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The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia Hardcover – March 17, 2009

by Andrew Lih (Author)

4.3 36 ratings

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"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."

--Jimmy Wales

With more than 2,000,000 individual articles on everything from Aa! (a Japanese pop group) to Zzyzx, California, written by an army of volunteer contributors, Wikipedia is the #8 site on the World Wide Web. Created (and corrected) by anyone with access to a computer, this impressive assemblage of knowledge is growing at an astonishing rate of more than 30,000,000 words a month. Now for the first time, a Wikipedia insider tells the story of how it all happened--from the first glimmer of an idea to the global phenomenon it's become.

Andrew Lih has been an administrator (a trusted user who is granted access to technical features) at Wikipedia for more than four years, as well as a regular host of the weekly Wikipedia podcast. In The Wikipedia Revolution, he details the site's inception in 2001, its evolution, and its remarkable growth, while also explaining its larger cultural repercussions. Wikipedia is not just a website; it's a global community of contributors who have banded together out of a shared passion for making knowledge free.

Featuring a Foreword by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and an Afterword that is itself a Wikipedia creation.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Since Wikipedia was launched online in 2001 as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," it has blossomed to more than a billion words spread over 10 million articles in 250 languages, including 2.5 million articles in English, according to Wikipedia cofounder Wales in the foreword. Lih, a Beijing-based commentator on new media and technology for NPR and CNN, researched Wikipedia and collaborative journalism as a University of Hong Kong academic, and he has been a participating "Wikipedian" himself for the past five years. He notes the site has "invigorated and disrupted the world of encyclopedias... yet only a fraction of the public who use Wikipedia realize it is entirely created by legions of unpaid and often unidentified volunteers." Other books have surfaced (How Wikipedia Works; Wikinomics), but Lih's authoritative approach covers much more, from the influence of Ayn Rand on Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales and the "burnout and stress" of highly active volunteer editor-writers to controversies, credibility crises and vandalism. Wales's more traditional earlier encyclopedia, the peer-reviewed Nupedia, began to fade after he saw how Ward Cunningham's software invention, Wiki (Hawaiian for "quick"), could generate collaborative editing. Tracing Wikipedia's evolution and expansion to international editions, Lih views the encyclopedia as a "global community of passionate scribes," attributing its success to a policy of openness which is "not so much technical phenomenon as social phenomenon." (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* A subject that is long overdue in receiving its very own solo-book treatment is Wikipedia, the Internet version of the encyclopedia, named after wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick. How it started—and proliferated, despite human foibles and scandals—is the focus of academic and Wiki expert Lih. It is fitting, too, that a Beijing-based technologist chronicle the amazing growth of this knowledge phenomenon, fueled by volunteers across the world, which allows anyone to openly edit any page of the Web site. Its different beginnings, via alternate sites and dedicated geek hosts, are documented, as is the fascinating process of how an entry is entered, edited, and transformed—with Lih’s metaphor, the Piranha Effect, particularly apt. With its international standing now ranked number eight among Web sites, containing two million individual articles, the Wikipedia, nonetheless, has encountered its share of issues, whether generated by trolls (those troublemakers who drag issues through the community) or the more serious vandals, such as Essjay, whose claim to be a well-known professor appeared in a New Yorker article. An easy, nontech, intriguing read about a Web miracle that today rivals Encyclopaedia Britannica, according to well-respected publications, in the quality of many of its articles. --Barbara Jacobs

From the Author

Andrew Lih was an academic in new media and journalism for ten years, at Columbia University and Hong Kong University. He has been a commentator on new media, technology, and journalism issues on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR. Lih is based in Beijing.

About the Author

Andrew Lih was an academic for ten years at Columbia University and Hong Kong University in new media and journalism. He has also worked as a software engineer, entrepreneur, new media researcher, and writer. Lih has been involved with Wikipedia since 2003, helps plan the annual Wikimania conference, and frequently acts as a spokesman for Wikipedia in Asia. He has been a commentator on new media, technology and journalism issues on CNN, BBC radio, MSNBC and NPR.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by TECHNOLOGY I recently read a magazine article that mentioned Nikola Tesla as if everyone knew of his accomplishments. I didn't, so I threw his name into a search engine. A Wikipedia entry came up first. Fifteen minutes later I had a much better idea of his inventions. As media critic Andrew Lih explains, Wikipedia has become one of the 10 highest-traffic sites on the Internet on the strength of a pretty crazy idea: Rather than use experts, create an encyclopedia written and edited by anybody who wanders by. Every entry has an "edit this page" tab that you can click on without registering or signing in or getting any permission, and your update appears instantly. Consumers who just browse entries may be oblivious to the fanatical volunteers who write, edit, patrol for vandalism and argue vehemently with one another. Lih tells of the 2002 "Spanish Fork," a revolt by members who started their own version, Enciclopedia Libre, over a mere hint that Wikipedia might carry advertisements. I learned from Lih to check out the "Discussion" pages. They show what grade articles have been given by the vote of members. That article on Tesla, for instance, is "B-class," not quite up to the "Good" standard.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hyperion (March 17, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1401303714
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1401303716
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 8 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.75 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,158,542 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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- #545 in Computing Industry History
- #1,101 in History of Engineering & Technology

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4.3 36 ratings

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Iveta Kazoka

A good book if you are interested in how Wikipedia's rules came out to be what they are

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2013

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Notice that this book has been written in 2009 which obviously means that the latest developments have not been covered! But I bought this book in order to learn about the beginnings of Wikipedia and how its rules came into being. And this text is perfect for this purpose!

