'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
Wikipedia has been hailed as the most revolutionary aid to the spread of human knowledge since Gutenberg's printing press. In less than a decade it has single-handedly invigorated and torn up the very idea of an 'encyclopedia', eclipsing every rival tome in every language in the world.Today Wikipedia is firmly entrenched in the world's top 10 web sites. It has become so popular we casually stumble across its content every day. Type any word into any search engine and more than likely a Wikipedia page will be the first result. It is increasingly cited in the press, books, legal affairs and politics. But whereas the only web brands that consistently rank above it - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft - are multi-billion dollar enterprises, each with tens of thousands of employees, Wikipedia has a paid staff of just 10, with an operating budget of little more than $3 million.
Instead it depends entirely on a legion of unpaid, often anonymous, volunteers. And, since January 2001, these 'Wikipedians' have created more than 10 million articles, in over 250 languages, adding and updating at 'the speed of news' to create nothing less than a 'continuous working draft of history'.But success hasn't come without controversy and whilst many regard it as a great liberator, others - from universities to the People's Republic of China - see only anarchy and chaos. So now, for the first time, Andrew Lih tells the Wikipedia story. A story which challenges some of our most cherished notions - from neutrality, authority and ownership to civil liberties and the profit motive - and explains how a bunch of geeks built the world's greatest encyclopedia.
It includes a foreword by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. In a unique publishing experiment the final chapter - on the future of Wikipedia - will itself be written as a wiki. It is an accessible narrative history of one of the world's great websites, in the same vein as "The Google Story" (9780330440059) and "Wikinomics" (9781845133832). It is written with the full support of Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation.
Review
*Starred Review* "A subject that is long overdue in receiving its very own solo-book treatment is Wikipedia, the Internet version of the encyclopedia, named after wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick. How it started—and proliferated, despite human foibles and scandals—is the focus of academic and Wiki expert Lih. It is fitting, too, that a Beijing-based technologist chronicle the amazing growth of this knowledge phenomenon, fueled by volunteers across the world, which allows anyone to openly edit any page of the Web site. Its different beginnings, via alternate sites and dedicated geek hosts, are documented, as is the fascinating process of how an entry is entered, edited, and transformed—with Lih’s metaphor, the Piranha Effect, particularly apt. With its international standing now ranked number eight among Web sites, containing two million individual articles, the Wikipedia, nonetheless, has encountered its share of issues, whether generated by trolls (those troublemakers who drag issues through the community) or the more serious vandals, such as Essjay, whose claim to be a well-known professor appeared in a New Yorker article. An easy, nontech, intriguing read about a Web miracle that today rivals Encyclopaedia Britannica, according to well-respected publications, in the quality of many of its articles." --Barbara Jacobs, Booklist
Author Biography
Andrew Lih is an academic who writes and commentates on new media, journalism and technology. He has taught at Columbia University and the University of Hong Kong. www.andrewlih.com
