Wikipedia goes dark, but is the site still relevant

Wikipedia’s much publicized 24-hour blackout in protest of online antipiracy laws is not, it turns out, quite so dark.


The user-created encyclopedia is one of a number of Web sites that temporarily closed at midnight on Tuesday to publicize the belief that provisions in two Congressional bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act, referred to as SOPA, as well as the Protect IP Act, or PIPA — which may require search engines to block access to sites that employ copyrighted material via links or hosting — is tantamount to censorship, among other concerns.


But while a visit to Wikipedia’s English site shows a gloomy black screen with the stark words “Imagine a world without free knowledge,” intrepid users have to imagine no such thing: it is still possible to access Wikipedia’s content in a number of ways.


For example, typing Wikipedia.org in a Web browser (or any of the site’s pages for that matter), and as the page loads, pressing the escape key, circumvents or stops the blackout placeholder page from appearing. Timing the maneuver exactly right may take a few tries.


Could it be the case that, after a decade of driving innovation on the Web, Wikipedia is no longer relevant?


Perhaps the first place to look for an answer is Wikipedia itself, which has, in several ways, failed to keep pace with the rapid evolution of the Internet. With all due respect to the site’s ability to capture intelligence and knowledge from the Web on nearly every topic under the sun, the site no longer has the rock-star appeal it had ten years ago. While other sites have been integrating social elements — even simple things such as the Facebook Like button — and updating themselves for the visual Web, Wikipedia still looks like something out of the text-heavy 1990s. The social interaction on Wikipedia, such as it is, actually takes place behind the scenes, out of reach of the social Web.


Wikipedia, unlike Google or Twitter or Facebook, is the product of a nonprofit organization, Wikimedia Foundation, and is largely subject to the whims of volunteer contributors with their own views of what Wikipedia should represent to the world. In other words, if Wikipedia goes dark, it does not have accountability to shareholders or markets. Twitter and Facebook have future IPOs to worry about, Wikipedia does not. The Wikipedia Blackout is a statement, and a noble one at that, but not something that has immediate relevance to many people beyond the tech digerati.


Over the past few years, dissension over the mission of Wikipedia has become public, as some of the project’s most passionate supporters have left for other initiatives, jaded by the realization that most of the important work of Wikipedia has already been done. Most notably, there has been a failure to bring in fresh talent to replenish the ranks of aging Wikipedians. Jimmy Wales acknowledged as much after the most recent Wikipedia Conference. Wikipedia, like any nonprofit initiative, must compete for funding with other important causes and projects, forcing the site to rely essentially on tips and goodwill contributions for survival.