Wikipedia is 10 years today. The “multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project,” was launched on January 15, 2001. The New York Times says Wikipedia will celebrate its 10th anniversary with conferences and parties across the globe, including in New York, Boston, and San Francisco, organized by its community of users.
An early example of crowd-sourcing, allowing regular people to shape the content of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia went live with no fanfare in 2001. There were doubts whether people would contribute or if the information they submitted would be reliable. 10 years later, Wikipedia, is an important source of information for millions of topics according to the NYT. Although it has suffered its share of inaccuracies and hoaxes, Wikipedia remains among the Internet’s most visited sites.
The percentage of all American adults who use Wikipedia to look for information has increased from 25% in February 2007 to 42% in May 2010. This translates to 53% of adult internet users according to the Pew Internet report. Pew says that using Wikipedia is more popular than sending instant messages (done by 47% of internet users) and the NYT says Wikipedia is more popular than eBay.
Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees Wikipedia, told the NYT, “Wikipedia is modest. It isn’t a beautiful site. It looks a little awkward — sometimes the writing is a little bit awkward.” But she added that people still have “a deep and abiding affection for it.”
Wikipedia is working to improve the site. Among the initiatives the NYT points to are:
- Opening its first overseas office in India
- A partnership with 16 universities to have professors assign students to write about public policy,
- Increasing the number of experts who contribute, and
- Recruiting museums, which could offer better images for the site.
Wikipedia’s plan is to make it easier to add new articles and photos to the site. Tweaks to the underlying software are intended to streamline the service, although Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia told the NYT the site would never become flashy. “We are not going to become Facebook, we are not going to become MySpace or YouTube.”
Do you use Wikipedia? Does Wikipedia need to become more like Facebook?
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.