At the beginning of 2001 the world, technological and beyond (were the Twin Towers still standing), was radically different: Google was born less than 3 years ago, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were still a long way to go, while Apple it was emerging from a long crisis and would unveil the first product of the new direction, i.e. the iPod, only several months later. Silicon Valley as a whole was still recovering from the drama bursting of the dot-com bubble.
In the more than two decades that have passed since 2001, however, there is a reality that has remained a constant and has indeed played an increasingly important role in the sharing and diffusion of culture and knowledge. This reality is Wikipedia. Opened on January 15 of that year, the free encyclopedia founded by Jimmy Wales became over the course of the 23 years of his life a landmark global, present in over 300 linguistic editions and consulted through almost two billion unique monthly accesses.
Gender gap WikiDonne, the project to rebalance the female presence on Wikipedia by Emanuele Capone 13 April 2022
A few months after its debut, in May 2001, the Italian version of Wikipedia also went online, which today represents the ninth most important edition in the world by quantity of entries (over 1.84 million) and was consulted 8 billion times in 2023. We don’t know who was the first to write on Wikipedia in Italian, but we know what the first entry was: fu Communication (here in the original version)which provided the sociological definition of this phenomenon, and also who the author was, i.e. the 55-year-old computer scientist Gianluca Morowho works at the University of Padua.
“Also because of my profession I have always been interested in the world of free software – he explained to us – By frequenting that environment and the newsgroups of the time, I learned about this project, based on an idea of free information that immediately fascinated me. Also intrigued by the technical aspects, I wanted to understand how it worked, inserting a text in the Italian version, specifically on communication, which I had already written on my own. I recently happened to watch it again, and obviously it has been modified a lot over time.”
This is because, as is known, the true innovation of Wikipedia is to build on the collective intelligence of the Internet, allowing anyone not only to create new entries, but also to modify existing ones. Precisely this revolutionary mechanism has for a long time aroused skepticism: “Me too I was initially perplexed – Moro recalled – I wondered what could come out of an encyclopedia in which anyone can write anything”.
And in fact, especially in the early years, it was not uncommon to find errors also within important articles on the Italian Wikipedia (the article in which Umberto Eco told L’Espresso about his constant pursuit to correct errors that appeared on the page dedicated to him). Over time, however, the correction and modification mechanism was constantly refined: “When I wrote my first entry it was enough to click the Publish button and everything went online – Moro told us again – Now there is a very close interaction Between the moment of writing, drafting, checking contents and compliance with standards. This is a big job that must be recognized by the volunteers who dedicate themselves to it. It is the strength of Wikipedia, which has made and maintains it a widely reliable tool.”
In Italy there are on average 36 thousand people who, by making at least one modification, are responsible for the maintenance of what has become the largest encyclopedia in the world, often through endless discussions which, in some cases, can also have very bright tones.
The study A few dollars are enough to boycott artificial intelligence by Andrea Daniele Signorelli 29 June 2023
But not Wikipedia and Wikimedia (the foundation manages this and other projects open) have amply demonstrated how widespread and important an open project, based on donations, free of advertising and therefore radically different from the prevailing model in Silicon Valley, can have. Why are there so few other similar cases of this magnitude? “The open source environment usually tends towards fragmentation, with the result that a single programmer or small group is then unable to carry on a project in the long term – Moro clarified to us – In my opinion, the strength of Wikipedia is bringing together the many contributions on a single platform. It is the collaboration that makes this project successful, which stands out from others that are perhaps equally valid and useful, but intended only for a niche.”
In a world, the digital one, which is almost always based on so-called surveillance capitalism, Wikipedia therefore represents something unique in terms of importance, longevity and size. The desire to give life to alternative models, in any case, continues to smolder, as demonstrated by the growth of the fediverse (whose best-known exponent is Mastodon) or by some projects linked to the so-called Web3 (the new incarnation of the Web based on blockchain and cryptocurrencies).
From this point of view, the Wikipedia’s decades-long success continues to represent a reason for optimism. And a beacon for anyone who trusts that the Internet will once again represent that space of freedom that it promised us to be.