Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution

by Joseph M Reagle (Editor), Jackie Koerner (Editor)

Wikipedia's first twenty how what began as an experiment in collaboration became the world's most popular reference work. We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty years. What began almost by accident—a wiki attached to an nascent online encyclopedia—has become the world's most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent of a Big Mac, Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly) reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia, built on a model of radical collaboration, remained true to its original mission of “free access to the sum of all human knowledge” when other tech phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book, scholars, activists, and volunteers reflect on Wikipedia's first twenty years, revealing connections across disciplines and borders, languages and data, the professional and personal. The contributors consider Wikipedia's history, the richness of the connections that underpin it, and its founding vision. Their essays look at, among other things, the shift from bewilderment to respect in press coverage of Wikipedia; Wikipedia as “the most important laboratory for social scientific and computing research in history”; and the acknowledgment that “free access” includes not just access to the material but freedom to contribute—that the summation of all human knowledge is biased by who documents it. Contributors Phoebe Ayers, Omer Benjakob, Yochai Benkler, William Beutler, Siko Bouterse, Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze, Amy Carleton, Robert Cummings, LiAnna L. Davis, Siân Evans, Heather Ford, Stephen Harrison, Heather Hart, Benjamin Mako Hill, Dariusz Jemielniak, Brian Keegan, Jackie Koerner, Alexandria Lockett, Jacqueline Mabey, Katherine Maher, Michael Mandiberg, Stephane Coillet-Matillon, Cecelia A. Musselman, Eliza Myrie, Jake Orlowitz, Ian A. Ramjohn, Joseph Reagle, Anasuya Sengupta, Aaron Shaw, Melissa Tamani, Jina Valentine, Matthew Vetter, Adele Vrana, Denny Vrandečić

Genres: Business, Technology

376 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2020

Reviews

[Peter Tillman]

Science magazine's review: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/20...
Excerpt:
"Today, Wikipedia is the world’s leading encyclopedia. Every month, 1.5 billion unique devices worldwide access it 15 billion times, with more than 6000 page views per second. Meanwhile, Encyclopaedia Britannica—last printed in 2010—is now “all but dead” online, according to scholar Heather Ford in her essay in Wikipedia @ 20.

The book’s 22 essays are wide-ranging, often intellectually engaging, and, in parts, stylishly written. Its 34 contributors include, fittingly, academics and nonacademics based in many countries, although predominantly in the United States. Its U.S.-based editors, Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner, are (respectively) a professor of communication studies and a qualitative research analyst for online communities who also acts as the community health consultant for the Wikimedia community."

[Harald G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of 22 research articles and essays from eminent Wikipedians and academics discussing most important challenges for the Wikipedia movement, as well as the near future and past 20 years of history. Most chapters are mostly concerned with issues mostly relevant to the English language Wikipedia, with a few exceptions eg. how Wikidata may bridge the gap between different language versions.

Some of the chapters are really excellent (5 star!) reviews of key topics. E.g. Chapter 2 where Benjacob & Harrison the main trends in the media coverage of Wikipedia the past 20 years. Benkler's theory on how people could cooperate productively without market relations and hierarchies. As well as the development of Wikipedia as a current events news source. Part I and Part II of the book contain an excellent overview of challenges to the English language Wikipedia.

So why only 3 stars? Most chapters in Part III are jargon ridden personal essays where authors want to replace Wikipedia's policy of striving towards "Neutral point of view" with their own "Woke point of view". Part III mostly contain page after page of Social Justice ideological verbiage on
... cisgender ... marginalized folks ... LGBTQIA+ folks ... disrupting structures of power and privilege ... people of color ... indigenous... able bodied ... lived experiences ... non binary folks ... equity... narrative, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes it sounds like a parody eg when one of the authors describes herself as "...continues to use her cisgender white privilege to challenge injustice and inequality of many forms online."
Its perfectly possible to address biases in Wikipedia's coverage that is due to the high proportion of male tech workers in rich countries among the active contributors, without buing into "wokeism", which second most annoying US made ideology (second to Trumpism). The campaigning of US inspired social justice ideology is adversary to Wikipedia's mission of objectivity, so why spoil such a great scholarly effort, so why include these chapters?

[Apostle Lubek · Rating 1 out of 5]

THIS IS TOTAL TRASH... WIKIPEDIA IS TOTAL TRASH, IT IS THE INFUSION AND ESSENCE OF TRASH AND CRIMINAL ACTIVITY... NOTHING IS CORRECT HERE...AUTHOR ONLY PRAISES WIKIPEDIA ON THE OUTISDE, IT MAY LOOK GOOD BUT ITS TRASH ON THE INSIDE...
WIKIPEDIA STANDS FOR WIKIOCCULTIMS!!!

