Praise for Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Projects

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Readers, users, and editors, as well as media and other stakeholders have made great public statements about Wikipedia and the other projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. Below are some of our favorites, collected from Wikipedia Testimonials and other sources. If you make an addition (beneath the line), please provide an accurate citation..

For press or media inquiries, please write to press@wikimedia.org or visit the Wikimedia Foundation press page.

Contents 1 Books 2 Published Articles 3 Notable Blog Mentions 4 Wikipedia User Comments

[edit] Books

From Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins (DeFlorz Professor of Humanities, and Founder and Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT), New York University Press, 2006.

You probably won't believe in the Wikipedia unless you try it, but the process works. The process works because more and more people are taking seriously their obligations as participants to the community as a whole: not everyone does so yet; we can see various flame wars as people with very different politics and ethics interact within the same knowledge communities. Such disputes often foreground those conflicting assumptions, forcing people to reflect more deeply on their choices. What once was taken for granted must now be articulated. What emerges might be called a moral economy of information: that is, a sense of mutual obligations and shared expectations about what constitutes good citizenship within a knowledge economy.

From Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, David Weinberger, Times Books, 2007.

One of the lessons of Wikipedia is that conversation improves expertise by exposing weaknesses, introducing new viewpoints, and pushing ideas into accessible form.

From Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, David Weinberger, Times Books, 2007.

What is the most important lesson that Wikipedia teaches us? That Wikipedia is possible. A miscellaneous collection of anonymous and pseudonymous authors can precipitate knowledge.

From Wikipatterns, Stewart Mader, Wiley Publishing Inc., 2008. Stewart Mader is Wiki Evangelist for Atlassian Software Systems, and a noted wiki/social software researcher.

When you pick up an article in Britannica and read the content, you get what's there at face value but you don't know what went into developing that article. There's no easy way for you to know the backgrounds, influences, and biases of the authors. Now think about reading that article on Wikipedia. You'd have not only the article itself, but the revision history that reveals the social forces behind the construction of that article. You can see, for instance, where authors may have disagreed about the content, where people have contributed new content, and who those people might be. ... The bottom line is, with a wiki you see not only the end product of the information, but you get to see the construction of that knowledge, and that's incredibly valuable in measuring the quality of that information.

From Wikipatterns, Stewart Mader, Wiley Publishing Inc., 2008

Wikipedia has achieved accuracy because the process is a self-checking one. The low barrier to entry of the wiki means that not only can articles be created quickly, but also the presence of an interested community results in accurate information and rapid error correction.

[edit] Published Articles

Dan Tynan. "Winners and Losers of 2005". Tech Tuesday - Yahoo! News. (December 16 2005). Rated as both the "Winner" and "Loser of the Year".

You can't do a Web search on any major topic without this wiki popping up near the top of the results page. Heavily linked, authoritative, and constantly updated, the world's largest interactive encyclopedia came into its own this year[...] Popular, yes. Accurate? Not necessarily. Because its entries can be edited by anyone, the Wikipedia can be the source of dubious or biased information. [...(citing the Swiftboat controversy and Seigenthaler Incident)...] [W]ith more than 800,000 articles in English and well over 1 million in 15 other languages, foolproof policing is well nigh impossible.

Crispin Sartwell, "See 'Information,' 'Amazing,' 'Anarchy'", Los Angeles Times p. B15 (4 May 2005).

So is it to be trusted? Does it have the credibility of Britannica? Well, I have monitored over a decent period a number of entries on matters about which I know something and have found them almost invariably accurate. And I have watched some of them grow, becoming ever more elaborate and interlinked.

Wynn Quon, "The new know-it-all", National Post, p. FP19 (26 Feb. 2005).

Are traditional encyclopedia publishers aware of Wikipedia's threat? Here's a clue: Try looking for the "Wikipedia" article in the online version of Britannica. You won't find it. Nor will you find it in any of the half a dozen or so mainstream encyclopedias currently on the market. These folks should be busy brainstorming a survival strategy. Instead, the range of reaction has run in a comically limited range from denial to derision. Even Britannica, with its prestigious reputation, needs to figure out how it will thrive in what will increasingly be a Wikipedia world. In the final analysis, Wikipedia is more than just the raising of a new barn. It's the tearing down of the old ones.

