
Ten years ago Wikipedia was widely considered a doomed experiment - kareemm
https://medium.com/@cdixon/it-s-hard-to-believe-today-but-10-years-ago-wikipedia-was-widely-considered-a-doomed-experiment-a7a0dfd27b8b#.9bk1kti56
======
ctolsen
"It’s hard to believe today, but 10 years ago Wikipedia was widely considered
a doomed experiment run by utopian radicals."

I have absolutely no recollection of this. Wikipedia has had some trouble,
just like any other successful project, but has in my view been widely
regarded as a pretty successful project that everyone wants to have around
(unless you sold encyclopedias).

~~~
thoth
>"It’s hard to believe today, but 10 years ago Wikipedia was widely considered
a doomed experiment run by utopian radicals."

I can't believe nobody has responded to this with [citation needed] yet! ;)

OK seriously now, I kind of remember some rumbling about the challenges facing
the project: crowd-sourcing a general purpose encyclopedia, generating enough
money to keep things running without showing ads - who would write the
content, the quality would be terrible, etc.

I'm not sure it was "widely" considered as doomed, but I'm also sure the
breadth and depth of topics and overall result ranges from outright shock to
pleasant surprise of the naysayers.

Wikipedia has flaws but overall it is a great reference on a massive variety
of topics. Here's an anecdotal example: I'm a hiker and a friend and I ran
across a weird looking fruit on the trail. After taking pics and asking around
we were told it was an "Osage orange". Never heard of it, so I went to
Wikipedia and found a lot of info and yes, that was definitely it. I can't
imagine Encyclopedia Brittanica, World Book, any of those I remember from my
youth, would have had as much info on the Osage orange!

~~~
gfsn54nsf
A neat exercise for anyone who thinks Wikipedia isn't a useful reference is to
pick ten random subjects from Encyclopedia Britannica and see how many of them
have an article in Wikipedia. (Answer is most likely "all of them".) Then do
the opposite:

Space Flight Operations Center (in wiki but not E.B.) Hypertrocta (in wiki but
not E.B.) Sokół motorcycles (in wiki but not E.B.) Paradeudorix petersi (in
wiki but not E.B.) Bella Voce (in wiki but not E.B.) ...and so on...

Now there is a certain amount of vandalism, rumor, political skew, etc. so you
should take what you read in Wikipedia with a grain of salt, but at least it's
there. Most of the time it will point you to a more authoritative source in
case you think someone's being deceptive about Osage oranges.

------
mike_hearn
Well, Wikipedia is pretty famous for its fairly vicious politics, infighting
and general difficulty of getting incorrect articles fixed if someone has
decided to camp on them. Whenever I read it I'm constantly amazed that it
works as well as it does, given that whenever I peer behind the curtain what's
going on there is fairly appalling.

I remember some years ago the wiki page for Bitcoin insisted it was a ponzi
scheme. Wikipedia has a page that defines the essential elements of a ponzi
scheme and Bitcoin didn't meet them, but no matter - edits to remove this
statement were immediately reverted and diverted to an endless discussion page
in which the camper in question couldn't be persuaded by any means, not logic,
not evidence, not weight of people disagreeing. I see that these days the
issue has been "resolved" by having an entire section called "ponzi scheme
dispute" that consists merely of different pundits contradicting each other.

Still, this is better than it used to be.

~~~
TuringTest
> these days the issue has been "resolved" by having an entire section called
> "ponzi scheme dispute" that consists merely of different pundits
> contradicting each other.

IMHO that is a good thing more often that not. It means that someone who has
heard the rumour will check Wikipedia and find a couple paragraphs about the
subject, with links to the most trusted agreed-upon references about who said
what.

The alternative is not having the section and requiring those same readers to
search their own way through the internet, without having any idea of what
sources to trust, and likely getting only one side of the controversy.

~~~
mike_hearn
It's definitely a better situation than it was, insomuch as at least people
can make up their mind about it.

That said, call me a pedant, but the term has a clear definition. The
statement is either right or wrong. Being able to cite people who merely
assert an opinion doesn't make them automatically worth having on an
encyclopedia page.

As examples, the wiki page for Barack Obama doesn't mention the claim that
he's a Muslim or that his birth certificate was faked anywhere .... because
it's factually incorrect nonsense that shouldn't be on a wiki page. Ditto for
the page on climate change.

