For all of its inaccuracies, Wikipedia proved that you could create a useful resource out of the contributions of hundreds of volunteers. Now Jimmy Wales, the sometimes controversial founder of the online encyclopedia, thinks he can do it again, this time with a search engine. How likely is he to succeed?
Wales certainly has a track record. Having made his fortune as a stock-options trader, he went on to found Bomis, a search portal that creates and hosts web rings around sometimes erotic topics. The portal made its money from advertising, which also helped to fund other ventures. The first of these, in 2000, was Nupedia. This was Wales’ first attempt at creating an online encyclopedia. Its articles were written by experts and licensed as free content.
Nupedia’s contribution process was cumbersome; all articles were subjected to peer review to make sure they were of high quality. By the time Nupedia ceased operating in 2003, it had produced only 24 articles that made it all the way through the review process; 74 more were in progress. It’s pretty clear why the site never took off.
By this time, of course, Wikipedia had been created (in 2001) and was well on its way to success. It now features nearly two million articles in English alone, and a very active community that updates and adds items as necessary based on news events. Printed encyclopedias, or even ones that are published regularly on CDs or DVDs, could never keep up. There are Wikipedias in a wide range of languages, though with significantly fewer articles than the English version (there is even a Klingon version with 83 articles).
Wikipedia is a not-for-profit venture, surviving solely on contributions and run by the Wikimedia Foundation, created in 2003. Wikia, on the other hand, was founded by Wales and Angela Beesley in 2004 as a for-profit wiki hosting service. It is free of charge for readers and editors, and has received venture capital funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Amazon.com.
These creations, in particular Wikipedia, have not been without their issues. Wikipedia articles are regularly subject to vandalism, and their accuracy may be questionable since the volunteers working on them are often not experts in their fields. Wales himself is on record as saying that Wikipedia is a starting point for a general overview, not an ending point. So how would this work with a search engine?
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