In the 1930s there were 2000 salesmen in the USA knocking on doors and selling sets of Encyclopedia Britannica. They were selling a highly regarded product and were on handsome commissions. By 2000 the set comprised 32 volumes of carefully researched entries provided by 100 full time editors and 4000 contributors. First published in Edinburgh in 1768, Encyclopedia Britannica became a trusted reference work in homes, schools and offices around the world. But in 2012 the print edition ceased production. Why did the company halt the presses after 244 years in print?
The work had become very expensive to produce and difficult to keep up to date. In the 1990s Microsoft launched a CD-Rom product, Encarta, which was nowhere near as accurate or as comprehensive as Encyclopedia Britannica, but it was very cheap and it included a search function. Encarta was discontinued in 2009 by which time a new and mighty competitor was dominating the market – Wikipedia.
Wikipedia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001 as a web-based, free encyclopaedia. It was constructed on a remarkably lateral idea. They employed an open-door policy which allowed anyone to create and edit articles on the site. Initially this meant that any article could contain inaccuracies such as errors, biases and irrelevant text. Gradually editing restrictions and controls were introduced. The content is largely self-policed by a community of volunteers. By 2019 Wikipedia had nearly six million articles in English and was also available in 300 other languages.
In this case the opposite of expensive was not inexpensive; it was free. The opposite of 100 paid editors was not 10 paid editors; it was thousands of unpaid editors. The result was a living body of work which was constantly updated and enhanced. Many people scoffed at the original notion of Wikipedia. They pointed out that there was no guarantee that any article was unbiased or accurate and that there was no sustainable business model to monetise the site and generate revenue. Despite these reasonable (but conventional) concerns, Wikipedia has flourished and is now the largest and most popular reference work on the world wide web.
