Happy birthday wikipedia

On January 15th, Wikipedia celebrated its tenth birthday.   It is great to see the continuation of such a large scale collaboration project.  Wikipedia has its critics, but it for sure adds a lot of value.  Even if you do not like or agree with its model or value proposition, I think it is interesting as an experiment and merits supports for that as well.

When I search for a topic, I often read the wikipedia entry for a quick introduction and follow on with the links at the bottom of the articles.  When Wikipedia asked for a donation last year, I happily contributed.  Shortly afterwards, I received an email from Wikipedia telling me about automatic monthly donations.  I guess it is good to follow up.  I think Wikipedia can also ask donators how else Wikipedia can generate income.  Wikipedia’s crowd-strategy project was a good initiative to engage the community as such and I gather donators can be given an option to join such efforts as well.

The Economist also Wiki celebrated Wikipedia’s tenth birthday with an article.  The article was crafted in a wikipedia article style which many people will immediately acknowledge, a testament to Wikipedia’s success.  The article paints a balanced portrait and discusses the main criticisms about Wikipedia, namely the openness of its model, its accuracy, decline in contributions and whether it is sustainable.  Despite all these concerns, Wikipedia remains to be a success story, “it is one of the ten biggest sites on the web and is used by around 400m people each month”.  Happy birthday Wikipedia.