The Sustainable Development Path of Wikipedia: A Coexistence of Success and Challenges

One of the most representative cases of public goods in the internet era is undoubtedly Wikipedia. This online encyclopedia, founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, aims to "make the sum of all human knowledge freely accessible to anyone" and seeks to provide a freely accessible knowledge platform via the internet.

To this day, Wikipedia has undoubtedly achieved this goal. Relying on the open editing model of "user-uploaded content", anyone can contribute content online, gathering a global "think tank". Currently, the platform has entries in over 300 languages, with more than 62 million entries recorded, and over 14 million edits per month. The data volume of the English Wikipedia alone exceeds 20TB, with monthly visits exceeding 6 billion, firmly ranking among the top ten most popular websites in the world. This data is enough to prove Wikipedia's benchmark status as a knowledge repository in the Web2 era.

In the current era of rapid AI development, the value of Wikipedia is becoming increasingly important. Research indicates that Wikipedia is the largest single source of information for ChatGPT's underlying large language model, with its content potentially accounting for 3%-5% of the data captured by LLMs. Some scholars even believe that "without Wikipedia, generative artificial intelligence would cease to exist."

It is worth noting that such a large-scale and successful operation as Wikipedia is not a commercial private institution, and even is described as "the largest non-commercial advertising-free website in the world." This sounds incredible, as most internet platforms of comparable size rely on advertising revenue or burn cash to maintain operations. For Web2 public goods that face difficulties in monetization and have short survival cycles, operating in a non-commercial model for a long time while maintaining such scale is nothing short of a miracle.

The successful operating model of Wikipedia is worth exploring in depth. This article will analyze the sustainable development path of this public good from multiple perspectives, including content production, sources of cash flow and expenditure allocation, power and financial disputes.

UGC: A Revolutionary Content Generation Model

The open editing mode of Wikipedia can be traced back to its early days. Its predecessor, Nupedia, had an editing process that was too slow, severely limiting the speed of content generation. To improve efficiency, Larry Sanger proposed the "Wiki" knowledge network system, allowing users to freely upload content and anyone can participate in editing entries.

This model, known as UGC(User-Generated Content), breaks the traditional format dominated by experts and publishers in encyclopedias. UGC can flexibly incorporate non-academic but trending hot events, quickly capturing user attention. This bottom-up "crowdsourcing" model extends Wikipedia's informational reach into all aspects. After its launch in January 2001, Wikipedia quickly surpassed Nupedia, which closed in 2003. The Encyclopaedia Britannica also ceased print publication in 2012.

Currently, there are still millions of volunteers around the world participating in editing and maintaining Wikipedia content, with about 120,000 active editors and approximately 300 editing events occurring every minute.

Although UGC created conditions for the rise of Wikipedia, it also brought side effects. In an open and free editing model, ensuring the accuracy of content is a challenge. Wikipedia has experienced multiple incidents of entry fabrication or destructive editing, such as inserting false information, advertising copy, or politically biased content.

In this regard, Wikipedia offers a rollback feature, allowing anyone who discovers malicious changes to restore an entry to a previous version. Data shows that obvious malicious edits can typically be detected and removed within minutes. Currently, Wikipedia widely uses bots to correct simple errors, but human intervention is still needed to handle complex issues.

Wikipedia has established a three-tiered security system:

1. Regular Processing: Modify, Rollback, Discuss
2. Administrators and Inspectors Involved: Have higher authority to handle disputes
3. Arbitration Committee: Composed of experienced volunteers, serving as a final means of resolution.

In terms of open content licensing, Wikipedia mainly adopts the CC BY-SA 4.0 protocol, allowing users to freely share or adapt content, but requiring attribution and publication under the same license.

Cash Flow Analysis: Donation-Supported Operating Model

For large internet platforms, stable cash flow is a key issue. Wikipedia, as a non-commercial and free reading platform, cannot monetize like other commercial platforms through advertising or membership systems. So, how does it obtain funds to maintain its operations?

The Wikimedia Foundation behind Wikipedia was established in 2003, headquartered in San Francisco, with over 500 employees. Its funding mainly comes from the following sources:

1. User donations: account for over 90% of total revenue, with an average contribution of about 11 dollars per donor.
2. Large enterprises and fund sponsorship: such as Google, Microsoft, Gates Foundation, etc.
3. Grant for Public Welfare Projects: Such as the "Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom" project
4. Wikimedia Enterprise Service: Provides paid APIs for large tech companies.
5. Wikimedia Online Store: Selling Merchandise
6. Investment Income: Approximately $6.5 million profit in 2023

In the fiscal year 2022-2023, the foundation's total revenue reached 180 million dollars. In terms of expenses, employee salaries and benefits accounted for 60%, community support accounted for 14%, professional services and management expenses accounted for 15%, and fundraising expenses accounted for 4%.

The funding sources and expenditure distribution of Wikipedia have sparked some controversy. Some question its "overfunding" and "fraudulent donations", believing that Wikipedia exaggerates its funding needs and does not actually require that much money for its operations. Others criticize the foundation for its inefficient investment in software development.

In response to the doubts, the foundation explained that the funds raised are not only used for daily operations but also ensure that Wikipedia has sufficient reserves to cope with potential crises, all while remaining ad-free, free of charge, and unaffected by commercial influences.

Challenges Faced by Wikipedia

Despite significant achievements in sustainable development, Wikipedia still faces numerous challenges:

1. Content Quality and Neutrality: How to Ensure Content Reliability and Timely Corrections in the AI Era
2. Reduction in active editors: Stricter review mechanisms and abuse of administrator privileges affect the enthusiasm of newcomers.
3. Discrepancies between the community and the foundation: There are disputes regarding resource allocation, software development, and other aspects.
4. Insufficient diversity among volunteers: Women, minorities, and content from non-English regions are often overlooked.
5. Damage to credibility: Internal disputes and the impact of AI may lead to a decline in user base.

Summary

The success of Wikipedia provides valuable experience for the sustainable development of public goods. Only through stable economic sources, efficient use of funds, transparent financial management, and deep community involvement can public goods develop steadily and robustly in the long term. At the same time, the challenges faced by Wikipedia also serve as a warning for other builders of public goods.

In the future, public goods will face more complex environmental changes, including user attention dispersion, rising operational costs, regulatory adjustments, and changes in demand. This requires public goods to continuously engage users, explore new revenue sources, and achieve sustainable development.