But this sort of thing seems very hit or miss. Whether pages can be kept
factual or not seems to depend just as much on whether someone reverts every
change to the page, as the facts themselves.

~~~
ErrantX
Mostly it's about recentism. Wikipedia, as all encyclopedias, is usually very
good for stuff that doesn't change frequently or in large amounts.

But there is a continuing problem with recent and current events. You get a
lot of people trying to produce a single article, and disputes occur.

One example: the Amanda Knox article spent literally _years_ in a slow-moving
and entrenched edit war (which nearly gave me a hernia trying to unpick) over
whether she was guilty or not - all of which was up in the air due to pending
court cases.

As soon as the case died down and tied up, the article instantly became a dead
zone and is mostly OK.

------
swang
When the SOPA/PIPA protests happened in 2012, I was really surprised to learn
that students were upset since all they used as a resource was Wikipedia.

I mean for the most part I agree with the quoted articles in that Wikipedia is
hard to "verify" other than what you believe sounds true. And sometimes this
happens.

1) Someone write something on Wikipedia 2) Person changes it 3) Another person
reverts, citing source X. Source X is "Celebrity Magazine" which may or may
not have actually checked that fact on Wikipedia. 5) Repeat

It is a bit scary how much our source of information is just this one site
source without decent "fact" checking other than turf war related reasons.

Here is one: I am pretty certain that Alicia Keys was born in 1980 and not
1981 as her Wikipedia article says. I have no way to prove this based on
Wikipedia standards and if you look on "the Internet" you sometimes see 1980
and sometimes see 1981. The editors who turfed her page at the time sided with
the 1981 timeline.

And how did they "prove" it was 1981? They showed links to some music related
websites with articles about her saying she was born in that year. Completely
ignoring alternative sources that said she was born in 1981.

I mean there are certain explanations on why this happened: 1) A major
publication cited her DOB as 1981, others followed suit. 2) Alicia keys'
handlers want her to be a year younger than she is, so she told her PR people
to make sure everyone says she was born a year younger. 3) Someone misheard
she was born in 1981, wrote that down on Wikipedia, then everyone else just
used Wikipedia as a reference.

The problem I'm trying to get at is, Wikipedia is so popular its hard to
figure out if people are just lazy and using it as a source, which perpetuates
this cycle of "Fact F on Article A is true because of source S, Source S it
turns out, used article A to look up Fact F and reprinted it without really
fact checking F.

So yeah, popular, but hard to determine how accurate. /rant.

~~~
varjag
> 1) Someone write something on Wikipedia 2) Person changes it 3) Another
> person reverts, citing source X. Source X is "Celebrity Magazine" which may
> or may not have actually checked that fact on Wikipedia. 5) Repeat

As illustrated in this useful infographic:
[https://xkcd.com/978/](https://xkcd.com/978/)

~~~
cooper12
There's a short list here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents)

See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting)

------
vezzy-fnord
My recollections from Wikipedia back in 2005 were quite impressive given the
massive scale and open contribution barriers of the project.

In fact, the reception is just as split today as it was back then. Especially
in light of increased grievances regarding how Wikipedia's bureaucracy
operates.

~~~
moomin
Indeed. There's studies in how to bias an article whilst maintaining the
illusion of NPOV (simple example: if you support X, always add an adjective
when describing its detractors, but leave supporters unqualified). There's
also pretty well documented cases of people with an axe to grind on specific
subjects locking an article in their favour.

~~~
thekodols
Do you by any chance have links to those studies? I'm building a crowdsourced
platform, so that info could be super-valuable to me.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
It seems like a case of the fallacy generally known as "poisoning the well".
You can start there.

------
hvs
Wikipedia is what convinced everyone that you could "crowd-source" everything.
That inevitably spawned all sorts of doomed experiments. But the only ones who
considered _Wikipedia_ a "doomed experiment" were those who had a vested
interest in that being true.

~~~
drakenot
What are some of the other success stories of the crowd-source movement
besides Wikipedia? StackOverflow / StackExchange comes mind perhaps.

~~~
astazangasta
Open Street Maps, IMDb. Heck, Reddit and HN. This is how the net works: we
build it together.

------
cwyers
> There are occasional errors and controversies, but for the most part it
> provides accurate, comprehensive information to billions of people every
> day.

Comprehensive? What?

~~~
codingdave
Billions? What?

~~~
cwyers
That's... a very good point.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Some random Internet stat says there are about 3 billion users on the
Internet. It's reasonable to assume that Wikipedia gets used by at 1-2 billion
at minimum.

~~~
cwyers
Daily?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Right. Reading comprehension failure on my part, sorry :<.

------
reitanqild
10 years ago I was optimistic about Wikipedia.

For me Wikipedia and Stackoverflow are now only reference material; - I rarely
even consider contributing. I still pay a bit once in a while for the
fundraisers but my feeling is that will decrease as well.

------
beagle3
Personal anecdote: I was in a location where Jimmy Wales introduced himself in
2007 with a simple, "My name is Jimmy Wales, I started Wikipedia". Some 50
very senior people from many industries and professions all said "thank you!"
enthusiastically in response.

