One of the world’s most- well known online encyclopedia, Wikipedia recently celebrated it’s 20 years of existence milestone. The multilingual open-collaborative, not-for-profit website is created and maintained by a community of volunteer editors who use a wiki-based editing system.
According to Douglas Scott, who is a board member at Wikimedia SA, “Wikipedia is different from all the other internet titans out there, donations keep the service running. Peer review makes Wikipedia work. It’s not perfect, but it’s as close as we can get”.
“There are knowledge gaps in South Africa… There’s a lack of diversity of editors… Some types of information are well-covered… But there are few articles on, say, Xhosa clan names. We need area experts… to contribute… But I don’t want to discourage people who don’t have credentials… Often when you’re very knowledgeable about a subject, you can’t explain it to people who aren’t” Scott concluded.
