Wikipedia's first twenty years: how what began as an experiment in collaboration became the
world's most popular reference work. We have been looking things up in Wikipedia for twenty
years. What began almost by accident—a wiki attached to an nascent online encyclopedia—has
become the world's most popular reference work. Regarded at first as the scholarly equivalent
of a Big Mac Wikipedia is now known for its reliable sourcing and as a bastion of (mostly)
reasoned interaction. How has Wikipedia built on a model of radical collaboration remained
true to its original mission of free access to the sum of all human knowledge” when other tech
phenomena have devolved into advertising platforms? In this book scholars activists and
volunteers reflect on Wikipedia's first twenty years revealing connections across disciplines
and borders languages and data the professional and personal. The contributors consider
Wikipedia's history the richness of the connections that underpin it and its founding vision.
Their essays look at among other things the shift from bewilderment to respect in press
coverage of Wikipedia Wikipedia as the most important laboratory for social scientific and
computing research in history” and the acknowledgment that free access” includes not just
access to the material but freedom to contribute—that the summation of all human knowledge is
biased by who documents it. Contributors Phoebe Ayers Omer Benjakob Yochai Benkler William
Beutler Siko Bouterse Rebecca Thorndike-Breeze Amy Carleton Robert Cummings LiAnna L.
Davis Siân Evans Heather Ford Stephen Harrison Heather Hart Benjamin Mako Hill Dariusz
Jemielniak Brian Keegan Jackie Koerner Alexandria Lockett Jacqueline Mabey Katherine Maher
Michael Mandiberg Stephane Coillet-Matillon Cecelia A. Musselman Eliza Myrie Jake Orlowitz
Ian A. Ramjohn Joseph Reagle Anasuya Sengupta Aaron Shaw Melissa Tamani Jina Valentine
Matthew Vetter Adele Vrana Denny Vrandecic
