The Last Best Place on the Internet

In his book, “The Last Best Place on the Internet” Richard Cooke calls Wikipedia 'the internet as it should have been". The work retells the history of Wikipedia with an emphasis on the human, with all the tragedy and comedy that entails. (This topic isn't directly related to Harringay, but this website was formed in the same rush of idealistic enthusiasm over the potential of the internet and so to me it feels linked. Wikipedia also has an important place in Harringay's recent history. So, I hope you'll forgive my including this on the site.)

Reviewing the book, The Economist, says,

"As Wikipedia celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, it faces big problems. It is shedding both readers and volunteer editors. It is at the centre of an escalating culture war. And AI poses an existential threat. As Richard Cooke, an Australian journalist, observes in a thought-provoking new book, Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia ever written by humans—and it is likely to hold that title for ever. (Any future rival is sure to be made with the help of AI)

The authour concludes with,

"AI’s absorption of Wikipedia means that more people than ever are reading its content. Yet it also means that fewer people are visiting the site itself. When a Wikipedia link is suggested by a search engine, nearly a tenth of users click through. When Wikipedia is cited by an llm, the clickthrough rate is only 0.33% (and not all credit their sources). Since 2022 Wikipedia has lost almost a quarter of its readership—and with it, opportunities to solicit donations and recruit new editors. Wikipedians are “a smaller club working harder to maintain something fewer people see”, laments one longtime contributor.

"Wikipedia’s billions of words, written, edited and categorised by millions of human volunteers, helped create the conditions for ai. Now AI’s use of that material threatens to suffocate the very source that helped bring it to life."

(The review also tells us that "The second-largest language on Wikipedia is Cebuano, a minority tongue of the Philippines, which has 6m articles—mostly about insects—that have been uploaded by a bot made by a Swede who married a Filipina"!)

Jennifer Szalai, a New York Times book critic, has published a video review of the book to go along with her full written review.