Review: The Wikipedia Revolution

My review of Andrew Lih's book has been published in this week's Times Literary Supplement. Obviously, it's not online, so I've posted a JPG and PDF.

As it was commissioned a few months ago, I haven't touched on the flare up this week regarding the number of editors leaving the site. For what it's worth, I don't think that the exodus will adversely affect the development of the English site much - it has stablised, and this is what you'd expect to happen when a period of explosive growth ends, as it clearly has.

I think the central thrust of my review still stands, the role of the 'cognitive surplus' - which went oddly unmentioned on last night's Newsnight. Those loosely tied to the project have left to find a new hobby to spend their surplus time and labour on.