Wikipedia at 25

A few thoughts and suggestions for a wonder of the world

You may have heard that the global compendium of all things known, Wikipedia, turned 25 years old this week. Or you may not have heard that because it didn’t garner a lot of attention. That’s unfortunate. In a grim time, Wikipedia is something worth celebrating.

I co-wrote a book with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales that was published earlier this year. It’s called The Seven Rules of Trust because it’s about how trust is won and lost. While the book is about more than Wikipedia, the story of how Wikipedia went from unworkable joke to globally trusted source of information is the book’s core. So I’ve spent some time studying Wikipedia. And I have a few brief thoughts I’d like to share about Wikipedia at 25, and related matters.

Before I do, some clarifications and caveats: While I’m a compulsive reader of Wikipedia, and I contribute money to support its mission, and I’ve spent time studying Wikipedia, I am a complete outsider. I’ve never edited Wikipedia. I am not an expert on Wikipedia. I have no relationship with Wikipedia or Wikimedia. Finally, please note that I have discussed none of this with Jimmy Wales. Good, bad, or indifferent, these are my thoughts alone. (Also, if you find this piece interesting, you may also want to read my defence of Wikipedia against accusations that it has become “Wokepedia,” which I published last year.)

Also, please note this is a modest little collection of thoughts I have about Wikipedia at the moment. It is not a comprehensive defence, or criticism, or call for reform. It’s just some thoughts rattling around in my head this morning. Some people are oddly obsessive about this subject and they sometimes behave, let’s be frank, like Spanish inquisitors sniffing out heresy. Please don’t do that. Disagree, sure, but keep it friendly.

#1: What qualifies as “news”

The fact that Wikipedia’s 25th birthday came and went with little to no media notice is significant. It’s worth a moment’s consideration before we push on.

As I’ve written many (many…) times before, the news does not remotely give attention to “things that matter” in proportion to the degree that they actually matter. That’s not because of the nefarious agenda of journalists, whatever you think that agenda may be. The driver is much more basic than that.

There’s an old editor’s maxim that “three quarters of ‘news’ is ‘new.’” That is novelty bias, a simple feature of human psychology — we’re all prone to it — elevated to professional ethos. As a result, the news is so universally skewed that we almost never notice the skew, much less complain about it (even in an era when griping that “the media are biased!” seems to be the only thing uniting us.) That skew is this: If it’s new, the news media may notice it; if it’s not, they will ignore it.

Combined novelty bias with negativity bias — another standard psychological bias, please note, not something unique to journalism — and you get a near-total disregard for slow, incremental progress. Yet slow and incremental is precisely how most meaningful progress is achieved. This is the main reason why the news badly misrepresents the shape and direction of human affairs. It ignores good news! And it bums us out far more than is warranted.

I did some searches of media hits for Wikipedia over the years and the results fit this paradigm perfectly: When Wikipedia was strange and new, it got a ton of media attention. As it grew like mad, so did the media attention. When it was embroiled in scandals, or surprising new research about Wikipedia was released, the attention shot up again. But gradually, over time, attention tapered off until it was a small fraction of what it once was. That’s because “Wikipedia still working” isn’t much of a headline, is it? “Wikipedia delivers as expected” isn’t a story. So Wikipedia faded from the conversation, then from consciousness.

Ever notice that the only time you think about the electricity in your house is when it’s not there? Wikipedia became like electricity. Something that’s always there. Always working. Once anything gets to that point, only a major malfunction can restore it to headlines and consciousness.

This point applies to so much in the modern world: Things that work wonderfully and consistently are ignored and taken for granted; we focus on the things that fall apart.

In a sense, that’s rational. It’s the things falling apart that need attention. But if we are unaware of this perceptual imbalance, or we forget it for too long, we can easily conclude that nothing works and everything is falling apart.

And people say and do terrible things when they believe that.

That’s why any excuse to occasionally celebrate what works — even something as arbitrary as an anniversary — should be taken.

#2: Don’t ignore the forest

Following on that observation is another that smacked me in the face, hard, when I wrote that defence of Wikipedia I mentioned above.

Lots of people objected. They typically did so by directing me to one particular critique of Wikipedia that was impressively long, detailed, well-researched — and narrow. Really narrow. In fact, it was a critique of the work of a single Wikipedia editor. Now, this person is not just any editor. He is one of the relative few who makes enormous numbers of edits, and has for many years, so he is a significant force in Wikipedia-world. It was legitimate to carefully critique the work of that one person, as this critic did.

But still, it was one person! The seven million articles in English Wikipedia are the product of a staggering number of contributions by people all over the world for the past quarter-century. However energetic this one editor is, however bad his efforts may be, he is the equivalent of a vandal spray-painting graffiti on the side of a battleship.

