Wikipedia - 1 in every 200 page views on the Internet
by Michael HoffmanSaturday, June 30th, 2007
In Sunday’s New York Time’s Magazine is an article about Wikipedia and the small group of dedicated volunteers who are the site’s real authorities. The site, an encyclopedia of information compiled by the site’s readers, has grown rapidly and, according to the Times’ article accounts for 1 in every 200 page views on the entire Internet. That is HUGE! I tell clients who expect people to simply show up to their website that the internet is like the ocean and every web page is a drop of water. This one site gets 1 in 200 views in that ocean.
Making Wikipedia a nonprofit was either the smartest thing Jimmy Wales ever did or the dumbest thing.
The Times’ piece examines how Wikipedia increasing covers breaking news, something not usually found in an encyclopedia. How do the Wikipedians cover news when they don’t really leave their bedrooms?
The presentational difference is that Wikipedia’s version of events comes in the form of one constantly rewritten, constantly updated, summary article, rather than a chronological series of articles, each reflecting new developments, as newspapers and even most news sites do. But much more significant than that, no Wikipedia article contains any attempt at actual reporting — in fact, original research is forbidden.
The rule, according to Wales, is “not out-of-context absolute” — if he, or some other trusted Wikipedia user, happened to be present at some catastrophic event and took a picture of it, that picture wouldn’t necessarily be removed from the site — but in general, he explained, “it’d be too easy to be hoaxed. And anyway, an encyclopedia is really not where you should go for that. Britannica doesn’t publish original research. An encyclopedia is the condensation of received wisdom.”
Read more online here. (Or you can always read the History of Wikipedia article on Wikipedia.)
