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The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." --Jimmy Wales With more than 2,000,000 individual articles on everything from Aa! (a Japanese pop group) to Zzyzx, California , written by an army of volunteer contributors, Wikipedia is the #8 site on the World Wide Web. Created (and corrected) by anyone with access to a computer, this impressive assemblage of knowledge is growing at an astonishing rate of more than 30,000,000 words a month. Now for the first time, a Wikipedia insider tells the story of how it all happened--from the first glimmer of an idea to the global phenomenon it's become. Andrew Lih has been an administrator (a trusted user who is granted access to technical features) at Wikipedia for more than four years, as well as a regular host of the weekly Wikipedia podcast. In The Wikipedia Revolution , he details the site's inception in 2001, its evolution, and its remarkable growth, while also explaining its larger cultural repercussions. Wikipedia is not just a website; it's a global community of contributors who have banded together out of a shared passion for making knowledge free. Featuring a Foreword by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and an Afterword that is itself a Wikipedia creation.
246 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
February 28, 2013
This was a could-not-put-down book for me that I read in 2-3 days (very fast for me). I was fascinated by the saga of how Wikipedia came about and how they assembled a virtual an army of volunteers to create a user-built encyclopedia of over 4 million articles. While the book is written by an insider it was not a puff piece. It covered some of the interesting challenges they faced with personal, creative, legal, ethical, and commercialization battles along the way. The book is largely chronological with the early chapters covering pre-Wikipedia efforts at building a user-contributed encyclopedia (and smaller attempts at collaborative writing). The book flows well from chapter to chapter. It is written for a non-technical audience while proving enough technical details to interest the more tech savvy reader. This was written in 2009 I would love toe see an updated version. The book alludes to updates coming via a blog or web site, but there was very little information there.
January 11, 2019
A must read for anyone who is going to teach a class about Wikipedia. A detailed history of the first 10 years
June 8, 2018
Wikipedia's history is full of turning points and, as you can imagine, surprising events. Jimmy Wales tried to remove Jerry Sanger's contributions to founding the site, developed a side business as a for profit wiki using mediawiki's software for pop culture that wouldn't fit on wikipedia and went through many complicated patches fighting trolls and vandalism. At the end, we have the greatest encyclopedia ever written (and that might forever be), a product of a community of unknowns that might only ever talk to each other through computers but that are collecting humanity's knowledge and cataloging it for everyone to consume.
The book is a great tour through wikipedia's history, the main issue is that it goes back and forth in history too much instead of following through a timeline. Still, you get to know a lot about encyclopedias, what projects led to them eventually creating Nupedia and then Wikipedia and how the site survived it's infancy and problems to be the tool we use and trust today. Well worth the read.
The book is a great tour through wikipedia's history, the main issue is that it goes back and forth in history too much instead of following through a timeline. Still, you get to know a lot about encyclopedias, what projects led to them eventually creating Nupedia and then Wikipedia and how the site survived it's infancy and problems to be the tool we use and trust today. Well worth the read.
June 21, 2009
Andrew Lih writes for the non-techie, giving a clear overview of how Wikipedia works and how it got started. If you want to focus on the mechanics of Wikipedia - how edit wars are resolved and how vandalism is deterred - you could start reading about halfway through the book. However, I found the early chapters intriguing since they explore the origins of collaborative online culture including Usenets and HyperCard of the early 1980’s and even the “online culture” of amateur radio in the 1960s. Lih briefly dips back farther in time, to the 19th century, to point out the collaborative aspects of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary (OED). (For a more complete history of the writing of the OED, check out Simon Winchester’s fascinating and highly readable The Professor and the Madman.)
September 25, 2021
I love how this book touches open source philosophy, and talks about the cultural aspects of wikipedia, not just the product and events.
January 12, 2017
This book starts off great and then gradually goes downhill. The bits I liked best were those on the history or encyclopedias, the origin of the name "wiki" and how Wikipedia handled the scandal where a journalist was accused of having something to do with JFK's assassination (this was all made up as a prank but still freaked out the journalist and Wikipedians.)
