The Anyone-Can-Edit Syndrome: Intercreation Stories of Three Featured Articles on Wikipedia

Abstract

The user-generated wiki encyclopedia Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Wikipedia has become the world's largest wiki encyclopedia, and behind many of its entries are interesting stories of creation, or rather intercreation, since Wikipedia is produced by a large number of contributors. Using the slogan “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” (Wikipedia 2013), Wikipedia invites everyone to participate, but the participants do not necessarily represent all kinds of individuals or interests – there might be an imbalance affecting the content as well as the perspective conveyed. As a phenomenon Wikipedia is quite complex, and can be studied from many different angels, for instance through the articles’ history and the edits to them.

Keywords

• wikipedia
• collaboration
• intercreation
• produser
• experts
• front figures