The Last Best Place on the Internet by Richard Cooke

THE LAST BEST PLACE ON THE INTERNET by Richard Cooke, an award-winning Australian journalist, describes “A Human History of Wikipedia.” And it seems particularly relevant as we transition to an age dominated by AI when even Wikipedia’s own entry page now notes that they are receiving fewer visitors. This book feels like more than the history of the past quarter century for this massive site (“the largest and most read reference work in history,” per its own Wikipedia page entry). Cooke has produced almost an elegy to Wikipedia’s human-centered, volunteer efforts, (e.g., he notes its early “radical shift” of including “Talk” and History” sub-pages for articles) and a ban on advertising. He also highlights the controversies surrounding questions about its accuracy and systemic bias (e.g., discussing the efforts to encourage more female editors) while splitting the text into different parts which address questions concerning What is Wikipedia? Where did it come from? Why does it work? What has been the Struggle? and What is the Future? Reading this rather dense and detailed work will encourage reflection on how (subconsciously for me at least) our use of Wikipedia has changed (e.g., “One figure showed that the click-through rate to Wikipedia from AI chatbots was only 0.33 percent; for search engines, it had been closer to 9 percent” and (Cooke refers here to another researcher’s observations), “what we’re witnessing is something more profound: a generational shift in how people relate to knowledge itself. Younger users don't search. They scroll. They don't read articles. They consume fragments.”). The Notes section comprises roughly fifteen percent of the text and Cooke conducted an extensive series of interviews. Library Journal gave THE LAST BEST PLACE ON THE INTERNET a starred review, saying, “Cooke leaves no stone unturned, and the result is a wide-ranging, eye-opening, and entertaining survey of the weird and wonderful world of Wikipedia.”

For a fun exercise in appreciating the numbers of people working on Wikipedia and the frequency of edits, visit Listen Wikipedia which is explained here.