The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia, by Andrew Lih
Who would have known that mixed into the aggregate at the foundations of what by now must be the most consulted encyclopedia in the history of the world would be Ayn Rand, options-pricing theory, Kropotkin, table napkins, soft porn and a Hawaiian airport shuttle-bus?
This being the internet, you might have guessed at soft porn — a sometime minor business interest of its founder Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Wales. But the rest? These are interesting times for the culture of knowledge, and the story of the evolution of Wikipedia, with its utopian belief in collective good faith, its roots in hacker culture and its history of ingenious bricolage, is at the centre of them.
One of Wikipedia’s only non-negotiable policies is NPOV, or ‘Neutral Point of View’ — a rule, as you’ll have noticed, that Andrew Lih’s subtitle cheerfully violates.
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