Wikipedia's Growth Story

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Case Details:

Case Code : BSTR272
Case Length : 13 pages
Period : 2001-07
Pub Date : 2008
Teaching Note :Not Available
Organization : Wikipedia
Themes: Business Models | Growth Factors and Challenges
Industry : Internet and e-Commerce
Countries : US

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This case study was compiled from published sources, and is intended to be used as a basis for class discussion. It is not intended to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a management situation. Nor is it a primary information source.

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"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."¹

- Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia, in July 2004.

"I only use Wikipedia for things I know cold, looking for a terse description to share with my daughter doing homework so I don't have to write it myself. But if I don't know the subject, I would never consider Wikipedia as a source of information. The biggest issue is that Wikipedia provides no information on who posted the story, the writer's credentials or the motives behind changes."²

- Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management, Wharton University, in January 2006.

Introduction

On September 09, 2007, Wikipedia, the US-based online encyclopedia, posted its two millionth article in its English edition. By then, Wikipedia had published more than 8 million articles³ in around 253 different languages⁴. Wikipedia hosted a total of 1.41 billion words with more than 609 million words in the English edition alone⁵.

Built on the model of free content ⁶, Wikipedia came into being on January 15, 2001. The website was a wiki⁷, to which anyone could contribute content and which anyone could edit. Hence, the name Wikipedia - a combination of Wiki and Encyclopedia.

Wikipedia was a result of an experiment to collect information for another project called Nupedia⁸.

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1] "Wikipedia Founder, Jimmy Wales Responds," www.interviews.slashdot.org, July 28, 2004.

2] "Can Wikipedia Survive Its Own Success?" Knowledge@Wharton, January 25, 2006.

3] An 'article' on Wikipedia is a page containing an encyclopedia entry. Wikipedia does not stipulate the minimum number of words for the write-up to qualify as an article on the website. An article is different from a 'page' which includes all the material on Wikipedia, including encyclopedia pages, talk pages, documentation, and other special pages like rules, guidelines, etc.

4] Each language has a separate domain name. For example, the English version is en.wikipedia.org.

5] "About Wikipedia," en.wikipedia.org.

6] Free content is a kind of work which includes technical writing or art work having very little (or nil) legal restriction regarding freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the content.

7] Wiki is a software using which one can create, and edit web page content. Wiki is generally used to create collaborative websites.

8] Nupedia was an encyclopedia to which experts contributed content.