The wikiworld will come

By now I suspect most web users have heard of wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that recently celebrated its millionth article. I used to edit it quite a lot, but that's no great distinction: it had hundreds, thousands, of editors then and it has more now.

There's no doubt in my mind that wikipedia is a wonderful project. Whether it is a platform for cranks or a reliable reference source, it is the most interesting development the web has brought us yet. True, many of its other inventions are more popular to participate in — music and film downloads, social networks starting with livejournal and culminating in myspace, and, linked to the latter, blogs.

These other trends weren't all that easy to predict, but they make sense. Who'dve thought we'd be downloading music instead of buying it in a physical form? Once the technology was there — particularly broadband 'net access — it was inevitable really. Music providers were slow to respond to the opportunity, so web users set out to do it themselves, uncertain about the legalities.

But who would've predicted blogs and, especially, journals? Blogs, once again, soared in popularity after the technology was up to scratch, once it was easy to upload articles and have them read. XML and related languages have really made that possible. But before that was all sorted out, people were already keeping public diaries. There may well be a theory that anyone writing a diary secretly wants it to be read, but to actually publish the daily events for all the world to see? Again, it wasn't easy to predict, but looking back it seems quite a natural development out of Usenet groups, discussion lists and the like.

Filesharing and discussion came together to form social networks — Friends Reunited was one of the important precursors to that, and now friendster and myspace are classic examples. I don't know whether livejournal's friends list function was a first, but it was definitely a forerunner to the lists people now create on other social network sites, with all the same worries about who to add and who not to add, just as party-throwers might agonise over who to invite and who not to invite.

But back to the wiki — who could have predicted that? Yeah, it would become obvious people would start using the internet to collaborate in various ways and to share information, and those are the main points about wikipedia. But to create a collaborative project open to everyone without exception? It defies expectation, certainly.

Someone quoted recently (on a livejournal community for wikipedians which I set up) that the problem with wikipedia is that it only works in practice — in theory, it can never work. People really did say it'll never work. They said it would fall to vandals, that the articles would be crap. There have been problems with those particular worries. Indeed, a number of contributors have left the project because of incessant vandalism, and I'm sure many potential contributors have been discouraged by the poor quality or particular articles.

But wikipedia has not fallen. It persists and improves, much to the surprise and bemusement of everyone, its founders included. Why should we care? Well, it is an incredibly useful site, providing systematic and easy-to-access information on a massive range of topics. It may need to be taken with a pinch of salt, and it can never be perfect, always being a work-in-progress.

What is important to realise is that wikipedia has a vision and a plan attached to it: the ultimate aim is to give "every single person... free access to the sum of all human knowledge". When the day comes that the wikimedia foundation distributes wikipedia affordably in all the world's major languages — then people will realise the very real impact this project is going to have.