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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 It has gaps and biases, and can often be out-of-date on more niche topics.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. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[765],"class_list":["post-14023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":765,"user_id":124,"is_guest":0,"slug":"charlie","display_name":"Charlie Clark","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f33ac8d0f95636e781da4ce2989c92c069e5e30f5f6f633972f991e3ccb9371f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14023"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14026,"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14023\/revisions\/14026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14023"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blopig.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=14023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"