Iwas on the internet, trying for an accurate definition of a ‘millenial’, when Wikipedia came to my rescue. It led me to a Time magazine cover story from 2013, which roughly defines it as anyone born between 1980 and 2000. That word emphasised, I reflected, how people of the said generation resorted to ‘googling’ past problems. Most of their queries led to Wikipedia.
As a child, the only probable reason I could think of for owning a computer was gaming. Some time, the gaming bug bid adieu and different versions of encyclopedias, courtesy Britannica and Encarta, on a CD captivated me, taking me to worlds beyond my reach. When the Internet spread its tentacles, binding us inextricably, Wikipedia made a quiet, dignified entry. It has not left ever since.
Often the first link to turn up on a internet search, Wikipedia’s influence is ubiquitous—newspapers ‘borrow’ from it, youngsters steal from it, and, let’s confess, we all dig it too. It is the best, free-curated content out there, getting information from verified sources and putting it in an objective format. For there are registered editors and subject experts who work on submissions and changes, often marking out disputed points. Scholarpedia, operating on the same platform, has content curated by scholars. Co-founder Larry Sanger has created Citizendium, a platform which seeks to be an upgrade, with a tight watch on content by an editorial team.
In February 2014, The New York Times listed Wikipedia fifth behind Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and Google in terms of page-views, with 500 million unique visitors a month. In fact, nearly half of the traffic on Google routes to Wikipedia.
Founded in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Sanger, the non-profit Wikipedia is available in 292 languages. Owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wiki signifies a website offering collaborative modification of its content by its 29 million users. The English version alone has 52,64,357 (and counting) articles.
Lately though, Wikipedia has attracted flak for being ‘left-leaning’. Charges are also levelled at it for ‘vandalised’ content.
A recent article in the MIT Technology Review noted Wikipedia’s decline since its heyday in 2005. However, considering how stingy and downright illegal we can be while consuming content on the web, the website remains the first one I contributed $10 of my money to during college, because I believed it needed a leg-up.