It describes what were the preconditions (logistics) for Wikipedia: the technology that had to be invented and repurposed, the very specific community that started to develop it, the freedom of cyberspace ideas& computer hacker ethic that underlined those attempts. The author provides both this information and some broader context - phenomena that developed before or in parallel to that of Wikipedia (such as Usenet, Netnews). I wasn't previously aware of several false starts (Nupedia; Wikipedia editing problems etc.), the specific policies that were developed (such as "neutral point of view"; a policy regarding automatons; soft code of conduct etc.) and the ways how the conflicts had been solved when someone is in disagreement on some point about the content of articles (for example, inclusionists and deletionists; Gdansk/Danzig story and the way in which the compromise was reached) or is there to vandalize. It was also nice to learn a new useful term - stigmergy!

What I found most useful about this book: the description on how the rules of Wikipedia were created and then developed throughout the years and the cultural differences in setting or applying them (English vs Japanese vs German version).

Two ideas that most stuck in my mind having read the book: 1) generally people intend to help and can be relied on; 2) Vote-aversion of this community: "Don't vote on everything, and if you can help it, don't vote on anything!"

I learned so much from this book so, although it is dated, I easily give it 5 stars.

8 people found this helpful

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Hande Z

World At Our Fingertips

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2009

Verified Purchase

Anyone who uses a computer is likely to have read a Wikipedia article. It seems to be unavoidable because the internet allows one to search for any subject, and chances are, the subject we want has already entered the Wiki pages. Andrew Lih has set out in this one volume, a book about the history of Wikipedia, how it works, and how people everywhere can get involved. It also explained how online search engines rank subject matter. Google, for example, places "JewWatch", an anti-semitic website first in the rank because it has the most related sites and most of them are anti-semitic. Google doesn't like it, but it is following its "agnostic" policy of ranking subjects according to its ranking formula for the sake of consistency. The potential of this online encyclopaedia is so vast, one might perhaps pause to consider its implications. At the basic level, we would be concerned about its accuracy. It is an inherent problem for this unique encyclopaedia because it is growing every second. It is constantly being edited and enlarged, so errors are bound to occur; some inadvertently, and some perhaps inserted by pranksters. More importantly, is it desirable to have information and knowledge freely available and without cost? Whatever views we have on this point, it is fair to say that Wikipedia has made life easier for many of us. It is precisely because of that that we should pause to ponder the question posed. As stated in its unique "Wiki-designed" afterword, "The greatest enemy of a revolution is its success." It has been a long road for this unique website, and as we wonder how much further it will develop, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, reminds us in the foreword to the book that "It's all about dialogue, it's all about conversation, it's all about humans making decisions." One day we might look back in wonder and say we have progressed so far and so much by standing on the shoulders of "nobodies', the unsung editors and contributors of wikipedia - but perhaps not; not if we have read Andrew Keen's "Cult of the Amateur".

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Emc2

Excellent! Highly recommended, particularly for Wikipedians

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2009

Verified Purchase

This is a well researched book covering Wikipedia's origins and main events until mid 2008. Well-written, it reads fast, though there is an unnecessary excess of computer technical terms in the first chapters, but do not be afraid of this jargon, as the more technical stuff is limited to a few paragraphs, simply skip them that you are not going miss anything important. There is no doubt any Wikipedia editor will enjoy this book, particularly the newcomers like me who missed the beginnings.

I lament that Mr. Lih did not go deeper into the issue of Wikipedia's reliability as a source. Indeed he could have elaborated a bit in order to provide guidance to Wiki readers in how to identify which articles are not to trust. Another subject that I think deserves a deeper discussion is why people contribute to Wikipedia.

Also he missed one key issue that already made it to the mainstream press in recent years, and that is the criticism of its predominant liberal bias, which jeopardizes Wikipedia's proclaimed neutral point of view and seriously erodes its credibility as an universal encyclopedia. The global warming related articles are the perfect case for illustrating this problem, as a bunch of experienced editors, including several administrators, have managed to consistently make sure that Wikipedia only reflects mainstream climate change ideology, and any criticism or weakness in the GW theory is censored, sanitized, minimized, blocked, or even nominated for deletion, making very difficult for other editors (not necessarily "skeptics" or "deniers") to present a truly neutral point of view about this controversial subject. For a little taste regarding this issue, just peek the Talk Page in the article about "Climategate", which is named as such in almost all other wiki language projects, but not in the English Wiki.

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billtoo

Okay if you want a lot of detail. Very interesting how Wikipedia works.

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2016

Verified Purchase

Interesting but more detail than I was looking for.

One person found this helpful

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