Wikipedia’s future lies in poorer countries
The site’s volunteer workforce has plateaued in the West, but is surging in Asia and Africa
THE MISSION statement “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” belongs to Google. However, the search engine’s ask-me-anything usefulness relies partly on the unpaid labour of the army of volunteer editors at Wikipedia, a collaborative online encyclopedia. Overseen by a not-for-profit group and dependent on constant donations of both money and time, Wikipedia is a brittle foundation for the world’s informational ecosystem (see International).
This article appeared in the Graphic detail section of the print edition under the headline “A rich-world Wikipeak”
Graphic detail January 9th 2021
From the January 9th 2021 edition
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