In discussions about the politics of knowledge, the name of online encyclopedia, Wikipedia is one that no one can ignore. Wikipedia has featured naturally in debates on knowledge ever since information technology applications began reaching ordinary people as tools and services. A core principle of democratic thought on knowledge is the idea that ‘knowledge is the greatest weapon’. Capitalism challenged this principle by monopolising knowledge itself. Wikipedia emerged as a popular resistance to this monopolisation. In that sense, Wikipedia and its parent organization, Wikimedia, were also platforms that primed knowledge for public debate. This people-centric, free encyclopedia initiative, which allows anyone to intervene in intellectual debates, has successfully completed a quarter of a century. When Americans Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia on January 15, 2001, their aim was to create a single portal to store all the knowledge accumulated by humankind. This was the idea and dream of Sanger, who was also a philosopher. Although that goal has not been fully realised, Wikipedia remains a vast repository of knowledge spread across more than 300 languages worldwide. It is estimated that Wikipedia, one of the eight most visited websites in the world, currently hosts more than seven million articles.
An encyclopedia is generally understood as a collection of articles that comprehensively discuss subjects. Encyclopedias are usually compiled by arranging articles alphabetically or thematically. The articles are written by experts or groups of experts in their respective fields. From Pliny's Naturalis Historia, considered the world's first encyclopedia, to the Encyclopedia Britannica which was highly popular until recent times, all these series of publications were prepared in this manner. Wales and Sanger proposed a radically different idea. Anyone could write an article and upload it to Wikipedia, and someone else could edit it if required. The only condition was adherence to clear standards and guidelines for writing and editing. With this approach, an article written by one person would be updated and developed by many others, ensuring that the knowledge of a single individual was not imposed arbitrarily. Alongside this, a continuing public debate on the subject would take shape. As the world entered a new century, Wikipedia put this idea—once considered entirely utopian—into practice, making it popular and transforming it into people's primary reference. This also enabled the significant task of translating knowledge into many languages. In the modern era, intellectual transactions continue to take place primarily in English, considered the global language. Consequently, knowledge is being collected and amassed solely in this language. Wikipedia broke this linguistic monopoly by providing tools for translation. It is worth recalling that of Wikipedia’s seven million articles, six million are in languages other than English. Wiki Malayalam deserves special mention here. The first Malayalam article appeared on Wikipedia in December 2002. Within the first five years, it reached 5000 articles in Malayalam. The limited number in the early period was due to technical complications related to computer fonts. Later, as Unicode fonts became widespread, the number of articles increased. By 2013, the count crossed 30,000, and today 87,567 Malayalam articles are available on Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation had already identified 1,000 essential articles that every Wikipedia should contain, all of which were published in Malayalam ten years ago.
It cannot be overlooked, however, that despite the popularisation of knowledge, this initiative faces several challenges. The first concerns the content of articles. Even though it is often characterized as a platform for public discourse, that platform has been hijacked in certain contexts. There have been deliberate attempts to insert false and misleading information into articles. In India, it became major news that Sangh Parivar organisations had appointed volunteers specifically for this purpose. While efforts to inject Sangh Parivar ideology into Wikipedia articles have been exposed, a close reading of many entries suggests that the threat has not been entirely eliminated. At the same time, in the era of artificial intelligence, online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia are no longer read as they once were. Ten years ago, Wikipedia ranked sixth among the most visited websites, but it has since slipped by two places. In short, it can no longer be described as the primary reference point for people. Moreover, similar initiatives inspired by the Wiki model have begun to emerge using artificial intelligence. An example is Grokipedia from Elon Musk’s company xAI. In this context, the relevance of Wikipedia is increasingly being questioned. Even so, Wikipedia will be remembered as an initiative that created a new paradigm in the construction of encyclopedias.