• Andrew Lih
• Aurum Press
• $39.99 (in stores May 7th)
Who can imagine world without Wikipedia? You type in search and then, chances are, the hit you pick is Wikipedia. Rightly or wrongly, people trust the information and use it widely. So how did it all start?
Or first, why did it all start? “Imagine 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,” answers Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
While that might be overstating things somewhat (obviously every single person on the planet doesn’t have access to Wikipedia and, even if they did, the sum of all human knowledge is not contained there), the intent is sound and the site major success.
Author Andrew Lih traces the path to success and explains how bunch of geeks built this online global encyclopaedia. In nutshell, created in 2001, Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world and has become one of the largest reference sites on the web with at least 684 million visitors yearly by 2008. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages (so Wikipedia tells me).
The history is interesting (if little too involved and computer-tech-geek at times) but the most compelling reason to read The Wikipedia Revolution is for the thought it provokes on information (who owns it, who verifies it), copyright (wikipedia has none) and cooperation (the thousands of volunteers who created and maintain the site).
Wikipedia is increasingly cited in the press, books, legal affairs and politics.
And while the only web brands which rank above it (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) are multi-billion dollar enterprises, each with tens of thousands of employees, wikipedia has paid staff of ten and an operating budget of just over US$3 billion.
Lih doesn’t shy away from discussing Wikipedia’s problems (educationalists abhor the reliance their students place on its information) and negative publicity but, rather than detract from the site’s reputation, it acts more to remember to be cautious about all information. An interesting and informative, if somewhat disturbing, read.

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