It does not give out any computer code, which what I feared it would start to do. However, those tech geeks may be disappointed by the omission. After all, the subtitle promised to show you how it was done, didn't it? No one just pointed a magic wand at the computer and said, "Make it so," and it was done. Intense code and lots of jargon had to be involved.
It does describe why people write for free and anonymously. Now, that's all very well for the human spirit and furthering the pool of knowledge for the future and blah blah blah but NEVER addresses my main concern:
Writing for free. Because these boneheads do it, it makes it really hard for professional writers to make a living.
I've been using Wikipedia since 2006 (I've even donated money) when I started being a freelance writer and I never once noticed that there had been a thriving community bitching about every article and picture and edit done on the site. Some of that greatly interesting bitchiness is mentioned here but mostly in summaries, which was disappointing. I wanted more dirt at Writing-For-Free-On-Utopia-Website-Land. One guy writing and editing articles (and was at one time a Wikipedia employee) claimed to have degrees and such but turned out to just be a guy in a basement with an Internet connection. That was funny.
So I love Wikipedia but I hate it, too. It should start paying its writers somehow. However, when I'm researching a bizarre niche topic for an article and cannot find anything online on the subject other than Wikipedia, then I could kiss it.
Could being the operative word.
It does not give out any computer code, which what I feared it would start to do. However, those tech geeks may be disappointed by the omission. After all, the subtitle promised to show you how it was done, didn't it? No one just pointed a magic wand at the computer and said, "Make it so," and it was done. Intense code and lots of jargon had to be involved.
It does describe why people write for free and anonymously. Now, that's all very well for the human spirit and furthering the pool of knowledge for the future and blah blah blah but NEVER addresses my main concern:
Writing for free. Because these boneheads do it, it makes it really hard for professional writers to make a living.
I've been using Wikipedia since 2006 (I've even donated money) when I started being a freelance writer and I never once noticed that there had been a thriving community bitching about every article and picture and edit done on the site. Some of that greatly interesting bitchiness is mentioned here but mostly in summaries, which was disappointing. I wanted more dirt at Writing-For-Free-On-Utopia-Website-Land. One guy writing and editing articles (and was at one time a Wikipedia employee) claimed to have degrees and such but turned out to just be a guy in a basement with an Internet connection. That was funny.
So I love Wikipedia but I hate it, too. It should start paying its writers somehow. However, when I'm researching a bizarre niche topic for an article and cannot find anything online on the subject other than Wikipedia, then I could kiss it.
Could being the operative word.
August 14, 2009
I borrowed this book from the library because the title caught my eye, and I've always been interested in Wikipedia. I thought it was a good overview of how Wikipedia came to be, the decisions that the people involved made, and how those decisions still affect it today. I think Lih was unbiased in his telling, seeming to follow the Wikipedia model.
December 15, 2021
So when I pick this out at my library, I didn't notice that it was written in 2008. This didn't stop my enjoyment of the history and the ups and downs of building a wiki encyclopedia. Coming to the end, I realized that they didn't know where it would go from there and even if it would survive, interesting.
This kept me engaged through the whole reading.
This kept me engaged through the whole reading.
September 7, 2010
Interesting at first, but mostly self-indulgent. Wish they had chosen an audio speaker actually familiar with some technical terms. Each of the times he used the pronunciation Sigh-sop for SysOp I cringed a little. The spelling out of ASCII was equally absurd.
January 28, 2015
The only thing wrong with this book is being too long. Ideas were beat to death rather than treated sufficiently and moving onto another point.
October 14, 2018
The encyclopedia, meaning “rounded education” has been around for hundreds of years, dating back to the Roman era and has evolved over the years. There have been many renditions of the encyclopedia, especially in modern times when everything went electronic and then internet based. There have been other versions of the non-text encyclopedia that have existed in the modern electronic age, but it was taken to the next level when a free non-download version utilized the internet, known as Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia encyclopedia has become a worldwide phenomenon that was able to overshadow all other types of encyclopedias in less than a decade. Before Wikipedia, there had been a history and a variety of different types of encyclopedias, text and electronic. Founder Jimmy Wales teamed up with a group of hackers, students, writers, and regular internet enthusiasts in 2005 at a Hostel in Frankfurt Germany to change the game. Wikipedia is now a household reference point among multiple age groups across the world and only seems to grow in popularity. It is a simple and affective reference point on virtually any subject in many languages. Wikipedia was meant to be a social gathering environment where knowledge could be shared and “regular” people could influence anyone even if they are not scholars.
