The Power Of The Wikimedia Movement Beyond Wikimedia

“In January 2017, we the constituents of Wikimedia, started an ambitious discussion about our collective future. We reflected on our past sixteen years together and imagined the impact we could have in the world in the next decades. Our aim was to identify a common strategic direction that would unite and inspire people across our movement on our way to 2030, and help us make decisions.”

The above is part of the preamble to Wikimedia 2030, a recently-released strategy process facilitated by the Wikimedia Foundation addressing the Wikimedia movement’s next stage. The movement refers to the more than one hundred Wikimedia affiliates worldwide as well as hundreds of thousands of volunteers and contributors. The Foundation, which supports the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, as well as wiki images and other Wikimedia sites, has been reaching out throughout 2017, in a series of meet ups, conferences, discussions. The document sets out a vision of expanding Wikimedia, and its ecosystem of free knowledge and participation; a vision of far wider participation in areas such as Africa, South America and Central America and among various populations. To review the document, though, is also to see how much the Wikimedia movement has to offer the reshaping of other economic and political institutions beyond Wikimedia. Let’s explain, starting with Wikipedia’s current status. The readership numbers of Wikipedia continue to be jaw dropping. According to the latest Wikipedia data through February, it has over 5.5 million entries on English Wikipedia (more than 46 million articles on Wikipedia across nearly 300 languages) with around 600 new articles added daily. Each month on average, Wikipedia is viewed more than 15 billion times, and accessed by more than 1 billion unique devices. The enterprise relies on a loose administrative structure and an army of volunteers. More than 200,000 editors, who are volunteers, make one edit or more on Wikipedia every month. Wikipedia was not the first to try to create an online encyclopedia—at least seven other attempts were made before it launched in 2001. As noted in a NiemanLab article (“Why did Wikipedia succeed while other encyclopedias failed?”), Wikipedia succeeded over the other attempts as it was able to attract this enormous volunteer base. It lowered the transaction costs to participation, and emphasized the encyclopedia’s social mission and social ownership....

Consider also the process that Wikimedia has established to allow persons to become editors, and post, add to or revise articles on Wikipedia. Wikimedia has no screening process of editors. It does not utilize the usual criteria of degrees, certifications, portfolios or job titles.

Yet, without these sorting criteria, the process somehow succeeds as noted above both in wide participation and reliability. The internet has broken down many of the traditional gatekeepers. Wikimedia suggests the breakdown might proceed further. It affirms the unrecognized knowledge and insights of people outside of the universities, or big foundations, or cable television shows. As Wikimedia’s Ms. Lien notes,

Within our visions is a core promise of participation—the idea that we all have something to contribute in creating and building the world’s knowledge, that we all have an active role to play in understanding the world around us.

Finally, consider, the flat hierarchy that characterizes the Wikimedia administration. Wikimedia is not without an administrative organization. There is a loose structure of (volunteer) administrators, with more senior administrators given authority to mediate disputes, and combat vandalism and misinformation campaigns. However, the hierarchy is based mainly on past performance and willingness to contribute, than on any company politics, connections or credentials. Editors can nominate themselves for more senior positions, in a highly transparent process.

One does not need to romanticize Wikimedia to see the possibilities it offers beyond Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia sites. In contrast to other democracy movements in politics and the workplace, Wikimedia offers us more than theory. It gives us glimpses of what is possible in questioning hierarchies and gatekeepers—the creativity and energy unleased, the involvement, the common ground possible—even as it continues to question and seek to improve its own structure."