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The man behind the Wiki

James Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, speaks on the past, present and future of the online collaborative encyclopaedia

SOCIAL INNOVATION Jimmy Wales says Wikipedia wasn't a technical innovation

Much like the revolutionary product he helped create, Jimmy Wales has a disarming charm about him. In many ways, he is a reflection of the ethos of mutual growth that underlines efforts behind Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopaedia he founded.

"We found that Nupedia, our first attempt at an encyclopaedia, was too top down, and not much fun for anyone," says Wales. "We tried out the Wiki software as a test, but we got more work done in two weeks than in two years. And so we launched Wikipedia."

A social innovation

Contrary to what many believe, says Wales, Wikipedia wasn't much of a technical innovation.

Although the in-house programmers at Wikipedia (two of only five full-time employees involved in the effort) have made significant customisations to the software involved, the basic technology is quite straightforward.

"All the technology we use for Wikipedia was around for six years before we started. Wikipedia is a social innovation, not a technical one."

And what an innovation it is.

The encyclopaedia today boasts over five million entries in various languages, with the English edition alone notching up close to 1.5 million articles.

With editions in over 200 languages, of which more than a dozen have 50,000 articles each, Wikipedia is today one of the most frequently visited sites around the world.

What is most fascinating about this venture, however, is that this gigantic system is almost wholly maintained and run by a growing group of volunteers, including Wales himself.

As with any system of such a size and nature, Wikipedia too has come under a fair share of criticism.

Larry Sanger, an organiser for Wikipedia who helped set up the project but quit in 2002, for instance, claims that Wikipedia is anti-elitist in that it places consensus ahead of expertise.

Wales, however, claims that this accusation has no real basis in truth.

While the core community is always excited to have expertise on board, he argues, they do not accept anything based simply on the credentials of the expert doing the talking.

Onus on the merit of ideas

"At Wikipedia, we defend ideas based on the merit of those ideas. So you could say that we are anti-credentialist. In a lot of cases, we have failed to retain the experts. But normally, experts are respected in the community."

Another sore point for many is what they see as a lack of credible sources of reference.

Based as Wikipedia is on the Internet, much of the reference material for its entries also comes from online sources, sources many people still do not attribute credibility to.

Wales contends that although Wikipedia's sources are online, the parameters used to ensure reliability are the same as those used in print.

"We're still old-fashioned about that and only consider reliable sources such as online editions of prominent newspapers (although you have to be careful there too), peer-reviewed academic journals and so on. We encourage people to cite books as references, but online references are so much easier to track."

Indeed, this perceived credibility attached to print publications gives traditional encyclopaedias such as the Britannica an edge over Wikipedia, admits Wales.

"A former editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica once told me that they sell two things - high quality information and furniture. The fine, polished finish of the Britannica gives it an aura of credibility."

Wikipedia Vs Britannica

However, contrary to the general understanding, Wikipedia hasn't fared too badly compared to the Britannica.

"A study by Nature Magazine compared various articles of equal length in Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica and found that while the latter had an average of three errors per article, Wikipedia had only four. What shocked people wasn't that there were four errors in Wikipedia, but that the Britannica had errors at all."

As unusual a growth path as Wikipedia has taken, predicting its future is a difficult task for Wales.

The future

"It's easier to predict the course of the other language editions than the English Wikipedia. We know the course of evolution, and it's easy to extrapolate what the Kannada Wikipedia, for instance, will look like in five years. With the English Wikipedia, we are on the cutting edge, facing all the new problems first. So there are now moves within the community to concentrate less on growth and more on quality. I refuse to predict how big Wikipedia will be in the future because any number I give now will seem silly in five years."

Besides Wikipedia, Wales also runs Wikia, a for-profit venture that hosts sites built around specific interests, "like encyclopaedias of pop culture," one of the most popular of which is Uncyclopedia, a parody of Wikipedia.

RAKESH MEHER

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