From Wikipedia to Glasp: Harnessing Collective Wisdom for the Future

In defining the mission and vision of Glasp, we aspire to create a project that significantly contributes to the development of human wisdom and leaves a lasting impact on society. Wikipedia, from this perspective, serves as a quintessential example of a platform that aggregates human knowledge. However, my understanding of its origins and evolution is limited. By researching Wikipedia's history, I hope to gain valuable insights that could inform and inspire our own project.

About Wikipedia

• Started on: January 15, 2001

• Founder: Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger

• Mission of Wikimedia: To empower and engage people worldwide to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain and to disseminate it effectively and globally.

• Purpose of Wikipedia: To benefit readers by serving as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia—a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge.

• Goal of Wikipedia Articles: To present a neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge in a fair and accurate manner with a straightforward, "just-the-facts" style. Articles should maintain an encyclopedic style with a formal tone, avoiding essay-like, argumentative, promotional, or opinionated writing.

Predecessor: Nupedia

• Nupedia was founded by Jimmy Wales and underwritten by Bomis, with Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief in October 1999.

• Nupedia had a seven-step approval process to control the content of articles before being posted, rather than live wiki-based updating.

• Unlike Wikipedia, Nupedia was not a wiki; it was instead characterized by an extensive peer-review process, designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias. Nupedia wanted scholars (ideally with PhDs) to volunteer content.

• By the end of its first year, Nupedia had only 21 articles approved under the aggressive vetting process; clearly, a better solution was needed. (⇒ so slow)

• Bomis intended to generate revenue from online ads on Nupedia.

How Wikipedia Started

• In January 2001, Nupedia started Wikipedia as a side-project to allow collaboration on articles before entering the peer review process.

• According to Vice, one day Larry Sanger had dinner with Ben Kovitz, and he explained what he had been doing in his spare time, spending a lot of time on wikis, a website which can be edited directly from the web browser, by anyone. Then, Larry got an idea of combining Wiki + Nupedia.

• Larry said that "the neutrality policy is absolutely instrumental, for example. The changes that we made to the way that wikis work was instrumental." in the interview.

Wikipedia's Current Stand & Reputation

In 2018, Facebook and YouTube announced that they would help users detect fake news by suggesting fact-checking links to related Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is now a trusted source of reference.

Q&A

Why did Wikipedia succeed while other encyclopedias failed?

According to NiemanLab, the followings are the reasons:

• Content Focus: Content > Technology.

• Familiarity & Ease: People understand what it is and what it's for.

• Author-less Structure: Lowers the pressure to contribute something stellar.

• Less Gamification: The inverse of game dynamics can be a powerful force, as well.

Who is the Wikipedia contributor? What traits do they have? (Ref: Wikipedians)

• Demographics: According to the WMF findings, the top three countries where Wikipedia contributors reside are the United States (20%), Germany (12%), and Russia (7%). The primary language of Wikipedia contributors is English (52%) followed by German (18%) with Russian and Spanish coming in third at 10% each.

• Personal Traits: According to a study published in 2008, Wikipedia members are more likely than non-members to locate their "real me" online—that is, to feel more comfortable expressing their "real" selves online than off. This corresponds with more general findings that Internet communities tend to attract users who are introverted offline but more able to open up and feel empowered on the Web.

• Motivations: In November 2007, the most commonly indicated motives were "fun", "ideology", and "values", whereas the least frequently indicated motives were "career", "social", and "protective" (as in "reducing guilt over personal privilege").

Why People Contribute to Wikipedia?

From Wikipedia's Editor Study in April 2011.

Why they contribute?

• 71% I like the idea of volunteering to share knowledge

• 69% I believe that information should be freely available to everyone

• 63% I like to contribute to subject matters in which I have expertise

• 60% Itʼs fun

• 59% I like Wikipediaʼs philosophy of openness and collaboration

• 57% I keep finding or looking for mistakes

• 53% I find articles that are incomplete or biased

• 44% I want to popularize topics I care about

• 29% I want to demonstrate my knowledge to a wider public or community

• 18% I want to gain a reputation within the Wikipedia community

• 7% I do it for professional reasons

Wikipedia Statistics

General Statistics (from Wikipedia):

• Articles: 6.36 million

• Pages: 54 million

• Edits: 1.03 billion

• Users: 42.1 million

• Active Users: 120,000

• Administrators: 1,087

Access Statistics (from SimilarWeb):

• Monthly Visits: 5.39 billion

• Average Visit Duration: 00:03:50

• Pages per Visit: 3.06

• Total Page Views: 16 billion

Geographical Distribution of Users:

• United States: 25%

• Japan: 6.3%

• Germany: 5.6%

• United Kingdom: 5.4%

• Russia: 4.6%

Traffic Sources:

• Search: 85.7% (4.6 billion visits)

  • Organic: 100%

• Direct: 11.5% (621 million visits)

• Social: 1.4% (75.6 million visits)

  • Reddit: 42% (31.8 million)

  • YouTube: 31% (23.4 million)

  • Facebook: 9.7% (7.3 million)

  • Twitter: 7.1% (5.4 million)

  • Quora: 3% (2.3 million)

• Referrals: 1.2%