20 years of the encyclopaedia anyone can edit: Wikipedia and the pursuit of knowledge equity
When referring to collaborative knowledge creation, sharing and curation, Wikipedia stands out as the benchmark. On January 15, 2021 Wikipedia celebrated its 20th anniversary. There are many good things to say about Wikipedia: it has successfully demonstrated that ordinary people, and not just academic elites, can build and produce knowledge – and useful knowledge at that, if we take into account that Wikipedia is consistently one of the top 10 most visited webs on the internet, with more than 20 billion monthly pageviews (Wikimedia statistics, 2021). People don’t have to pay for the content, it is ad-free and independent, hosted by a non-profit organization – the Wikimedia Foundation – that mostly relies on small donations from individuals around the world. It is a unique model – free knowledge by the people for the people – that has held true for two decades by valiantly pursuing an aspirational vision: a world where everyone can have access to the sum of all knowledge.