Wikipedia: Difference between revisions

The encyclopedia is a major destination for readers to access information about any given topics, ranging from natural sciences to political fields. Theoretically, the encyclopedia is open for editing by anyone, meaning that readers can become producers and editors at any time.<ref>{{cite web |last1=McGrady |first1=Ryan |title=What Attacks on Wikipedia Reveal about Free Expression {{!}} TechPolicy.Press |url=https://www.techpolicy.press/what-attacks-on-wikipedia-reveal-about-free-expression/ |website=Tech Policy Press |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=14 May 2025}}</ref>

Although Wikipedia formally enshrines the right to fork contents from them in order to start a new encyclopedia, it has been reported that Wikipedia effectively operated as a ''de facto'' monopoly among online encyclopedias for a long time, and Wikipedia had received privileged positions by various search engines such as [[Google]] on their search results. Social media service [[TikTok]] included similar information from Wikipedia in their search results. Besides that, Wikipedia is one of the top sources for AI chatbots.<ref>{{cite web |title=Wikipedia:Content forks |url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PROJFORK |website=Wikipedia |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=16 October 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Introducing Justapedia |url=https://quillette.com/2023/12/11/introducing-justapedia/ |website=Quillette |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=11 December 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Sato |first1=Mia |title=TikTok has quietly been inserting Wikipedia snippets into search results |url=https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/13/23871880/tiktok-search-engine-wikipedia-snippets-google |website=The Verge |access-date=21 November 2025 |date=13 September 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Schaul |first1=Kevin |last2=Chen |first2=Szu Yu |last3=Tiku |first3=Nitasha |title=Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/ai-chatbot-learning/ |website=Washington Post |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en}}</ref>

Consequently, Wikipedia's monopoly had generated significant downstream effects where Wikipedia had played crucial roles in shaping medical decisions, economic outcomes, scientific publications, and perhaps judicial rulings.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Beck |first1=Julie |title=Doctors’ #1 Source for Healthcare Information: Wikipedia |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/doctors-1-source-for-healthcare-information-wikipedia/284206/ |website=The Atlantic |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |date=5 March 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Hinnosaar |first1=Marit |last2=Hinnosaar |first2=Toomas |last3=Kummer |first3=Michael |last4=Slivko |first4=Olga |title=Wikipedia matters |url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jems.12421 |website=Journal of Economics & Management Strategy |access-date=21 November 2025 |pages=657–669 |language=en |doi=10.1111/jems.12421 |date=2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Neil |first1=Thompson, |last2=Douglas |first2=Hanley, |title=Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence From a Randomized Control Trial |url=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3039505 |access-date=21 November 2025 |language=en |doi=10.2139/ssrn.3039505 |date=13 February 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Trial by Internet: A Randomized Field Experiment on Wikipedia’s Influence on Judges’ Legal Reasoning |url=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4174200 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |access-date=21 November 2025}}</ref> Wikipedia is even included among longtermist knowledge preservation initiatives such as the Arch Mission's The LEO (Low Earth Orbit) library, The Lunar Library I on the failed Beresheet lunar lander, The Lunar Library II on the failed Astrobotic Peregrine lander, The Galactic Legacy Archive on a successful Intuitive Machines moon lander mission, and The Pyramid Library on the successful Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander mission.<ref>{{cite web |title=The LEO Library: Constellation 1 |url=https://www.archmission.org/leo-library-1 |website=Arch Mission Foundation - Preserving humanity forever, in space and on Earth. |access-date=21 November 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=The Lunar Library: Genesis |url=https://www.archmission.org/spaceil |website=Arch Mission Foundation - Preserving humanity forever, in space and on Earth.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Lunar Library II |url=https://www.archmission.org/lunar-library-2 |website=Arch Mission Foundation - Preserving humanity forever, in space and on Earth.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Galactic Legacy Archive |url=https://www.archmission.org/galactic-legacy-archive |website=Arch Mission Foundation - Preserving humanity forever, in space and on Earth.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Galactic Legacy Archive |url=https://www.archmission.org/galactic-legacy-archive |website=Arch Mission Foundation - Preserving humanity forever, in space and on Earth. |access-date=21 November 2025}}</ref>

On August 2020, a Reddit user publicized that a prolific Scots Wikipedia administrator did not speak the Scots language; tens of thousands of articles were in fact English with eye dialect spellings to suggest a Scottish accent, or word-by-word machine translations of articles from English Wikipedia. Wikimedia users debated recruiting fluent speakers of Scots to repair the articles, reverting all edits from the administrator in question, or – as the latter would entail removing nearly half the articles in the encyclopedia – even deleting and restarting Scots Wikipedia afresh. ''The Guardian'' attributed the problem to systemic issues in Wikipedia culture, suggesting that some administrators are afforded effectively unchecked power based on sheer volume of edits (rather than the quality of their work). Robyn Speer, chief scientist at Luminoso, expressed concern that artificial intelligence corpora which used Wikipedia for language-training data had been corrupted by the pseudo-Scots.<ref name="inews">{{cite web |last1=McDonald |first1=Karl |title=Scots Wikipedia taken over by American teenager who wrote thousands of 'very odd' articles without learning language |url=https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 |website=inews.co.uk |access-date=August 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200826132225/https://inews.co.uk/news/scotland/scots-wikipedia-language-articles-native-speaker-mistakes-610689 |archive-date=August 26, 2020 |language=en |date=August 26, 2020 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Brooks |first1=Libby |last2=Hern |first2=Alex |title=Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia |website=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=August 26, 2020 |date=August 26, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=McCarthy |first1=Kieren |title=Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles |url=https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/26/scots_wikipedia_fake/ |website=[[The Register]] |access-date=August 26, 2020 |language=en |date=August 26, 2020}}</ref>