Just how huge is Wikipedia?
June 13th, 2007
This graphic illustrating the size of Wikipedia appears in the current print issue of GOOD Magazine, and has now been posted online. The illegible text on the image above reads as follows.
To help you get an idea of Wikipedia’s size, we have put 250,000 blue and yellow dots on these two pages. Based on that scale, you would need:
27.2 copies of these two pages to equal the 6,800,000 unique visitors Wikipedia sites get per day
28 copies of these two pages to equal the 7,000,000 articles on the site
1.1 copies of these two pages to equal the 282,874 people who have contributed to the site
0.001 copies of these two pages to equal the 250 languages they speak
Wikipedia has its critics, and some of their criticisms are legitimate. But whatever its shortcomings, it is difficult to deny that Wikipedia is a powerful global phenomenon, an extraordinary example of what truly collaborative knowledge creation and sharing can produce. With relative simplicity, Wikipedia invites each of us to have a generative Web experience, tapping into our deeper desire to create, without the need to be “creative.”
As you think about the future of your organization, I urge you to set aside the mainstream media’s often reflexively critical perspectives of Wikipedia, as well as your own assumptions about its pros and cons, in favor of a different point of view: what can Wikipedia’s success teach us about how we need to change?
Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity, We Have Always Done It That Way
Ben Martin and P.I.
Association exec Ben Martin, CAE is P.I.’s Architect of Participation. Jeff and Ben help clients harness the power of the Web through the strategic application of social tools.
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