The world's largest encyclopaedia is not the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or even Encarta, it is a web-based free content encyclopedia which can be read and edited by anyone. The English version alone contains 460,000 articles [and is growing at a rate of 3,000 per day] and 77 million words. Wikipedia.org is now one of the most popular reference sites on the Web, getting around 80 million hits per day [that's more than oxygen, and they don't have free text messages].

It's not your normal encyclopedia, or even website. Wikipedia runs on 'wiki' software, an application that allows users to collectively author web documents. Each wikipedia page contains an 'edit' link, which users can click to edit passages created by other writers. Unlike traditional encyclopedias, which are written and edited by professionals, Wikipedia is the result of work by thousands of volunteers. Anyone can contribute an article, or edit an existing one, at any time.

Yes, anybody can just go to the site and change an entry. Even you. It is unbelievably easy and takes about two minutes. Anybody reading is actively encouraged to change anything they they think is wrong. Each entry is constantly evolving, and there is no final authority to sign off and say this definition is now definitive. It's mad. But it seems to work.

There will be some people who through ignorance, ideological hangups or just malice, make changes which are downright wrong. But the idea is that the encylopaedia polices itself. There are so many people using the wikipedia that political or philosophical foes will end up working together despite themselves to come up with a definition that everyone can agree with, and that nobody will want to change.

There is a kindof community feel to the wikiverse despite it's size, and a dedicated team of wikipedians hover constantly, monitoring changes and undoing anything that is too controversial, biased or just nonsense. But only a tiny percentage of entries get sent back.

Marx would say it works thanks to a dialectical process. Bertie Ahern would probably call it socialism. We think it's the way the web is supposed to work, with everybody's opinion counting equally, and definitions not dictated from above by the man. It's idealistic, and definitely not foolproof, but it shows the potential the internet has to really shake things up, powerwise. There is a kind of beauty to the idea, if not the practice.

Even though it's an American set up project there's plenty of Irish entries, many of them impressively obscure. During a quick random browse we learned that 'Letterkenny IT' is "an institution that offers courses in business, computing, engineering, nursing and science", 'Dustin the Turkey' is "a popular Irish television puppet, star of RTÉ's The Den since the 1980s" and 'Arse' is "an Old English word that has been the coarse word for buttocks since time immemorial". The wikipedia knows its stuff.

Obviously, those researching essays for college should be careful. Even if malicious stuff is generally taken out quickly, you could be unlucky with your timing. And most of those writing the articles are slightly more nerdy than average Joes, not PhD qualified experts in their fields. I wouldn't use it as a definitive guide to thermonuclear dynamics. But as an initial research tool, when looking for some background info on something, it is pretty cool.

There are now several side projects running such as the Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikibooks, which all use wiki software and are hosted and supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to learn they are site of the week. Enter the wikiverse by clicking here.

first published on oxygen.ie