Only experts can be trusted to create an encyclopedia.
That’s been the prevailing view ever since the Gutenberg printing press put books within the reach of ordinary people almost 600 years ago.
When the internet exploded in the 1990s, groups of entrepreneurs began to imagine the future. Wouldn’t it be great to have an online encyclopedia? After centuries of bulky, multi-volume encyclopedias cluttering an entire family room bookshelf, wouldn’t it be incredible to be just a few clicks away from all the knowledge in the world?
The movers and shakers of that movement included Bill Gates and Microsoft, who launched Encarta in 1993, and Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, who unveiled Nupedia in 2000.
What both projects had in common is that only experts in their fields would be allowed to contribute articles.
Sanger and Wales, for instance, created a lengthy and forbidding process for the approval of Nupedia articles. At the end of its first year, Nupedia had only a dozen articles published and another 150 bogged down in the peer review swamp. Worst of all, nobody was having fun. Writing and editing felt like a drag.
That’s when Wales and Sanger launched a “minor league” online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. It would tag alongside Nupedia. Wikipedia would encourage mere mortals – people without Ph.D.’s – to write about subjects they loved. Not for money or fame, but just for the fun of it.
The Nupedia board was indignant. They insisted that Wikipedia be kept radically separate from the “real” encyclopedia, so the ramblings of the amateurs didn’t inadvertently contaminate the brilliance of the experts.
As it turned out, that was just about the greatest gift Wikipedia could ever have received.
Walter Isaacson, in his book The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Invented the Digital Revolution, describes what happened next:
“Unfettered, Wikipedia took off… It was a delightful, counter-intuitive concept… Anyone could edit a page, and the results would show up instantly. You didn’t have to be an expert. You didn’t have to fax in a copy of your diploma. You didn’t have to be authorized by the Powers That Be. You didn’t even have to be registered or use your real name.
“Sure, that meant vandals could mess up the pages. So could idiots or ideologues. But the software kept track of every version… In the case of Wikipedia, its defenders [that is, the people absolutely devoted to preserving the integrity of a particular subject] were fiercely committed. Wars have been fought with less intensity than reversion battles on Wikipedia.
“And somewhat amazingly, the forces of reason regularly triumphed.”
In other words, despite enduring popular opinion to the contrary, Wikipedia articles are amazingly accurate. Studies show they compare favorably to those written by globally recognized subject matter experts.
And there are lots and lots of them.
Before its first birthday, Wikipedia had published 10,000 articles. As of Labor Day this week, there were exactly 6,877,224 articles in at least 287 languages. The English articles are comprised of more than 4.6 billion words. Approximately 14,000 new subjects are added every month. That’s down from the peak growth period in 2006, when 50,000 new articles appeared every 30 days.
But one must admit that the currently monthly “decline” merely suggests that Wikipedia has seriously chipped away at the number of subjects worth writing about.
Isaacson describes Wikipedia as an unplanned miracle, “the greatest collaborative knowledge project in history.” Encarta and Nupedia are long gone. What we now know is that ordinary people can be trusted to create an encyclopedia.
And according to Scripture, it’s clear that God trusts ordinary people, too.
Jesus entrusted his message, his mission, and his legacy to a rag-tag group of slow learners. One of them turned him in to the police, and another declared three times that he didn’t even know who he was – and that was the guy Jesus had identified as the leader of the band.
The Bible couldn’t be more clear: For God so loved the world he didn’t send a panel of experts.
Incredibly, he’s still in the business of recruiting people like you and me.
So take whatever you have – your gifts, your experiences, and your fondest hopes – and entrust them to the Lord. Then let him do the rest.
You don’t have to be a star to be part of the greatest story in heaven and on earth.
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