This particular critique came up so often I corresponded with its author. I found this person smart and serious, unsurprisingly given the quality of his work. I told him hordes of people were citing his essay as proof that Wikipedia — not one editor, Wikipedia, the whole damned thing — was rotten to the core and should be junked.

He said, in effect, that’s unfortunate. I love Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia has a serious problem with editors like the person I critiqued but I don’t think my essay should be used to condemn and dismiss the whole thing.

My response to him: Maybe you should say so.

Because he hadn’t. In that whole, long essay he hadn’t said the equivalent of, “I think Wikipedia has serious problems and I hope my criticism will help improve it because for the most part Wikipedia is great. The world is so much better with Wikipedia in it. Let’s make Wikipedia better.”

Smart, informed critiques are good, even essential. For Wikipedia. For any organization. But only if they are used constructively. That requires the organization to take serious critiques seriously, but it also requires critics not to overstate their evidence or draw conclusions out of proportion to the evidence. Or to make the simpler mistake of zeroing in on a problem without noting that, hey, the whole project is still pretty darned good.

When critiquing one tree, or even a whole grove, don’t ignore the forest — or you may find your work used to support the clear-cutting of something you love.

#3: Wikipedia has work to do

Above, I say organizations must take critiques seriously. Wikipedia is a vast and sprawling community of communities, which makes it extremely difficult to generalize, but I’ve spoken to enough people, who have given me enough evidence, that I think there are at least pockets of Wikipedia that are not open enough to critique and self-examination. I don’t know how common those pockets are. But I know they exist.

The story usually goes something like this: There is a subject that is highly contentious for one reason or another. (These aren’t usually very high-traffic subjects, like “Donald Trump,” which is part of the problem.) Some editors set up camp. Not many. Maybe only a handful. But they never leave. They work away on this subject, and carefully monitor everything anyone else does on the subject. Their views harden, if they weren’t already. They become intolerant of disagreement and calls for revision. As long-timers, with established networks and reputations, they usually have the heft to get their way. Over and over. Editors who disagree tire of constantly being dismissed. They leave. The long-timers remain. Ossification sets in.

Needless to say, that is not how Wikipedia or any open platform is supposed to work. But it’s a very human process. And a predictable one. Scholars who study these sorts of organizations know they are a constant struggle between opposing tendencies: If they are too open and free-wheeling, they spin off into chaos and people eventually leave because nothing good gets built in chaos; if they are too rule-bound and closed, they are captured by the few and people leave because their contributions aren’t welcome. Either way, they die. The key is to maintain the right balance between these opposing forces, which requires constant monitoring and a willingness to move the dial a little this way, then a little that way, as the platform evolves.

For the most part, I think Wikipedia has done an excellent job of striking that balance. That’s why it just turned 25. But I also think there are problems in some parts of the forest (to extend the metaphor above.)

Further down, I have some suggestions for reform, including one relevant to this problem.

#4/ Larry Sanger

Speaking of reform, Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia, has some ideas he posted last fall. (By the way, that introduction written by Free Press editors is an outrageous slur, and all too typical of the hysterically over-the-top attacks being funding and promoted, sometimes covertly, by Elon Musk and other Silicon Valley would-be-overlords. But don't get me started on those people…)

I think Sanger has some ideas worth considering (hence the plug) but his ideas about neutrality and “competing articles”? They would amount to giving humanity, lying on its sickbed, a tablespoon of arsenic.

At the national and global level, we are already suffering from unprecedented epistemic fragmentation. If the 20th century was the era of “mass communications” because huge numbers of people got their information from a relatively small number of sources with gigantic reach, the 21st is deep in to the era of “micro communications” — where the number of sources of information has exploded like a handful of stars going supernova, replacing a few giants with uncountable trillions of small sparks racing off in all directions. There’s good and bad in both mass- and micro communications, but the most dangerous aspect of micro-communications is, obviously, the difficult of establishing a set of shared facts to enable shared discussion and deliberation. Get rid of shared facts and democracy is in mortal peril.

Some liberal democracies still have a number of widely consulted sources of information, such as the BBC in Britain. But not the United States. In America, there is no general information source consulted by most people, whatever their politics — except Wikipedia.

So what happens if Wikipedia were to adopt Sanger’s proposals? I could go on and on but I’ll simply invite you to imagine opening Wikipedia one day, typing in “Holocaust,” and being confronted with several articles — ranging from one that says the Holocaust happened to one that says it’s a Jewish hoax.

I say, no, thank you, to that tablespoon of arsenic.

And I might as well add this: Every time Larry Sanger does an interview, the platform featuring the interview plays it up like “wow, even the founder of Wikipedia says it has become a travesty!” What they never mention, as far as I can see, is that Sanger was only involved with Wikipedia at the very beginning, he left long before it got big and matured, and he has spent most of the last quarter-century slagging Wikipedia while trying to launch his own competing ventures. None of that means he’s wrong. But it does mean that his opposition to today’s Wikipedia is not proof that Wikipedia was once good but is now rotten— and those who present it thusly are doing their readers/viewers/listeners a disservice.

