Wikipedia: The most democratic force on earth

Spencer Graves claims that Wikipedia is the most democratic force on earth. Almost anyone can change almost anything on Wikipedia. What stays tends to be written from a neutral point of view citing credible sources.

Any Wikipedia user can receive an email any time an article that interests them changes. If the change is obvious vandalism, it will likely be reverted in seconds or minutes. Other changes may still be reverted or at least revised, though changes consistent with credible sources are usually retained in some form. The best Wikipedia articles are obtained via a collaboration between many people with very different understandings of the issues discussed in the articles.

The Wikipedia Foundation (WMF) does NOT pay anyone to edit Wikipedia. Funds donated to WMF go to maintaining the software, organizing conferences of volunteer Wikimedians, and lobbying governmental bodies to support Wikipedia’s “prime objective” to build “a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”


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