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than by a single intelligence. But while accuracy binds the trust
between reader and contributor, eccentricity and elegance and
surprise are the singular qualities that make learning an inviting
transaction. And they are not qualities we associate with com-
mittees.” Yet Wikipedia has eccentricity, elegance, and surprise
in abundance, especially in those moments when enthusiasm
becomes excess and detail is rendered so finely (and pointlessly)
that it becomes beautiful.
In the article on the sexual revolution, there was a line, since
deleted, that read, “For those who were not there to experience
it, it may be difficult to imagine how risk-free sex was during
the 1960s and 1970s.” This anonymous autobiography in min-
iature is an intriguing piece of editorializing, but it’s also a little
legacy of the sexual revolution all by itself, a rueful reflection
on a moment of freedom that didn’t last. (The editor who added
“Citation needed” is part of that story as well.) In the article on
the anticommunist intellectual Frank Knopfelmacher, we learn
that “his protracted, usually freewheeling, invariably slander-
ous late-night telephone monologues (visited alike upon asso-
ciates and, more often, antagonists) retained a mythic status for
decades among Australian intellectuals.” The Hong Kong novelist
Lillian Lee, we are told, seeks “freedom and happiness, not fame.”
Pedants have a reputation for humorlessness, but for Wikipe-
dians a sense of humor is at the core of the good-faith collab-
oration that defines the project. There is probably no need for
an exhaustive history of a giant straw goat erected in a Swedish
town each Christmas, but the article on the Gävle Goat chroni-
cles its annual fate fastidiously. It is prone to vandalism by fire,
and the article centers around an exacting timeline that lists
the date of destruction, the method of destruction, and the new
security measures put in place every year since 1966. (In 2005, it
was “burnt by unknown vandals reportedly dressed as Santa and
the gingerbread man, by shooting a flaming arrow at the goat.”)
Why do Wikipedians perform these millions of hours of labor,
some expended on a giant straw goat, without pay? Because they
don’t experience them as labor. “It’s a misconception people
work for free,” Wales told the site Hacker Noon in 2018. “They
have fun for free.” A 2011 survey of more than 5,000 Wikipedia
contributors listed “It’s fun” as one of the primary reasons they
edited the site.
This is why the meta side of Wikipedia—the Talk pages, the
essay commentaries, the policies—is suffused with nerdy jokes.
We’re so used to equating seriousness with importance that this
jars at first: It’s hard to square the encapsulation of all human
knowledge with a policy called “Don’t be a dick” (since revised
to “Don’t be a jerk”). But expressing the directive that way car-
ries a purpose. It’s the same purpose that drives Wikipedians to
collect and celebrate the site’s “Lamest edit wars,” which include
long-running skirmishes on Freddie Mercury’s ancestry, the
provenance of Caesar salad, the proper pronunciation of J. K.
Rowling’s surname (“Perhaps it rhymes with ‘Trolling’?”), the
wording of certain captions (“Is the cat depicted really smil-
ing?”), and the threshold of notoriety required to appear on a
list of fictional badgers.
Few architects of a world encyclopedia would think to include
a forum for jokes, and in the unlikely event that they did, no one
could anticipate that it would be important. But on Wikipedia
the jokes are very important. They defuse tensions. They foster
joyful cooperation. They encourage humility. They promote fur-
ther reading and further editing. They also represent a surprise
return to the earliest days of Enlightenment reference works.
Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, compiled in 1755, gives one defi-
nition of “dull” as “not exhilarating; not delightful: as, to make
dictionaries is dull work.” Perhaps the most important ency-
clopedia of the late modern period, the Encyclopédie, is barbed
with satirical and anticlerical quips: The entry on “Cannibals”
cross-references with “Communion.”If it is a mistake
TO KEEP COMPARING WIKIPEDIA TO BRITANNICA, IT IS ANOTHERKIND
of category error to judge Wikipedia against its peers in the inter-
net’s top 10. Wikipedia ought to serve as a model for many forms
of social endeavor online, but its lessons do not translate read-
ily into the commercial sphere. It is a noncommercial enter-
prise, with no investors or shareholders to appease, no financial
imperative to grow or die, and no standing to maintain in the
arms race to amass data and attain AI supremacy at all costs. At
Jimmy Wales’ wedding, one of the maids of honor toasted him
as the sole internet mogul who wasn’t a billionaire.