Online encyclopedias 線上百科全書
Happy Birthday, Wikipedia 生日快樂，維基百科
Lessons from the success of a different sort of tech titan
另類科技巨頭的成功啟示錄
Leaders
Jan 9th 2021 edition
WIKIPEDIA IS CLEAR on the matter: Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Yet on this particular question, few people seem to agree with the world’s most popular encyclopedia. The site approaches its 20th birthday, on January 15th, as the 13th-most-visited place on the web, offering more than 55m articles written in 300 languages. Worries about fake news, filter bubbles and market power have soured public opinion on the Utopian promises of the early internet. But Wikipedia—written by amateurs, freely available to all—stands as the great exception. It is the dream that worked.
維基百科對此事立場明確：它不是可靠的資訊來源。在特定問題上，似乎很少有人同意世界上最受歡迎的百科全書。該網站將於1月15日迎來20歲生日，作為訪問人數第132名的網站，它提供5,500萬種使用300種語言編寫的文章。在假新聞、篩檢程式泡泡和市場力量的擔憂下，公眾對早期網路烏托邦式承諾的看法惡化。但是，由業餘愛好者編寫並向所有人免費提供的維基百科是個例外。這個夢想實現了。
Or at least, mostly worked. Wikipedia’s crowdsourced model remains vulnerable to the occasional hoaxer or chancer. In August it emerged that many articles on the Scots version of the site had been written by an American editor who, by his own admission, was not really a speaker of the dialect. Nor is it free from honest mistakes. That can cause problems: for better or worse, powerful platforms from social-media firms to the World Health Organisation have come to treat it as a wellspring of truth online. All the same, the world is much better off for its existence.
或至少，大部分實現了。維基百科的眾包模式仍偶爾易受惡作劇或騙子攻擊。8月曾傳出一位美國編輯在蘇格蘭版維基百科撰寫許多文章，他本人承認不是真正蘇格蘭母語者，也並非沒有誠實上的錯誤。這可能會引起問題：無論好壞，從社群媒體到世界衛生組織等強大平台都將維基百科視為線上真理的源頭。同時，世界因為它的存在而更加美好。
Indeed, familiarity may have dulled the scale of its achievements. As well as being roughly as accurate as old-style encyclopedias, Wikipedia is also incomparably broader. Curious readers can learn about worthy subjects like Homer, general relativity or the Taiping Rebellion. They can also read about Québécois slang, the nature of magic in the “Harry Potter” novels and the fortunes of Yeovil Town Football Club, which toils in obscurity in the fifth tier of the English league. Denis Diderot, the 18th-century editor of the French Encyclopédie, hoped to “assemble all the knowledge scattered over the face of the Earth”. Wikipedia would have delighted him.
的確， 平易近人或許令人低估它成就有多大。但維基百科不僅與舊版百科全書一樣準確，且廣博的程度無人匹敵。好奇的讀者可以學到有價值的主題像是荷馬、廣義相對論或太平天國叛亂等。他們還可以讀到魁北克語、「哈利波特」小說中的魔法性質以及約維爾足球俱樂部的命運--他們在英格蘭全國性聯賽中默默無聞。18世紀的法國百科全書編輯狄德羅（Denis Diderot）希望「收集散布在地表上所有的知識」。維基百科將能取悅他。
The project owes much of its success to its unique structure. Funded by donations, Wikipedia earns no profits. It has no venture-capital backers demanding growth at all costs. Without advertisers to satisfy, it can focus exclusively on the interests of its readers and contributors. It is curated and run by people, not machines. There is no recommendation algorithm humming away in the background, choosing what to show readers in order to keep them glued to the site for as long as possible.
這項成就很大程度上歸功於其獨特結構--由捐贈者資助。維基百科沒有任何利潤，沒有風險投資的贊助者不惜一切代價地要求成長，不用滿足廣告商，可以只專注於讀者和捐助者的利益。它由人管理，而非機器，沒有推薦演算法在後台運轉、選擇展示的內容使讀者盡可能長時間地黏在網站上。
Other tech titans should study its success. Relying on algorithms is one reason they have achieved enormous scale with so few employees. Yet the downsides have begun to haunt them. As the social-media giants hire ever more people as moderators, and write ever longer sets of rules about what is allowed, Wikipedia offers a lesson in how to run a human-powered website.
其他科技巨擘應研究這樣的成功模式，依賴演算法是他們只用少數員工卻取得巨大規模的原因之一。然而，不利因素已開始纏繞他們。隨著社群媒體巨頭雇用更多人力審核，並就允許內容編寫更多的規則，維基百科提供有關如何運行人力網站的典範。
It is also a welcome boost for Enlightenment values, which have suffered at the hands of populism and authoritarian capitalism. If Wikipedia’s occasional scandals make people approach it with a little scepticism, all the better, for fair-minded scepticism is a healthy attitude in general. Wikipedia sees itself as a work in progress. If a fact is wrong, it invites users to persuade others so that it can be corrected. Its internal culture holds that knowledge comes from evidence, reason and good-faith debate, not pronouncements from the pulpit or the party.
這也是啟蒙價值觀所樂見的進展，啟蒙價值觀在民粹主義和專制資本主義的手中受挫。如果維基百科偶爾發生的醜聞，使人們對它抱持一點懷疑，那就更好了，因為公正的懷疑通常是一種健康的態度。維基百科將自己視為進展中的工作。如果事實是錯誤的，它會邀請用戶說服他人，因此它可被更正。它的內部文化認為，知識來自證據、理性和善意辯論，不是來自講台或政黨的聲明。
Like any institution, Wikipedia has flaws. It sometimes fails to live up to its own ideals. The nature of crowdsourcing means its quality varies. The most popular articles receive the most scrutiny, and tend to be the best. That leaves a long tail of obscure entries of lower quality. Articles can be overlong, or too technical. Much of its magic comes from the distinctive culture that has built up among contributors—but cultures can be fragile.
像任何機構一樣，維基百科也有缺陷。它有時無法實現自己的理想。眾包的性質意味著質量參差不齊。最受歡迎的文章受到最嚴格的審查，往往也是最好的。這留下了質量低下的晦澀條目，文章可能太長，也可能太技術性。大部分的奧妙來自於貢獻者之間建立的獨特文化，但文化可能不堪一擊。
Perhaps its biggest flaw is that, for all its breadth, it is still too narrow. The site’s editors are mostly male, and mostly from North America and Europe. A small number do a disproportionate share of the work. That colours both the encyclopedia’s choice of entries and the way it covers them. Wikipedians have been trying to change that, but progress has been too slow. A lot is at stake. In rich, liberal countries, where information is widely available, Wikipedia is a convenience. In poorer places, and illiberal ones, it can be quietly revolutionary. ■
縱然已盡可能廣博，也許它最大的缺陷仍然是太過狹隘。該網站的編輯主要是男性，且主要來自北美和歐洲。少數人承擔了不成比例的工作。這使百科全書詞條的選擇及其報導方式染上偏見色彩。維基百科一直在試圖改變這種狀況，但進展太慢。這帶來許多風險，在資訊隨處可得的富裕、自由國家，維基百科是一種便利。在較貧窮和不開明的地方，這可能是場安靜的革命。 ■
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