I think things got a bit off track.
I sort of got distracted by the responses, but the reason I brought up the “Star Trek” articles wasn’t because I have a problem with them being on Wikipedia and it wasn’t because I think they make Wikipedia cost more money to run, it also wasn’t because I think they make it harder for people to find information on other, more “academic” topics.
The reason I brought it up is because the discussion is, “Could Wikipedia get too big to fail?” To answer that, we have to consider what is meant by “bigness.” To me, bigness in this context could only mean “article count.”
Well, the thing is, maybe of Wikipedia was a huge repository of original research in areas of public importance could we justify “bailing it out.” In reality, it isn’t.
I’d argue a large portion of Wikipedia’s articles deal with things that do not merit public funding to keep them alive. The comparison with a library is actually not apt. A library is a collection of actual material, Wikipedia is a collection of summaries. Until respected authors, scientists, and others start publishing their original research and their original works on Wikipedia, it will always be just that–a collection of summaries.
I know there are a lot of ardent defenders of Wikipedia who will get mad because I’ve called Wikipedia a collection of summaries. I should quickly state that this isn’t a bad thing, that essentially is exactly what one would expect from an encyclopedia.
I know that teachers today, when they assign a research project or research paper to students, they won’t accept Wikipedia on a works cited page or on the bibliography. Well, aside from a few totally slack-ass teachers, when I was growing up you sure as shit couldn’t cite “reference works.” Meaning you couldn’t cite Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book, Compton’s et cetera. Not because the teacher thought the information in encyclopedias was bad, but because essentially the encyclopedia article was the assignment. A high school or even early-college level research paper is really not much more than summarizing a topic, backing it up with citations, and maybe sometimes drawing some conclusions. Well, that is essentially what an encyclopedia article already does, so to allow that as the citation would mean a lot less work for the student, which would also mean they wouldn’t properly learn how to research from more elaborate secondary sources.
There is a thing I see a lot on the Wikipedia donation forum in which the founder talks about how Wikipedia is the “sum of all human knowledge.” Well, it isn’t, it’s a summary of a large portion of human knowledge. You certainly couldn’t learn calculus, evolutionary biology, organic chemistry, Renaissance history, 19th century British Literature and et al from Wikipedia.
Which is perfectly fine, you couldn’t learn those things from Britannica, World Book, Compton’s et cetera. An encyclopedia doesn’t produce “original” knowledge, it compartmentalizes original knowledge.
If Wikipedia was a repository for tons of original knowledge, then yes it could get too big too fail. Since it isn’t, it never will. Wikipedia’s strongest attributes are its accessibility, how it links readers to more information, and its price (free.)
Something it shares in common with Google, arguably Google is indispensable in sharing human knowledge just like Wikipedia is. Could Google get too big to fail? Probably not, mainly because of how software works, Google could go under and then Microsoft would be happy to move in. If Google went under, it’s also likely another big player in the software industry would buy up the information and rights to use Google’s search algorithms and et cetera–so the public would lose nothing.
It isn’t like when AIG or General Motors goes under, you can’t so easily buy up and keep running a mammoth insurance company or billions of dollars in manufacturing assets. Software and bytes are a lot different in that regard.
If Wikipedia went under, firstly none of the articles would be lost. They are all essentially cached elsewhere, probably by Google, maybe by the Internet Archive, definitely by “copy cat” websites like Answers.com. That is in a “worst case scenario” where Wiki folds and pulls the plug over night. What would quickly happen is some other entity would come up and Wikipedia (maybe with a different name) would reemerge almost instantly. Maybe Microsoft or Sun or Google would take over, and that’d probably be the status quo for a little while until a new non profit emerged (due to obvious bias concerns with a major tech company running something like Wikipedia.) Or, it’s not even unthinkable that some of the big tech companies could all donate equal amounts to a “pool” that would then create a totally independent non-profit entity that would be responsible for its own independent fund raising going forward. Hell, even one billionaire like Paul Allen could set that up, and done correctly it’d quickly not have any association with him and thus not be susceptible to allegations of bias. It’d cost Allen less than some of his individual players cost him in a single season for one of his sports teams.
