Wired USA - 03.2020

pedians—trolling, doxing, hacking, death threats. The site’s parent
organization has repeatedly owned up to the situation and taken
halting steps to redress it; several years ago, it allocated hundreds
of thousands of dollars to a “community health initiative.” But in a
way, the means to fix Wikipedia’s shortcomings, in terms of both
culture and coverage, are already in place: Witness the rise of fem-
inist edit-athons.
The site’s innovations have always been cultural rather than
computational. It was created using existing technology. This
remains the single most underestimated and misunderstood
aspect of the project: its emotional architecture. Wikipedia is
built on the personal interests and idiosyncrasies of its contrib-
utors; in fact, without getting gooey, you could even say it is built
on love. Editors’ passions can drive the site deep into inconse-
quential territory—exhaustive detailing of dozens of different
kinds of embroidery software, lists dedicated to bespectacled
baseball players, a brief but moving biographical sketch of Khan-
zir, the only pig in Afghanistan. No knowledge is truly useless,
but at its best, Wikipedia weds this ranging interest to the kind
of pertinence where Larry David’s “Pretty, pretty good!” is given
as an example of rhetorical epizeuxis. At these moments, it can
feel like one of the few parts of the internet that is improving.

One challenge
IN SEEING WIKIPEDIA CLEARLY IS THAT THE FAVORED POINT OF
comparison for the site is still, in 2020, Encyclopedia Britannica.
Not even the online Britannica, which is still kicking, but the print
version, which ceased publication in 2012. If you encountered the
words Encyclopedia Britannica recently, they were likely in a dis-
cussion about Wikipedia. But when did you last see a physical copy
of these books? After months of reading about Wikipedia, which
meant reading about Britannica, I finally saw the paper encyclo-
pedia in person. It was on the sidewalk, being thrown away. The
24 burgundy-bound volumes had been stacked with care, looking
regal before their garbage-truck funeral. If bought new in 1965, each
of them would have cost $10.50—the equivalent of $85, adjusted
for inflation. Today, they are so unsalable that thrift stores refuse
them as donations.
Wikipedia and Britannica do, at least, share a certain lineage.
The idea of building a complete compendium of human knowl-
edge has existed for centuries, and there was always talk of finding
some better substrate than paper: H. G. Wells thought microfilm

Wikipedia

is built on

the personal

interests and

idiosyncra-

sies of its

contributors.

You could

even say it is

built on love.

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