It all started in 2001 a group of self-organized volunteers gathered to change the game in searching for information on the internet, a centralized reference point. What is now Wikipedia was to be a live, editable information site that could allow a subject to be changed as events took place. This was far superior to text book encyclopedias that were printed and if there was a change, it would have to be added to the next rendition. This made Wikipedia something the world had never experienced and become so successful. Wikipedia was able to become a site that worked faster than any twenty-four hour news room, having updates within seconds of an event happening. Take for instance you hear in the news (TV or internet) that an actor passed away. You could go to their Wikipedia page and there would be an update in a specific section regarding this event and possibly a when, where, and how. After some time, in 2004, contributors wanted to meet and Jimmy being almost like a prophet, brought them together. This gave a more personal sense of direction and contribution to this free source of information.
Wikipedia was supposed to be a free source of information as the elite techs that started the internet wanted information to be. With Wikipedia being free, there is encouragement for volunteers to make the choice to donate their time without feeling like they are contributing to someone’s wealth. Instead they are contributing to global information, being a part of something bigger. There were various internet based items through evolution made this all possible with the teams of highly talented techs such as; 1) Linux, created by Finnish hacker to start free software which was a collection of people’s contributions then consolidated and released for an updated download, 2) the internet browser or HTML, 3) open software, content, and format known as DMOZ, and 4) Neupedia or the WikiWikiWed for easy editing.
This did not come without its challenges. Since Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, there have been cases of false information being published which can cause problems as it can be false. Wikipedia does have pages that are locked in which one cannot edit the same as other pages. I was able to experience this for a college course assignment to edit a Wikipedia page. It was an interesting experience, but there was a sense of fulfillment being able to edit a page that was of interest to me. I can see the idea behind having a free source of information on a large scale that an everyday person can contribute to and be part of. Searching for information can be challenging in the vast world of the internet. Like most people, it is easy to first think of Wikipedia for the information needed. Knowing the information comes from virtually anyone, we need to remember that if the information being searched for has to be exact and factual, Wikipedia can be a reference point and we may have to search in other databases to filter for what is needed.
I found the book to be interesting, but I was not interested in some of the detail as I am not a tech person. I read this book because I utilize Wikipedia on a regular basis and understand searching the internet for information can be difficult especially depending on what you are looking for. I feel it is important for people to understand how this site became what it is today and how it has affected our society in the modern internet information age. I have a much better understanding on what it took to create this phenomenon and the purpose behind it.
The Wikipedia encyclopedia has become a worldwide phenomenon that was able to overshadow all other types of encyclopedias in less than a decade. Before Wikipedia, there had been a history and a variety of different types of encyclopedias, text and electronic. Founder Jimmy Wales teamed up with a group of hackers, students, writers, and regular internet enthusiasts in 2005 at a Hostel in Frankfurt Germany to change the game. Wikipedia is now a household reference point among multiple age groups across the world and only seems to grow in popularity. It is a simple and affective reference point on virtually any subject in many languages. Wikipedia was meant to be a social gathering environment where knowledge could be shared and “regular” people could influence anyone even if they are not scholars.
It all started in 2001 a group of self-organized volunteers gathered to change the game in searching for information on the internet, a centralized reference point. What is now Wikipedia was to be a live, editable information site that could allow a subject to be changed as events took place. This was far superior to text book encyclopedias that were printed and if there was a change, it would have to be added to the next rendition. This made Wikipedia something the world had never experienced and become so successful. Wikipedia was able to become a site that worked faster than any twenty-four hour news room, having updates within seconds of an event happening. Take for instance you hear in the news (TV or internet) that an actor passed away. You could go to their Wikipedia page and there would be an update in a specific section regarding this event and possibly a when, where, and how. After some time, in 2004, contributors wanted to meet and Jimmy being almost like a prophet, brought them together. This gave a more personal sense of direction and contribution to this free source of information.
