Who doesn’t know it, who havn’t heard of it, who doesn’t use it? Wikipedia is the world greatest and comprehensive of all encyclopaedias. There has never been a more extensive conglomeration of knowledge and wisdom in the humanity than that. But how could such a platform emerge in only six years?

Wikipedia is an online-community where people create share the content based on their specific knowledge or special interest directly in the browser. Everyone can create, change, extend and even erase an article. The Name Wikipedia consist of the hawaiian word “Wiki” witch means “fast” an the word encyclopaedia. Today, it consists of millions of articles in more than 70 languages.

Due to the GNU-License it is free for everyone to write and to read articles. So some critics say the majority of the articles is poorly investigated and badly written. They mistrust the quality and the scientific value. And it’s true: who says that the stuff your neighbour could have been written is 100 percent right!? Who says that the articles are fully fledged and thoroughly documented?! These doubts are understandable but through these principles Wikipedia is a sophisticated example of Andersons Long Tail theory.

Compared to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Wikipedia is not authored by experts and here and there simply not as precise or scientific. But Wikipedia is much bigger (Wikipedia has more than 3.5 Mio articles vs. 80000 Encyclopaedia Britannica) faster, scalable it is self organised. Based on more than 50000 Authors the articles get corrected within minutes after publishing. (Source: “The Long Tail”, Chris Anderson, Hyperion 2006 NYC) For me, Wikipedia is the ultimate knowledge base I always consult first. In 99 percent of all cases it provides a decent answer. If I want to get deeper into the issue, I mostly follow the attached link list at the bottom of every article.