It wasn't considered a failure or doomed in any circle I frequented 10 years
ago, and I did a lot (academia, business, entrepreneurship, makers, more) --
and it wasn't so with anyone of the "general population" that I associated
with. The only less-than-positive remarks I've heard about Wikipedia where
from people who snarked "but anyone anywhere can change a value any time, how
can you ever trust that?" Which is, of course, true -- but a variation of
which applies to e.g. Encyclopedia Britannica just as well.

------
oldmanjay
This article is essentially an approximation of a Jay-Z song, celebrating the
triumph over adversity and haters. If Wikipedia started out selling crack the
similarities would be overwhelming.

Good on ya, Wikipedia! You've come a long way up.

------
Kumaiti
Just like almost everything else that ends up getting big and successful.

~~~
logicallee
Not really - Wikipedia still makes you say, "That can't possibly work." Think
about it - the first and most definitive, accessible source on any subject you
don't know anything about, is something strangers on the Internet can
collaboratively edit, troll, or subtlely subvert. This just can't work -
except that it does!

It goes counter to everything on the Internet. You would expect it to read
like the comments section of a news article - instead, it's more definitive
and factual than news articles themselves. Amazing!

~~~
Nimitz14
> Think about it - the first and most definitive, accessible source on any
> subject you don't know anything about, is something strangers on the
> Internet can collaboratively edit, troll, or subtlely subvert.

That's not true. Go to this page

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_celebrities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_celebrities)

pick a list and add yourself into it. Within an hour your change will have
been reverted.

This claim that anybody can edit wikipedia is bullshit and rather annoying.

~~~
DanBC
You've pointed out one page that has good monitoring. There are plenty of
pages that don't have anybody watching them where changes can be made.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Still the point is valid - the wildcard "anybody can edit" is not at all true,
for many of the most 'followed' pages. Which are the one that are most
interesting to change.

I've had old company listings disappear because they had no links. The company
is gone! History! Nothing to link to. So that meant some busybody made it
their job to delete that piece.

------
skrowl
Today it's just widely considered a very popular but doomed experiment.
Wikipedia is corrupt as hell and the power of editing important pages lies in
the hands of a few elites.

~~~
bnegreve
> corrupt as hell and the power of editing important pages lies in the hands
> of a few elites.

Are other medias better in that respect?

------
davidgerard
The talk was that it was doomed, but from inside it was blindingly obvious
that, "if we want a good encyclopedia in ten years, it's going to have to be a
good Wikipedia." I said so at the time:
[http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/277688.html](http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/277688.html)

------
arafa
It would seem there's a conflict of interest between Wikipedia and those that
report on it, since there's some overlap there. Reminds me of the old Upton
Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
his salary depends on his not understanding it."

------
EA
Upper management sent out an email my workforce telling us "to beware the
Wikis". Their stance was that since anyone can edit it, it can not be trusted
and that it could potentially host malicious content.

------
pbreit
The current example of similar style "claim chowder" is probably Bob Lutz'
commentary on Tesla. And I would do the same thing I did back then re:
Wikipedia: acknowledge but discount.

------
kingmanaz
Wikipedia has succeeded in allowing the victors to write history. Nothing
damaging to the status quo escapes the paid Hasbara editors.

------
antonmaju
Long-long time ago, there was Microsoft Encarta

------
austenallred
I wonder how successful Wikipedia would have been if it weren't for being the
first result in almost every Google query.

~~~
amboar
Isn't it an indicator of success that it is the first result in almost every
Google query? The articles don't write themselves and Google tries to show the
most relevant information, hence the articles must have some standing before
they percolate up the results.

~~~
sparkzilla
It's not as simple as that. Does Google show the most relevant information, or
does it show a non-profit link that suppresses its competitors, and that it
can scrape without any legal issues? Does it promote Wikipedia to give its
search results authority, even when other sites may have better and more
accurate information? I explore some of these issues here:
[http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-
friends-...](http://newslines.org/blog/google-and-wikipedia-best-friends-
forever/)

~~~
jordanthoms
I imagine their ranking metrics show that Wikipedia pages are very popular
with their users, which is why they've steadily moved up in the rankings. It
makes sense too - Wikipedia gives a general rundown of a topic in a standard
format, so for a initial search to learn the basics of something it's a great
destination. Can't see much of a conspiracy here.

------
panglott
To be fair, pretty much everything on the Internet in 2005 was a doomed
experiment. Plenty of them have beat the odds.

------
MrPatan
I never had the impression this was true 10 years ago. Source: I was there

------
yarrel
Clickbait title is clickbait. And wrong.

