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    The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia
    The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia
    The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia

    Written by Andrew Lih

    Narrated by Lloyd James

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "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, founder of Wikipedia

    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 number-eight 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 Web site; it's a global community of contributors who have banded together out of a shared passion for making knowledge free.

    The Wikipedia Revolution features a foreword by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and an afterword that is itself a Wikipedia creation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 20, 2009
    ISBN9781400180769
    The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia

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    Reviews for The Wikipedia Revolution

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      This tells about Wikipedia, which began in 2001 and is now one of the best sites on the Intermet. I have Wikipedia on my toolbar, and visit the site often, and like it much. The book has some computer jargon which went over my head, but anyone interested in Wikipedia will find things of interest in the book.
    • 4/5
      The Wikipedia Revolution (2009) is probably the first serious attempt at a book-length history of Wikipedia. Unfortunately Andrew Lih is not a trained historian, it is a journalistic account with more reporting and synthesis than original interpretation. However it is still a quick and interesting read, even if Lih is a devout Wikipedian. Certain sections stand out: the history of Ward Cunningham who invented the Wiki software; the history of Larry Sanger and his role as "co-founder" (or not, depending, but it is not resolved here). The role of Usenet, Hypercard, Slashdot and MeatballWiki in the formation of early Wikipedia. A glimpse into the vastly different cultures of Japanese, Chinese, German and other foreign language Wikipedias. An overview of some (in)famous incidents such as Seigenthaler and Essjay. Lih appears to have researched the book mostly using archival sources - I was disappointed not to find new interviews with Wales, Sanger or any number of others - it takes away from the books value in the long term as a primary source, a missed opportunity to add to the historical record.There is a short Introduction by Jimmy Wales which is a standard stump speech heard many times before. The Afterword contains a crowd-sourced essay on the future of Wikipedia and it does contain a meaty examination of the difficult issues facing Wikipedia now and in the future. I found it to be surprisingly good. The Afterword is released under a Creative Commons BY license so it's freely available to copy - it's odd Lih did not point to where it can be found online.I would recommend this book for anyone who has been a long time member of Wikipedia and wants to learn more about 'a history experienced' over the past 8 years or so. There is so much that could be said about Wikipedia this book just grazes the surface but it's a good entry into what will certainly becoming a growing library of books about Wikipedia in the future.
    • 3/5
      If you wonder where things come from, this is an explainer book. It is not especially short and sometimes the audio version may induce sleep. I also went for the print book for comparison; audio has to leave out some things like tables or pictures. The author has been a contributor to Wikipedia for 4 yrs and does try to maintain journalistic neutrality, just as the online information source he is documenting. I found many parts interesting but some areas over-techinated. Overall, I enjoyed the writing and would like to see more about the important area of free access to all human knowledge, maybe sometimes scaled down so as to include those who aren't as well-educated but still want to know about things.
    • 4/5
      If you’ve ever searched for content on the Internet, chances are you’ve seen a link to Wikipedia article near the top of your results list. Do you click on the Wikipedia link or ignore it? This book may help you decide. You might expect a book written by a Wikipedia insider with a foreword written by Wikipedia’s founder to be nothing more than an extended promotion of the site. However, author Andrew Lih doesn’t shy away from the controversial aspects of the site, and he recounts its failures as well as its successes. Librarians and educators with responsibility for teaching students how to evaluate Web content will benefit from reading this history of Wikipedia’s development and analysis of its ethos.
    • 4/5
      If you are like me, you have your web browser homepage set at the Google homepage and 8 times out of 10, when you do a Google search for something, a Wikipedia article is one of the top hits in the search results list. Describing Wikipedia in Lih's own words, "Wikipedia is a human-centered endeavor that invites participation on a massive scale. It usurps top-down authority, empowers individuals, and harnesses previously untapped labor of individuals previously isolated kin separate social networks, but brought together by the Internet." Lih examines the idea of Wikipedia as an open information resource and the grassroots community of volunteer writers, editors and administrators who have built Wikipedia into the extensive online information resource it is to this day. Lih does a good job pointing out the teething/growing pains of Wikipedia over time, including personality/culture clashes between members as well as the difficulties of containing the ever growing throngs of vandals, trolls and sock puppets that are attracted to successful online sites that allow users edit/post capabilities, as we have noticed here on Librarything. The book was published in 2009 so it is not surprising that the next chapter of Wikipedia's life has already occurred outside of the pages of this book. While Lih does attempt to balance the social/cultural/community aspects of Wikipedia with the more technical, software geek side of software code and wiki structure, I can see where this may come across as rather dry reading for someone, especially if they are looking for more of the world end-user reaction to Wikipedia as a social phenomenon of the Internet age.
    • 4/5
      This audio book is a fascinating look at the resource we have all come to know. How does a resource that anyone can modify at any time work at all? The philosophy, technology, history and future of Wikipedia are all discussed in a knowledgeable and thoughtful way. Four stars.
    • 4/5
      I rather enjoyed this story of the development of Wikipedia. In some areas, such as entertainment, is the best and easiest resource to use for up-to-date information. As a collaborative effort, the structure of some articles is uneven, and there have been disputations. Of areas of interest to me, the Enneagram and some aspects of bus transportation service, there are some remarkable holes, and biased ideas of what should or should not be included. But as a whole, Wikipedia is very commendable. I think the author, Andrew Lih, has been even-handed. The story itself is engrossing. It is remarkable that so many people will volunteer their expertise in developing articles, and I have done minor edits myself.
    • 4/5
      Neatly covering Wikipedia - history, controversies, future issues with Wikipedian "standards" such as Essjay, Seigenthaler, Cunningham and the Spanish Fork but also more technical matters such as the historic development of the wiki-software and matters of internationalization.
    • 4/5
      well written and very interesting.