Wikipedia: Inside Fact City

Like a city,Wikipedia is greater than the sum of its parts. The search for information resembles a walk through an overbuilt quarter of an ancient capital. You circle around topics on a path that appears to be shifting. Ultimately the journey ends and you are not sure how you got there.

Wikipedia articles can send you down unlikely alleyways in two ways. First,there are links that direct you to the same article in another language,a trippy experience that sheds light on a culture. Spend time in German Wikipedia,and you find jazz musicians like Thelonious Monk with articles far longer than those written in their own language; you may also come upon odd areas of deep interest,like pecherei,the extraction of resin from treesno English equivalent providedand 15 different tools needed for the job.

Second,at the bottom of most articles,there are the categoriesimpromptu neighbourhoods,or perhaps civic organisations that bind together the virtual encyclopedia. There are unsurprising ones,like Jewish comedians,found at the bottom of the Jerry Seinfeld article; and then there are the quirky kind,like this one I stumbled upon: Literary devices playing with meaning. It was in the latter category that I came upon the article Mondegreen,which describes the phenomenon of mishearing song lyrics,which led to Soramimi,a Japanese term for hearing lyrics in foreign languages as Japanese phrases,which led to the discovery that the heavy metal band Metallica has a line in Enter Sandman that frequently is heard by Japanese as Lets go to Chiyoda Life Insurance. Which led to 8230;

It is a tale of spontaneous organisation and achievement. Until recently,Wikipedia was able to operate on a budget of less than 3 million a year. Today it is still only 7 million,all donations and grants. No advertising,no sugar daddy. A rags-to-rags story of world domination in information that could only have happened in the Internet age.

In its seven years of existence Wikipedia has become one of the top 10 global Web sites. It has many fewer visitors than Google,yes,but it is in shouting distance of Amazon and eBay,with more than 60 million Americans visiting in January. Hundreds of thousands of peoplesome anonymous,some using pseudonyms,others exactly who they say they arehave thus far come together to collaborate.

A single article,say about the Mumbai attacks last year,can have more than 1,000 contributors. Their discussions on how best to write the article can occupy pages.

Wikipedia encourages contributors to mimic the basic civility,trust,cultural acceptance and self-organising qualities familiar to any city dweller. Why dont people attack each other on the way home? Why do they stay in line at the bank? Why dont people guffaw at the person with blue hair?

The police may be an obvious answer. But this misses the compact among city dwellers. Since their creation,cities have had to be accepting of strangersno judgmentsand residents learn to be subtly accommodating,outward looking.

The marvel of Wikipediaand citiesis that all the intercourse and spiritual stimulus dont make living there impossible. Rather,they are exactly what makes living there possible. The greater the foot traffic,the safer the neighborhood. Thus,oddly enough,the more popular,even controversial,an article is,the more likely it is to be accurate and free of vandalism on Wikipedia. It is the obscure articlesthe dead-end streets and industrial districts,if you willwhere more mayhem can be committed. It takes longer for errors or even malice to be noticed and rooted out. Fewer readers will be exposed to those errors,too.

Wikipedia adds articles the way Beijing adds neighbourhoodswhenever the mood strikes. It is open to all: the sixth-grader typing in material from her homework assignment,the graduate student with a limited grasp of English. No judgments,no entry pass.

One of Wikipedias governing principles is N.P.O.V. neutral point of view,in much the same way Venice or Amsterdam or New York City in their heyday were uninterested in the religious,ethnic or political fights rampaging across the world. They,like Wikipedia,were polyglot homes for all who arrived on their shores.

Just as the world has had plenty of creationists,temperance societies and ruralists,there is a professional class of Wikipedia skeptics. They,too,have some seriously depraved behavior to expose: Wikipedia represents a world without experts! A world without commercial news outlets! A world lacking in distinction between the trivial and the profound! A world overrun with facts but lacking in wisdom!

Its all reminiscent of the longstanding accusations made against cities: They dont produce anything! All they do is gossip! They think they are so superior! They wouldnt last a week if we farmers stopped shipping our food! They dont know the meaning of real work!

This argument represents a true clash of ideas. It is clear from Lihs account that nearly every time Wikipedia has come to a fork in the road where the project could have chosen to impose more restrictions on who could edit whateven insist on a bit of expertiseit has chosen not to. That has made all the difference. The vindication of those choicesby Wikipedia and citiesis proved each time some yokel overcomes his fear and decides to make a visit and stay awhile.