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ZDNET's key takeaways
Wikipedia is the world's most popular online encyclopedia.
It is the most successful open data project of all time.
However, AI brings new challenges and long-term threats.
Today, when people ask, 'Where was Madonna born?' 'Who won the 1999 Super Bowl?' or 'Who's the current world classical chess champion?' (Bay City, Michigan, the Denver Broncos, and Gukesh Dommaraju), they turn to Wikipedia. Or, to be more exact, if they Google the answer, Wikipedia is the top source, but Google's AI Overview is what they'll see at the search results page. It's Wikipedia writers, however, who did the research for the answers.
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Twenty-five years ago, it was another story. Before 15 January 2001, if you did a Google search, your answers to those earlier questions would have come from a Madonna fan site, ESPN, and the Internet Chess Club. On that day, a small nonprofit launched what seemed like a utopian idea, an encyclopedia that anyone could edit. Today, it's one of the top 10 websites in the world, cited in court rulings, academic papers, and journalism. And yet, volunteers and donations still run it, without a single ad in sight.
Growing pains
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