#5 Reform Wikimedia

I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of Wikipedia’s readers have no idea how it’s organized and produced. I’m sure of that because I had no idea until I did the research.

So, briefly, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia we all read and love. It is written entirely by volunteer editors. Those editors answer to no one. They simply talk to each other and make decisions together. That’s it.

But there is another, important organization involved in delivering Wikipedia. It is the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikipedia and Wikimedia are easily confused. They’re only one letter apart, after all. But they are utterly different.

Wikimedia is the non-profit that operates the machinery Wikipedia runs on. Servers and software. Lawyering. That sort of thing. Wikimedia has a hierarchy and hundreds of paid employees at its headquarters in San Francisco, along with smaller offices in many other countries. When you donate, as I do, you donate to Wikimedia.

But here’s the key point: Wikimedia does not oversee or direct editorial decisions on Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s critics routinely don’t know this, or they choose to ignore it, so they hammer “Wikipedia” for doing something Wikimedia did and they routinely talk as if Wikimedia controls what Wikipedia publishes. None other than Elon Musk has done that repeatedly.

That’s a familiar problem to me.

Long ago, I sat on a newspaper editorial board and wrote newspaper editorials. Everyone inside the newspaper knew that the editorial board had nothing to do with the operations of the newsroom. Reporters reported. Editorial writers opined. We ignored each other. That was a professional requirement. The reporters were independent and their reporting was not supposed to be influenced by the newspaper’s editorials in any way, shape, or form.

Simple, right? But readers never understood or cared about our internal organization. Quite understandably, if the newspaper’s editorial board officially endorsed a political party or candidate in an editorial, readers took that as proof that the whole of the newspaper was taking political sides — and just as understandably, they assumed this must be influencing its reporting of the news. It didn’t matter how many times this was explained. Our editorials damaged the credibility of the newspaper’s reporting.

I personally came to the conclusion that we needed to scrap the editorial board and editorials altogether. To be credible, reporting must be perceived to be independent. That perception is sacred. Without it, a newspaper is nothing. Anything that puts it at risk must be eliminated.

I think exactly the same analysis applies to Wikipedia/Wikimedia (or any organization that relies on trust.) So here are a few suggestions.

One, scrap the name “Wikimedia.” It’s hard to think of a name more likely to cause confusion. Clarity and transparency are essential.

Two, scrap any overlap or blurring of lines between Wikipedia and Wikimedia. For example, there are employees of Wikimedia who are also Wikipedia editors. Ban that. If you want to be an employee of Wikimedia, a condition of employment must be that you do not touch Wikipedia. Ever.

If that sounds severe, bear in mind that institutions whose perceived impartiality are essential to their mission — such as judicial bodies — routinely use such strict separations.

You see the word “mission” in the preceding sentence? That brings me to the big reform Wikipedia/Wikimedia really need to implement.

#6: Mission first, last, and only

In the book on trust which I co-wrote with Jimmy Wales, there’s a chapter entitled “Be Independent.” Wikipedia/Wikimedia are pretty good at that now. But in this angry, suspicious time, pretty good isn’t nearly good enough.

Starting in the teens, but particular from 2021 on, Wikimedia started giving grants to groups it felt were doing work in the spirit of Wikipedia. That was well-intentioned. And a big mistake.

For one thing, it isn’t really “Wikimedia” that people like me want to support with out donations. It’s Wikipedia. Of course a professional organization is needed to collect and disburse money, so it’s reasonable and necessary for Wikimedia to do that. But when Wikimedia gives grants to organizations that Wikimedia executives think are doing work “in the spirit of” Wikipedia, they’re blurring a line. That would have been true no matter who they gave the grants to. But it was compounded by the fact that the grants mostly went to groups doing “equity-related” work, like supporting people of colour in newsrooms. And it was further compounded when Wikimedia sent money to the Tides Foundation, which has an arm that supports a long list of progressive causes.

This story gets complicated fast but I’m going to skip all the details because — remember — it isn’t only independence that matters. It’s the perception of independence. An organization like Wikipedia doesn’t only need independence to survive. It needs to be perceived to be independent. That means avoid even the appearance of partiality. And these grants invited people to think “Wikipedia is taking sides.”

Many Wikipedians objected at the time. They said it was “mission creep.” They said it threatened Wikipedia’s perceived independence. They were dead right: In subsequent years, every right-winger with a bullhorn used these grants as Exhibit A in their condemnation of “Wokepedia.”

All of that activity was dumb. It was the equivalent of Wikimedia putting a “kick me” sign on Wikipedia’s back.

