Wikipedia has recently celebrated its tenth birthday. The online encyclopaedia was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and a decade later it's hard to imagine a world without it.
But despite our reliability on it some experts question whether it can survive another ten years.
Sure real physical books look great stacked up on a shelf, and getting lost in a library and spending hours sifting through book is strangely enjoyable but in this digital age when we want information in a finger click we need a wiki style database of information and quite rightly so if the information is out there and there is the technology to bring it to us in super-speed then why shouldn't we?
We all know the debates behind Wiki
Tick- information can be instantly updated and articles are ever evolving whilst something like a paper encyclopaedia is uneditable and thus almost certainly outdated almost as soon as it comes out.
Cross- It's lovely, friendly 'anyone can edit' approach makes information dangerously unreliable at times and it is highly lambasted in the academic world.
But critics who take that approach treats us like idiots. We all by now know that anyone can edit Wiki and so it's word should not be taken as Gospel but then there's nothing wrong with using it as a quick and easy starting point when researching a topic. Those in the know scroll to the bottom of a wiki article (after a quick skim-read) and use the references to find more high-brow sources of information.
The real problem is not its reputation but it's financing. Don't forget that everything revolves around money, even information. And rather than being ad-funded, Wikipedia is a non-profit charitable organization.
Without donations who is going to pay for the servers and staff? After the ubiquitous donation appeal Wiki managed to raise $16 million but each time they have to plague us with beggar banners we're going to get less and less likely to part with our cash especially when there are charities for cancer and starving children on the TV every other advert.
Not only that but English language contributors fell from 54,000 in March 2007 to 35,000 in September 2010 posing another risk for the future of the information hub.
But we are so used to it now there is no way it is going to die completely, but expect big changes in the coming decade. I wouldn't be surprised if the site became ad-based and more totalitarian.
What do you think the future has in store for Wikipedia?
Source: mashable