Interestingly, on Wikipedia, there are articles both for and against whether Wikipedia is a social networking site: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:W

Interestingly, on Wikipedia, there are articles both for and against whether Wikipedia is a social networking site: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_social_networking_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_s... > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_a_social_networking_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_a_socia... -- To your point - I can see why Wikipedia is a "social network" according to the social science definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network However, there is also a distinction between "social network" and "social networking service": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service This is again a matter of language and semantics. If we wanted to get super-specific, we would call sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter "social networking sites" or "social networking services". Instead, we colloquially wrap everything up into the term "social network". To that extent, the intention and/or context of "social network" here is more about whether Wikipedia fits into the landscape of major public social networking sites mostly meant for socializing (ex. Facebook) instead of some other niche or segment. Wikipedia has a different use-case, product, and business model than "social networks" (social networking sites) like Facebook or Myspace, so it's something to consider when making the mental association of what a social network is and comparing it against those major brands. There's millions of users on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians), so it's not far-fetched that out of so many people, there are going to be those that clash with others in the network in bad ways. I bet if you look at other information-oriented "social network" organizations, such as in academia, the same sentiment would come up where there would also be unpleasant people and harassment to deal with as minutiae is argued over, so this is not something unique to Wikipedia in that regard. Overall, it would be nice if Wikipedia stayed committed to capturing information in a non-biased and objective way to preserve it for future users. It's valuable to have multiple groups contribute their own experience to various subjects, as long as it's not done destructively in a way that is intentionally set to follow an opinionated agenda, which would devalue the 'encyclopedic' nature of Wikipedia.