce the largest and most popular encyclopedia the world has ever seen sounds implausible. Surely reference works need to be compiled by experts? Yet Wikipedia now has over 17m articles, 3.5m of them in English, and its popularity—it is one of the ten biggest sites on the web and is used by around 400m people each month—shows how much people value it. As well as being a useful reference work, Wikipedia is also the most striking example of the idea that volunteers working together online can collectively produce something valuable. Not everyone can contribute to (or even understand) open-source software projects, but anyone can see how Wikipedia’s “crowdsourcing” model works. It showed that the wisdom of the masses could be harnessed, inspiring many other crowdsourced projects—a further reason to celebrate its success.
For all Wikipedia’s achievements, however, it inspires three worries: that it contains too many inaccuracies; that it is not financially sustainable; and that it has lost touch with its founding ideal of being open to all.
Start with the question of accuracy. Given that Wikipedia relies on its readers to spot and fix inaccuracies, errors are inevitable; entries may also have deliberate biases or inaccuracies introduced into them for political, personal or commercial motives. There have been several hoaxes. Britain’s exam watchdog, Ofqual, warned in 2009 that Wikipedia was not “authoritative or accurate” and entries “may be completely untrue”. Studies suggest that Wikipedia may not be as accurate as specialist information sources, but compares well with the accuracy of books, newspapers and magazines. If you look up a subject you know about on Wikipedia, you will find that it mostly gets things right. Even Ofqual conceded that Wikipedia “can be an excellent starting point for research”. Its ability to provide a quick overview of a subject, with links to abundant references, is of immense value.
What of Wikipedia’s sustainability? Over the past decade there have been occasional funding crunches as the site has grappled with its rapid growth. Yet a recently completed fundraising drive brought in $16m in donations in 50 days from 500,000 users. This suggests that Wikipedia has become more professional in its fundraising, and that crowdsourcing money, as well as content, is a viable model. The ubiquitous banner ads featuring Mr. Wales annoyed some users, but would probably be regarded by most as preferable to taking advertising or selling up to become part of an internet or media conglomerate, both of which might threaten Wikipedia’s neutrality and its non-profit, volunteer-driven ethos.
It is the third worry—that Wikipedia has become ossified and bureaucratic, discouraging new users from contributing—that is the greatest cause for concern. In recent years its most active contributors have become obsessed with obscure questions of doctrine and have developed their own curious jargon to describe the editing process. The number of regular contributors to Wikipedia’s English edition peaked in March 2007 and has since declined by a third; the number of new contributors per month has fallen by half. Growth in the number of articles and edits has also levelled off. Mr. Wales says all this is a sign of maturity: “The project is more complete—there’s less to work on.” But insiders worry that new users perceive Wikipedia as “uninviting” and “insular”.
Wikipedia is already starting to look rather stiff and middle-aged. To ensure its long-term health, it needs to rediscover the flexibility of its early years.
网络最有用处、最具变革性的特点之一是它无所不知。不论你是想查一个生僻的词或词组，还是想快速浏览一位历史人物简介，或是深入了解一个鲜为人知的科学或政治概念，都只需轻轻一点。这部分要归功于谷歌搜索引擎强大的搜索能力和广阔的搜索范围；但搜索的意义仅止步于它所获取的信息。对很多常见问题来说，最靠谱的办法是求助于维基百科。它是一个由用户贡献的在线百科全书，今年迎来了自己的十岁生日。
维基百科最初是新百科全书的分支。新百科是一部由专家编写的免费在线百科全书。为了更快提供更多文章，新百科的两位成员拉里•桑格和吉米•威尔士想了个点子：利用“维基”技术让所有人都能编辑词条。结果大获成功，维基迅速超越了新百科。
这是一个令人称奇的成功史。理论上说，志愿者集体创作史上最大、最受欢迎的百科全书听起来难以置信。参考书一定要由专家编写么？维基百科现有1700多万条目，其中350万篇为英文。它的受欢迎程度也表现出人们对其价值的认可：它是全球十大网站之一，每月用户达4亿人左右。维基百科不仅是一本有用的参考书，它还是一种理念最成功的例子——志愿者集体在线工作能创造出有价值的成果。不是所有人都能参与（或者甚至是理解）开源软件项目，但大家都能看到维基百科的“众包”模式是多么成功。它表明，大众的智慧是可以有效管理的，这激发了很多其它的众包项目——所以我们更应该庆贺它的成功了。
尽管维基百科硕果累累，它还是有三大隐患：太多不准确信息；缺乏稳定的经济来源；且偏离了对所有人开放的创始理念。
先说准确性。既然维基百科依靠读者发现和改正不准确信息，错误就在所难免，词条也可能因为政治、个人或商业动机而存在故意的偏见。这种情况已经发生过好几次了。英国的考试监管机构资格与课程管理委员会于2009年警告说维基百科缺乏“权威和准确性”，词条“可能完全错误”。研究表明，维基百科的准确性可能比不上一些专家信息源，但与普通书籍、报纸和杂志不相上下。如果在维基上查阅自己熟知的主题，你会发现信息大致都是正确的。连英国资格与课程管理委员会也承认，维基百科“可成为做研究很好的起点”。它能提供主题快速浏览和丰富的参考链接，价值不菲。
维基的财务问题又如何呢？过去十年该网站发展迅速，偶尔会出现资金紧缺。但最近完成的一项筹资运动在50天内从50万用户手中筹集到1600万美元。这表明，维基百科在筹资方面越来越专业，众包资金的模式与众包内容一样都是可行的。打着威尔士先生旗号的网页广告无处不在，这让一些用户很恼火，但大多人可能认为，有了这些小广告，维基百科将来才更有机会通过经营广告业务或出售公司而投奔一家大型网络或媒体集团。但是，这两者都可能影响维基百科的中立性和它非盈利、志愿者驱动的特质。
这是第三个麻烦——维基百科已经僵化、官僚化，新用户都不愿贡献信息了——这是最令人担心的。近年来，该网站最活跃的贡献者们成天纠结一些很晦涩难懂的教条问题，还发明了奇怪的行话来描述编辑过程。英文维基百科的定期贡献者在2007年3月达到峰值，自此就下降了三分之一，每月的新加入贡献者下降了一半。新增条目和编辑数量趋向稳定。威尔士先生说这都是成熟的表现。“该项目现在更加完整，所以要添加的东西少了。”但业内人士很担心新用户会认为维基百科“缺乏魅力”、“与世隔绝”。
维基百科看起来已像是步入中年、运转不灵了。为保证长期健康，它需要重新找回早年的灵活性。