What is the magic that makes Wikipedia so antifragile?

· Bits and Bobs 3/3/25
  • What is the magic that makes Wikipedia so antifragile?
    • It holds no monopoly on being an internet encyclopedia.[wn][wo][wp]
    • Within itself it has a single namespace: there's only one article titled Barack Obama.
    • That means that the collaborators who choose to work on that article need to come to a mutually agreeable balance point on that one scarce Barack Obama article.
    • People care about what Wikipedia's Barack Obama article says because Wikipedia has earned the credibility for being a balanced, coherent place with norms that reward alignment on ground-truthed facts.
    • People care about what Wikipedia says because other people care about what Wikipedia says.
    • It's a fully emergent process born out of swarms of human intention that has at its core a kind of inherent scarcity and buttressing network effects.

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