Simon Waldman, "Who knows?" "The Guardian" (Oct. 26, 2004):

It has no editors, no fact checkers and anyone can contribute an entry - or delete one. It should have been a recipe for disaster, but instead Wikipedia became one of the internet's most inspiring success stories.

Bill Thompson, "A question of trust online", BBC News Online, (Apr. 23, 2004)

And there is the Wikipedia, a community-written encyclopedia that has evolved over the years [...] into one of the most reliably useful sources of information around, on or off-line.

Bill Bailey, "Big Night In" [1], The Times, (Feb. 21, 2004)

If I’m writing a show I spend a lot of time researching it on the net. I use Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) a lot. It’s a brilliant online encyclopaedia, invaluable for historical stuff, and probably the most accurate of all those sites.

Sean Carroll, "Site of the Week", PC Magazine (Jun. 6, 2003):

This may sound like a recipe for disaster, but the results are impressive. While many of the site's 130,000-plus articles are definitely works in progress, many are rich, concise, and polished. [...] Surprisingly, our time spent on Wikipedia turned up no junk entries and no defacements. [...] A few of the articles seemed a bit dated, and we came across many red links or blue links that led to single-sentence placeholders. But for the most part, the items were useful and thoughtful. And the typos and awkward constructions we found? As editors, we plan to return to those pages, on the subjects we care about, and tweak them a bit.

Ben Hammersley, "Common Knowledge", Guardian (Jan. 30, 2003):

The Wikipedia [is] perhaps one of the greatest testaments to the generosity on the web [...] What makes the Wikipedia so compelling—and this article so hard to finish—is the way everything is so massively linked. You read one entry, and before you know it, you're reading up on Anne Boleyn or Italian greyhounds.

John Jerney, "The Wikipedia: The encyclopedia for the rest of us", The Daily Yomiuri (Oct. 22, 2002):

In particular, the goal of the Wikipedia is to produce the best encyclopedia encapsulating the sum total of human knowledge. And a quick run through some of the articles shows that this community based approach can indeed work. [...] The Wikipedia, and hopefully other services similar to it, offers the possibility of everything being written into history, with all of mankind sharing knowledge and information in a way that enables everyone to profit from it.

Mary Ellen Quinn, "Wikipedia", Booklist Magazine (Sep. 15, 2002):

What about authority and reliability and all the other things we've been taught to look for in an encyclopedia? We were prepared to hate Wikipedia, but were disarmed when we got to the section Wikipedia:Our Replies to Our Critics, which answered all these questions and more. [...] [Wikipedians] believe that their process of continuous editing means that articles can only improve. Bad content will be edited out, and good content will rise to the top, like cream: As further edits accumulate, the quality of the article moves asymptomatically towards perfection, and likewise the quality of the encyclopedia as a whole. Maybe. We'll keep an open mind.

Steven Johnson, "Populist Editing", New York Times (Dec. 9, 2001):

But an intriguing new subgenre of sites, called WikiWikiWebs, really are interactive: users can both read and write. [...] The most ambitious Wiki project to date applies this governing principle to the encyclopedia, that Enlightenment-era icon of human intelligence. [...] With a total of 16,000 articles in the database, the Wikipedia is already large enough to be a source of generally reliable information, though stronger in some areas ("Star Trek" spinoffs) than others (the novels of Charles Dickens).

"Open source". Jun 10th 2004. From The Economist print edition

Wikipedia... [is a] ...force for good.

Ulrich Johannes Schneider interviewed by Hubert Spiegel, "Aus für den gedruckten Brockhaus – Unser Wissen lebt nur in den Köpfen, nicht im Regal", FAZ (Feb. 15, 2008):

Es gibt bei Wikipedia sogenannte Exzellenz-Artikel, die von absoluten Kennern der Materie verfasst werden. Außerdem betreibt Wikipedia ein ausgezeichnetes System der Qualitätssicherung, das vor allem in der deutschen Version von Wikipedia sehr gut funktioniert. […] Die Kultur der wechselseitigen Kritik führt zu besseren Ergebnissen und auch dazu, dass Fehler leichter akzeptiert werden als in gedruckten Lexika. Außerdem erlaubt Wikipedia, die Genese eines Artikels nachzuvollziehen. Wenn Sie sich die verschiedenen Versionen ansehen, haben Sie einen Prozess der Arbeit am Wissen vor Augen.