I WILL SURE PROVE EVERY WORD I SAY:

what strong WMF privacy policy? LOL!!! read truthful comments:
https://twitter.com/wikimedia/status/...

archive.is/2L6mb THE FINAL REPOSE OF CLYDE BRUCKMAN = THE FINAL REPOSE OF 21ST CENTURY GREATEST "INTELLIGENCE" FAILURE jimbo Wales 's DISASTER WIKIPEDIA/WIKIMEDIA
FOUNDATION MISINFORMATION DISINFORMATION CRAP: https://web.archive.org/web/202404010...
[[https://books.google.com/books?id=typ... /JAN'S THR'ELOGY WIKIPEDIA "ENCYCLOPEDIA"TRUTH HURTS FREVER N EVER!!!]] wikiblog 2019/2020:https://archive.md/8Cm8E
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gr...... SVTCobra JERK AGREES: https://archive.is/ee6kQ TYPICAL WIKIPEDIA'S UNFORGIVEN SHAME IS FOREVER N EVER! https://books.google.com/books/about/...
xahlee.info/w/do_not_donate_to_Wikipe... https://archive.is/wip/mKiRa archive.is/CsyKa archive.is/Y0BB wikipedia watch org resurrected something wikiskum eternal will never ever cremate!!!

[[http://rosyjskieabc.blogspot.com/2015... javaHurricane, XXblackburnXx and his demonic mentor antandrus (OFFICIAL WIKIPEDIA TRIUMVIRATE OF EVIL) typical utmost usual wikipedia "encyclopedia" style vandalism]]!!!

AND ABOVE IS ONLY A DROP IN AN OCEAN OF WIKIPEDIA UTMOST STUPIDITY, IGNORANCE/ARROGANCE, HYPOCRISY, INTIMIDATION, HARASSMENT, HATRED, CONTRADICTIONS, ETC..

NICE PAGES ON: BSADOWSKI1 (real name brian sadowski the high school drop out) archive.is/YQqPZ antandrus (real name david): archive.is/TiYMV SOME OF TOP WIKIPEDOIA'S ETERNAL UNFORGIVEN LOSERS!!!
wikipeedoia truth with comments by many!!! archive.is/zQRfz archive.is/wJVor archive.is/k1iQk ANTANDRUS DAVID THE HARD CORE LTA WIKINAZI LEADER; archive.is/XcH9J BANNED ANT: archive.ph/7ASE5

[[INFINITELY GLOBALLY BANNED, LTA NAZITRASH ETERNAL, SS MAN HIMMLER JR:
BLOCKED LOSER encyclopediadramatica.online/Special:... conservapedia.com/User:Antandrus https://archive.ph/7ASE5; STALKS PEOPLE'S SICK MOTHERS IN REAL LIFE: simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?titl...]]
WIKIDIOTS THINK THEY "DELETED" THEIR UTMOST WIKISTUPIDITY AND DESECRATION OF THE SAINTS: https://archive.ph/bYqil https://archive.ph/DJmaY https://archive.ph/ryIC6 Ilovemydoodle jerk was falsely convinced to remove full date, but this only shows utmost wikistupidity, wikiarrogance, wikignorance, wikicontradictions, wikihypocrisy etc...

mk.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=??..., antandrus and lowly tuvalkin, jeff G., turelio, dannyS712, vermont, leonidlednev, 1234qwer1234qwer4, raymond, wikiBayer, achim55 old hard core nazi give themselves out: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
mk.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%D...
simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?titl... https://archive.ph/wip/9arRS + jail harassment https://archive.ph/wip/3QzLf

[Nat Baca · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting, and often self-critical, look at Wikipedia as a movement, a website, and a social phenomenon. Great both in concept and in execution, representing a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives. This collection really made me think differently about what Wikipedia is, has been, will be, and even *can* be.

What’s missing, if I had to pick, was a picture of the everyday reader experience, and the experiences of those outside of academic spaces. While this intentionally wasn’t the focus of the collection, I for one would love to see the thoughts of everyday enthusiasts, non-editors, and someone like the woman who runs Depths of Wikipedia or a member of the “Cool Freaks Wikipedia Club” on Facebook.

Perhaps this could be a followup piece, focused on the experience of readers — those who find joy, delight, sorrow, and connection in the articles; paired with those who feel left out and the challenges of seeking this connection and not finding it. Editors and their stories are obviously fascinating as well, but as the essayists in this collection note, they’re 1% of the users of the site. What are the other 99% doing, and what do they want and need in the site that they’re not finding?

Overall though, I really enjoyed reading these essays. I think they have a lot to say not just about Wikipedia, but about any large project of this scale and scope. It’s a massive and complicated undertaking with both admirable successes and in many ways obvious flaws. I can only hope that through introspection along the lines that produced this collection itself it can come to a better place over time.

[Dawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredibly eye-opening and illuminating (in diction and content), but weakly repetitive ending