I’m not naive. People like Elon Musk are bad-faith actors with lists of enemies. They will not judge evidence fairy. They will not change their minds in response to reforms.

But this isn’t about them. This is about the great mass of people who are Wikipedia’s readers. That is who Wikipedia/Wikimedia serves. And Wikipedia/Wikimedia must do all it can to assure them that the mission is clear and Wikipedia/Wikimedia pursue that mission with single-minded focus.

Wikipedia is not remotely the only organization whose success depends on being being independent and being perceived to be independent. Many do. None more so than judicial organizations — which is why judicial organizations have some of the most rigorous codes on the subject. I would suggest Wikimedia engage experts in judicial organization to review everything it does and make recommendations.

And one more thing: Given the polarization of American culture war politics, I would also suggest that Wikimedia move its head office out of San Francisco, which is widely seen as the capital city of one half of the political spectrum. In fact, I would recommend the headquarters be moved out of the United States entirely. In keeping with a determined focus on a singular mission, it should be somewhere neutral. I’d recommend Switzerland. All sorts of United Nations agencies are there. Why? The same reason Wikipedia should be there. (Also, Wikimedia has gone heavily toward remote work so a shift in the headquarters need not be massively disruptive.)

#7/ Commission expert reports

If Wikimedia stops sending grants to other organizations, it will free up some cash. I know an excellent use for that money.

Compile of list of subjects that satisfy two criteria: 1) The subject is contentious not only within Wikipedia but among experts who work in the field; 2) There have been many complaints that bands of editors are effectively acting as ideological gatekeepers.

Identify leading experts in the subject. Ask them to help you identify other experts, with particular emphasis on ensuring that all positions in the debates are represented. Bring those experts together at a lovely hotel somewhere nice and pay them a decent honorarium. Ask them to have a good-faith discussion and develop a consensus overview of the subject and the controversy that they agree reflects the full range of expert views on the subject.

Publish that document.

As always, Wikipedia editors would be free to exercise their own judgements as to when and how they should use that document.

But if there is, in fact, ideological gatekeeping underway, and views which experts on a subject agree are a legitimate part of the debate are not represented on the relevant Wikipedia articles, I think that would become readily apparent. And real change would happen.

That wouldn’t change the character of Wikipedia. It would remain in the hands of the volunteer editors, as always. But I think it would go a long way to reducing the power of would-be gatekeepers. And stop intellectual ossification.

#8/ The Wikipedia counterfactual

Wikipedia is a staggeringly vast compilation of knowledge that deserves to be thought of as one of the wonders of the world, alongside the usual palaces and pyramids. Except it’s unlike all the other wonders of the world in one, critical way: It was created without anyone giving orders. Without governments or corporations. Without power and force, without guards and tax collectors, without anyone losing anything. It is an immense monument to what free people can do with nothing but their own intelligence and energy. It is beautiful.

Now, if you’re old enough, as I am, cast your mind back to the 1990s.

Remember the hopes we had for the Internet? Everyone would have access to everything humanity had ever created. All the music. All the art. All the knowledge. “Holy shit, man!” we all said with eyes wide. “Can you imagine what the world be like then?”

Yeah.

This is not the future any sane person wanted.

A handful of billionaire tech overlords running giant platforms psychopathically optimized for profit and human misery while parents spend fortunes so their children can carry devices that make them dumber and sadder. Universal surveillance. The bonfire of privacy. Enshittification. Mass enshittification. This is not the way it was supposed to be.

But there is one towering exception: Wikipedia.

No corporation. No government. No enshittification. Just people working together to make something amazing. And give it away. Free. Wikipedia the one thing that lived up to our dreams.

And that’s key.

Try out this counterfactual: It’s 2026 and the world is the way it is. Minus Wikipedia. It was never created. Maybe Jimmy Wales got hit by a bus in 1998. (Sorry, Jimmy.) But there is no Wikipedia.

What’s different in that counterfactual? When you look around at the dismal landscape of the Internet, you see the same lumbering tech giants sucking money out of people’s eyeballs. But that’s all. There is no towering exception. There is nothing better. It’s an unrelieved hellscape.

Do you have any hope? Probably not. Sure, there are lots of tech theorists and technologists who claim there are amazing alternatives and experiments we could try, different paths we could take, ways we could use technology that would be good for people, not billionaires. But none of that has ever successfully produced something as big as one of the corporate tech giants. It seems that the only thing our societies could do with the Internet was to create this wasteland. Our dreams were naive. How foolish of us. This wasteland was inevitable.

And if it was inevitable, surely that means it can never change.

But Jimmy wasn’t hit by a bus. Wikipedia was built. And when we look at the Internet today we see Wikipedia — which is unmistakable, irrefutable, absolute proof that we can do better.

Wikipedia is a marvel. But it is more than that.

Wikipedia is hope.