Something I often think about is how surprising it is that Wikipedia works, given that it is a resource accessible to the entire internet to edit and maintain. By all normal internet logic, it should be dreadful: too open, too messy, and vulnerable to misinformation. These flaws are evident now more so than ever on other platforms which permit anybody to contribute, such as X or Reddit. But Wikipedia is one of the few places online that, for the most part, feels sane and reliable. Why?
I think the main contributor to this is that Wikipedia is designed to be revised. It does not need to sound authoritative, it just needs to be checkable. For a reference work, this is a much better ambition. It also leaves the process visible. You can see the edit history, the arguments, and the sources. Each page is exposed to a large number of mildly obsessive people, which turns out to be an excellent quality-control system. The internet has has no shortage of mildly obsessive people, and in the case of Wikipedia, they’re performing a noble job. Wikipedia gives their energy a useful outlet to the benefit of everyone.
It is not perfect, of course. It has gaps and biases, and can often be out-of-date on more niche topics. But it performs what feels like an impossible task – trying to build a repository of all human knowledge. And it works so well that we essentially take it for granted that it exists.
If you don’t know the history of Wikipedia, which you probably use on at least a weekly basis, then you can read more about it here, courtesy of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.
