Hindsight

Wikipedia's unexpected ability to generate high-quality articles about current events is a critical part of its success story; Keegan offers lessons taken from this for addressing the sludge polluting other online platforms.

Wikipedia’s death has been predicted many times in its twenty years. Reagle groups these dour prognostications into four periods. Though this history shows making predictions is foolhardy, Reagle predicts Wikipedia has many years of life ahead of it.

Wikipedia has been a useful utopia for how people could cooperate productively free of market relations and hierarchies. Benkler surveys the limits and disappointments with that utopia, and argues that Wikipedia remains a critical anchor for working alternatives to neoliberalism.

In the almost 20 years that have passed since it was launched, coverage of Wikipedia has undergone a radical shift: Initially cast as the symbol of intellectual frivolity in the digital age, it is now being lauded as the “last bastion of shared reality” in Trump’s America.

As the largest and most successful online volunteer project, Wikipedia is rightfully celebrated as a triumph of crowdsourcing and volunteerism. However, Robert Fernandez discusses the downsides of volunteerism and how volunteers can contribute to stifling innovation.

Conflict of interest (COI) is one of Wikipedia's most controversial but least-analyzed issues. What events have shaped its history? Who are the actors in this fraught ecosystem? What could be more fitting than learning from Beutler, someone who has a COI with this very subject?

In an increasingly factious world, Forsyth argues Wikipedia's approach to collaboration and trust-building point to a brighter future.

That which enabled Wikipedia to grow and become an invaluable free and open information resource have changed—both within Wikipedia itself and in the wider world. Hill and Shaw ask if there is room for optimism about the future of Wikipedia or open collaboration more broadly.