Wikipedia and fan loyalty

Wikipedia and Fandom manage to grow loyal communities with little toxic speech or misinformation. Their founders explain how, and discuss why Twitter – in contrast – is so problematic.

“The internet is so toxic and so horrible. But then there’s Wikipedia, and it’s completely different. Wiki communities are generally very nice places,” said Jimmy Wales, founder of online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

“Although the world struggles with viral misinformation – disinformation – we’ve proven to be pretty immune to all of that,” Jimmy added.

So what makes Wikipedia – and wiki communities such as Fandom – relatively immune to toxic discourse and misinformation?

Jimmy and Fandom CEO Perkins Miller claim that it’s down to devolving power into these communities and giving them the ability to control their environment.

Ultimately, there is a self-correcting nature to wikis. This is in contrast to Twitter, said Jimmy, where arguments can spiral out of control and misinformation can spread like wildfire.

Jimmy believes that other online communities can learn from how wikis operate, and outlined the main problems with Twitter’s approach when users encounter hate speech or misinformation.

“There’s three things you can do,” said Jimmy. “You can block them, and that helps you but doesn’t help anybody else. You can report them, and – if you’ve ever reported anything on Twitter, you know – that’s kind of a black box; that doesn’t work very well. Or, the most popular option, you can yell at them. And that’s what a lot of people do.”

“That just creates this online sort of toxic environment. And that’s because, as a user of Twitter, you don’t really have any ability to genuinely control the space,” said Jimmy.

Meanwhile, explained Jimmy, on Wikipedia and other wikis – such as Fandom – users elect their admins and the admins are accountable to the community and each other. They actually have the ability to control the space and can block problematic users from the platform if needed.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Fandom CEO Perkins Miller were in conversation with CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo on Centre Stage at Collision 2022.

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Main image of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales (left) and Fandom CEO Perkins Miller on Centre Stage during Day 1 of Collision 2022: Sam Barnes/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)