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One reason Wikipedia was able to grow so quickly was because of its scale. Instead of relying on a few posh journal editors like Britannica, anyone could contri

One reason Wikipedia was able to grow so quickly was because of its scale. Instead of relying on a few posh journal editors like Britannica, anyone could contribute. And while you have edge cases of people trolling and some misinformation, you also have a much larger labour pool of people dedicated to helping, not for a paycheque, but their own personal reasons.

ignoranceprior 6y ago
Wikipedia was originally intended to be a smaller sandbox area for Nupedia, the expert-authored encyclopedia from Bomis (Jimmy Wales's company). Of course, Wikipedia turned out to be much more successful. But there were other collaborative Internet encyclopedia projects that didn't do so well. Benjamin Mako Hill has a paper exploring what made Wikipedia succeed while the rest failed: https://mako.cc/academic/hill-almost_wikipedia-DRAFT.pdf https://mako.cc/academic/hill-almost_wikipedia-DRAFT.pdf
- HDMI_Cable 6y ago
  Yeah, it seems to be some sort of snowball effect. If you're lucky and have a few initial users, then you can grow faster, acquire more users, and beat the competition.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
> One reason Wikipedia was able to grow so quickly was because of its scale. I've carefully studied all three definitions of "scale" my dictionary offers up, and come to the conclusion that this sentence either means absolutely nothing ("It is big because it is big"), or something really strange ("Wikipedia grew because of its plate-like skin coverings").
- HDMI_Cable 6y ago
  Sorry, that was a bit unclear on my part. I was alluding to scale as in Wikipedia's massive pool of available editors being able to publish more content than competitors, thereby driving more traffic. (But of course, we all know that Wikipedia is run by the lizard people with the aforementioned plate-like skin coverings.)
  - Kim_Bruning 6y ago
    So how did wikipedia get those editors? But maybe that's a trick question! Rather: What does Wikipedia consider to be its pool of editors?
- not_knuth 6y ago
  The last millenium called and they want their prescriptivists back.
redis_mlc 6y ago
> you also have a much larger labour pool of people dedicated to helping, not for a paycheque, but their own personal reasons. This is often not true. There's a whole industry of W editors who charge corporations a monthly fee to guard their pages. It's supposed to be against the W ToS, but whenever foreign W editors are interviewed, they readily admit it (to gain more paying clients.) The "no paycheck" trope is almost as bad as saying ebay is about selling beanie babies.

ignoranceprior 6y ago

Wikipedia was originally intended to be a smaller sandbox area for Nupedia, the expert-authored encyclopedia from Bomis (Jimmy Wales's company). Of course, Wikipedia turned out to be much more successful. But there were other collaborative Internet encyclopedia projects that didn't do so well. Benjamin Mako Hill has a paper exploring what made Wikipedia succeed while the rest failed: https://mako.cc/academic/hill-almost_wikipedia-DRAFT.pdf https://mako.cc/academic/hill-almost_wikipedia-DRAFT.pdf

HDMI_Cable 6y ago
Yeah, it seems to be some sort of snowball effect. If you're lucky and have a few initial users, then you can grow faster, acquire more users, and beat the competition.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

> One reason Wikipedia was able to grow so quickly was because of its scale. I've carefully studied all three definitions of "scale" my dictionary offers up, and come to the conclusion that this sentence either means absolutely nothing ("It is big because it is big"), or something really strange ("Wikipedia grew because of its plate-like skin coverings").

HDMI_Cable 6y ago
Sorry, that was a bit unclear on my part. I was alluding to scale as in Wikipedia's massive pool of available editors being able to publish more content than competitors, thereby driving more traffic. (But of course, we all know that Wikipedia is run by the lizard people with the aforementioned plate-like skin coverings.)
- Kim_Bruning 6y ago
  So how did wikipedia get those editors? But maybe that's a trick question! Rather: What does Wikipedia consider to be its pool of editors?
not_knuth 6y ago
The last millenium called and they want their prescriptivists back.

redis_mlc 6y ago

> you also have a much larger labour pool of people dedicated to helping, not for a paycheque, but their own personal reasons. This is often not true. There's a whole industry of W editors who charge corporations a monthly fee to guard their pages. It's supposed to be against the W ToS, but whenever foreign W editors are interviewed, they readily admit it (to gain more paying clients.) The "no paycheck" trope is almost as bad as saying ebay is about selling beanie babies.