[edit] Notable Blog Mentions

Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems, "Wikipedia", Ongoing weblog (Aug. 31, 2004):

Maybe the Wikipedia is a short-lived fad, maybe it’ll get better, maybe it’ll get worse, but I was surprised that nobody pointed this out: The Wikipedia is beautiful. It’s an unexpected and unexplainable triumph of collective creativity and of order over entropy. I hope it lasts a long time, and those who criticize it Just Don’t Get It.

[edit] Wikipedia User Comments

Two16, from User talk:Ed Poor (spelling corrected):

"I've never posted to a usenet group because nothing I wanted to say was worth the overhead of learning the interface. It is a big commitment for me to learn any new interface. This killer app called, email, everyone around me has been chattering about for 17 years, doesn't provide me incentive to learn a very simple interface, how the hell could a usenet group? The killer app called wiki wiki has caused me to learn a mark up language , learn to keyboard, learn to compose text while touch typing and learn NPOV cold. I came here because a project under development needed a back end content manager and I was asked to take a quick look so I could provide an expert opinion on its suitability as the project's interface. Boy does it ever work. I've declared wiki wiki to be the killer app of the world wide web."

AngelikaDagmar, from an anonymous talk page:

"I am amazed not to have discovered Wikipedia until now. I am so moved by its richness and intellectual value that I actually shed tears. What a wonderful endeavor!"

From the Talk:Israeli-Palestinian conflict page:

Editor,

I have studied the issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades. I also lived in the middle east for 10 years. I must tell you that yours is one of the most non-biased, fact-based articles I've every seen on the topic. I appreciate your objectivity; I wish more people were like that.

Sincerely,

E. Davidson

Atlanta

Stan Shebs's personal page:

Dumping my life's accumulated factoids into Wikipedia seems like a fun thing to do, we'll see how it goes. Two weeks later, it seems more like being an ADD-afflicted magpie in a bottle cap factory!

Kingturtle's personal page:

The discovery [of Wikipedia] matched love-at-first-sight. For years, I've been collecting old almanacs and encyclopedia. I bandied about different ideas regarding sharing and documenting the information revealed in these discarded sources. To stumble on a thriving community devoted to sharing information gave me a tremendous thrill and a curious sense of relief. Thank heavens you're all out there!

User:Aarchiba on User talk:Aarchiba:

I must say, Wikipedia has made tremendous progress since I last fiddled with it; it's astonishingly compendious, and the quality is just amazing.

Musichastherighttochildren on Wikipedia:Village pump:

I am a newcomer to wikipedia; although I have been aware of it and used it on occasion for quite a while, I have only recently realised the depth of this resource, and discovered the mechanics behind it.

this project is fantastic! the number of articles and the amount of information in them is truly amazing, even articles on topics so obscure I thought there would be no chance they would exist. the band biographies, for example, seem to have more detailed information and useful links than any official band website I have seen.

also, the articles are articulately written and unbiased, and the links between articles are very well done (though perhaps I have whiled away too many hours in school reading article after article as a consequence of this). wikipedia has become the primary internet resource for me (with the possible exception of news websites), and I really think that it is a credit to everyone who works on it, and indeed to human nature itself! this may seem like a sweeping statement, but it is hard to believe that something so incredible could be produced entirely voluntarily by people in their spare time. and, at the same time, would-be spoilers are repelled; I have never seen an incorrect piece of information or any 'graffiti'. good show!

anyway, I'm sure plenty of people have said this before, but just thought I would congratulate everyone who works on here, and say hi. I'm jack by the way, and I live in north wales. I shall try to contibute as much as possible (so far all I have done is added a sentence about john peel going to school in colwyn bay)!

Anonymous, from Wikipedia:Village pump:

Wow. Just wow. As I cruised around the Pump, I noticed talks about how old people were. As a 16 year old, I'm supposed to be jaded on the world, but the fact that there are kids younger than myself gives me an unexplicable [sic] hope. Wikipedia has the greatest minds on the internet, and I look forward to working with them. I haven't even written my first article yet, but when I do, expect me to look to younger users for advice.

Anonymous, from Talk:Main Page [2]:

Thank you Wikipedia. This is one of the best things to ever happen to me. An infinite amount of knowledge all integrated into one website. I love this thing! You need to know about something? Just type it in. You need to know about something relating to it, just click on one of the links in its explanation. I could go on for hours on this thing just learning! I love it! Thanks a lot!