The sum of knowledge?
The largest and perhaps the most daring Web 2.0 project is the Wikipedia. This online encyclopedia is free and it is created through contributions by its users. You or I write and submit articles on a subject of interest, and then other users, rather than officiating editors, add to and correct those articles. With millions of articles already, and about 16,000 active users in any one month, people are clearly keen to add to this common pool of knowledge.
On the philosophy of the site, founder Jimmy Wales quotes the fraudulent quiz winner who became an editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Charles Van Doren, who said: “Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical, too … It should stop being safe — in politics, in philosophy, in science.†The project depends on offering its users more trust than any traditional website would allow. Long-serving Wikipedian Angela Beesley says, “Wikipedia exists to provide a globally available, free (as in freedom, as well as money), encyclopedic (verifiable and unbiased) resource to everyone in their own language. I subscribe to this goal and I also enjoy working with people who share it with me.â€