Wikipedia was supposed to be a free source of information as the elite techs that started the internet wanted information to be. With Wikipedia being free, there is encouragement for volunteers to make the choice to donate their time without feeling like they are contributing to someone’s wealth. Instead they are contributing to global information, being a part of something bigger. There were various internet based items through evolution made this all possible with the teams of highly talented techs such as; 1) Linux, created by Finnish hacker to start free software which was a collection of people’s contributions then consolidated and released for an updated download, 2) the internet browser or HTML, 3) open software, content, and format known as DMOZ, and 4) Neupedia or the WikiWikiWed for easy editing.
This did not come without its challenges. Since Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, there have been cases of false information being published which can cause problems as it can be false. Wikipedia does have pages that are locked in which one cannot edit the same as other pages. I was able to experience this for a college course assignment to edit a Wikipedia page. It was an interesting experience, but there was a sense of fulfillment being able to edit a page that was of interest to me. I can see the idea behind having a free source of information on a large scale that an everyday person can contribute to and be part of. Searching for information can be challenging in the vast world of the internet. Like most people, it is easy to first think of Wikipedia for the information needed. Knowing the information comes from virtually anyone, we need to remember that if the information being searched for has to be exact and factual, Wikipedia can be a reference point and we may have to search in other databases to filter for what is needed.
I found the book to be interesting, but I was not interested in some of the detail as I am not a tech person. I read this book because I utilize Wikipedia on a regular basis and understand searching the internet for information can be difficult especially depending on what you are looking for. I feel it is important for people to understand how this site became what it is today and how it has affected our society in the modern internet information age. I have a much better understanding on what it took to create this phenomenon and the purpose behind it.
October 4, 2024
reading non-fiction written in 2008 is definitely an experience; thinking about addressing the challenges of regulating and running wikipedia in the present digital age is really difficult. this was probably a decent overview of wikipedia in 2008 but in 2024 not so much. i feel both optimistic and pessimistic that random people can be trusted enough to create such a comprehensive, relatively objective online resource but at the same time the gradual increase of moderation suggests that that trust is constantly waning. does this kind of trend mean that things always take a turn for the bad or just that the more good things we have, the more we have to do to keep them good? at first i liked the sound of the word eventualism, where the wikipedians sort of expect articles to eventually turn out helpful regardless of the immediate choices made when editing them. but then it made me think of how it feels generally positive to see progress, especially technological, taking place but not having the foresight to consider the big picture effects and the potential consequences of this constant progress can be pretty harmful. i don’t know if i can always subscribe to the philosophy of just letting the cards fall where they may and only dealing with everything that follows afterward. i feel like this is all super irrelevant to this review now lol
April 13, 2024
Ever heard of copyleft? According to Wikipedia - Copyleft is the legal technique of granting certain freedoms over copies of copyrighted works with the requirement that the same rights be preserved in derivative works. In this sense, freedoms refers to the use of the work for any purpose, and the ability to modify, copy, share, and redistribute the work, with or without a fee. And with this, Jimmy Wales created Wikipedia - a whole community of Wikipedians contribute their own time and resources in creating an encyclopaedia (>10 million articles across 250 languages) that could be edited by anyone. This book is the story about how Wikipedia came to be and becoming one of the top 10 websites visited on the internet. Without the financial muscles of big corporations. Just with the "goodness of human kind" and a vision.
Read
June 14, 2025The Observer grabbed me from the very first line—Frank waking up dead? With no memory? I was instantly hooked. The supernatural war he's thrown into is unlike anything I’ve read before. The mix of spirits, demons, and tricksters creates a vivid, haunting world where nothing is as it seems.
The psychological twists kept me guessing, and the mystery around Frank’s past had me turning pages late into the night. Every character feels like a riddle, and the tension never lets up. I loved how the story explores memory, identity, and choice in such a unique way.
If you're into layered mysteries, eerie atmospheres, and smart, immersive storytelling, The Observer delivers all that and more. Easily one of the most original takes on the afterlife I’ve come across. Highly
The psychological twists kept me guessing, and the mystery around Frank’s past had me turning pages late into the night. Every character feels like a riddle, and the tension never lets up. I loved how the story explores memory, identity, and choice in such a unique way.
