Wikipedia: How a Scratch Pad for Experts Became the Web's Anchor

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Teachers and librarians once warned that a website anyone could edit was where facts went to die. Two decades later, federal courts cite it and scientific journals ask authors to update it. This episode goes back to the year 2000 and Nupedia, a slow, expert-reviewed encyclopedia that demanded credentials and a multi-step peer review. In January 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia as a feeder project, a public scratch pad for rough drafts. The scratch pad swallowed the encyclopedia it was built to serve.

Behind the growth sat a theory and a license. Wales, then running the web portal Bomis, drew on Friedrich Hayek's idea of spontaneous order, betting that scattered local knowledge would organize itself. Richard Stallman's GNU Free Documentation License made sure nobody could wall the work off. The episode then examines what came after the boom: stalled editor growth, edit wars settled without a boss, a damaging hoax, structural bias, and a co-founder turned critic.

• By 2007 the English edition passed two million articles, overtaking the Yongle Encyclopedia compiled in Ming dynasty China in 1408. Today there are over 68 million articles in more than 300 languages.
• Growth then plateaued as the obvious topics ran out, anti-vandalism bots and formatting rules scared off newcomers, and search engines began answering questions without sending visitors to the site.
• Researchers map conflict through mutually reverting edit pairs. English editors fought hardest over George W. Bush, anarchism, and Muhammad, while German editors clashed over Croatia, Scientology, and 9/11 conspiracy theories.
• In May 2005 an anonymous editor falsely linked journalist John Seigenthaler to the Kennedy assassination, and the claim stood for four months. The scandal produced strict rules for biographies of living persons.
• A draft page for physicist Donna Strickland was rejected in May 2018 for lack of media coverage, five months before she won the Nobel Prize. In October 2025 Larry Sanger published his Nine Theses, arguing the site has abandoned neutrality.