If you're into layered mysteries, eerie atmospheres, and smart, immersive storytelling, The Observer delivers all that and more. Easily one of the most original takes on the afterlife I’ve come across. Highly
February 17, 2025
It's not often that you read 15-year-old tech books that are still relevant today, but this is one, and it's still a great read. It covers Wikipedia's start from its open source origins, with a mention of inspirations like Usenet and Linux.
The Wikipedia of 2008 when the book was written is very recognisable from the Wikipedia of today. A lot more content has been added and it has a few more bells and whistles, but it is very much the same core product and ethos. The wider product set around the encyclopedia has also expanded but that's not something really covered in the book anyway.
Be great to have a second edition though.
The Wikipedia of 2008 when the book was written is very recognisable from the Wikipedia of today. A lot more content has been added and it has a few more bells and whistles, but it is very much the same core product and ethos. The wider product set around the encyclopedia has also expanded but that's not something really covered in the book anyway.
Be great to have a second edition though.
April 8, 2022
I have always been curious to know about how an open source project of such a large scale evolved. This book gives a good account of the Wikipedia story. It shares a lot of incidents which not only boosted Wikipedia but also led it into problems. Lot of community related problems are deeply detailed. It discusses lot of open issues that Wikipedia needs to resolve in future. I wonder how Wikimedia as a non-profit will survive as their funding needs are getting bigger. A must read for anyone who is into product development and community based projects.
December 24, 2025
Written from inside the Wikipedia community by an early participant, Andrew Lih’s book offers a clear-eyed account of how the encyclopedia came to be. Despite being published in 2008, much of it has held up remarkably well, especially his analysis of the social dynamics of a global, volunteer-driven community that still shape Wikipedia today. I appreciated his attention to early fault lines, including community backlash to advertising, editor burnout from vandalism patrol, the limits of assuming good faith, and the long-debated question of Larry Sanger’s role in Wikipedia’s founding.
October 4, 2017
If you want to know how Wikipedia was started, this is the book for you. Lih describes how the online encyclopedia was developed as well as its many bumps on the road. I read it as a beginning editor. It gave me a lot of perspective. Yes, anyone can edit the articles but there is oversight. I would recommend this to anyone interested in editing and/or writing articles in Wikipedia (or merely reading them).
January 24, 2024
I am quite certain there is, nowhere in the world, a better recap of Wikipedia's first decade. I've read it like, three times, maybe more? Thought it's largely non-technical, there's some relatively nitty gritty tech stuff — but if you're not interested, you can easily skip 'em over. To my surprise, the techiest parts ended up being some of my favorites. I also really liked the stuff about 20th century computing, mostly because tech pioneers tend to be are bizarre
June 9, 2025
An accessible run through of Wikipedia and its origins on online communities. As another reviewer put it, this is not a historian’s take on Wikipedia, but it does provide some good play by play on the challenges of managing on of the internet’s greatest tools. Dated through 2008, but still worth reading if this of interest. Quick weekend read with lots of offshoots/essays to dig into (philosophy/sociology of open source work, online copyright law, and credible knowledge management).
August 31, 2019
Libro fondamentale per comprendere un progetto che ha trasformato il processo di registrazione della storia umana. Grande lavoro di Andrew Lin, eccellente, che niente ha a che vedere con altri testi che tentano di raccontare Wikipedia. 5 stelle.
February 24, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Being a Wikipedian myself since 2009, I more or less know what has been going on in the community ever since, especially Indic Wikipedias, but the origins story and the development of various policies and other language versions was a delight to read.
February 19, 2017
A very interesting if at times tedious read.
June 13, 2017
Really enjoyed it, very informative trip down memory lane...
March 28, 2018
Nice to know how a learning revolution can start
September 9, 2018
The book was well-researched. Amount of information it had on the subject was impressive, the crowd-sourced afterword was probably the most impressive surprise this book held for me.
January 14, 2019
Enjoyable. Not the deepest tech history book, by any means, but a very nice history of Wikipedia. Great for anyone that has used wikipedia and wondered, “How did all this get started?”
November 17, 2019
partial read
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 10, 2020
And enjoyable history of the origins of Wikipedia, and some of the challenges along the way.
July 24, 2023
Extremely Neato wish it would happen more often. Us at least close to best. Lots of info. Good read
Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews