Unlike other encyclopedias throughout history, Wikipedia has no physical limit on how many pages it can contain.... also, in the age of Google search and hypertext, people can come across Wikipedia's content through any number of avenues... The idea of a volume or alphabetical order is completely irrelevant to a modern Internet encyclopedia. Althou... See more

Unlike most sites on the Internet that solicit "user generated content", no registration, no email, no identification is needed before someone can change a Wikipedia page. It would seem self-evident that this "open editing" model would lead to uncontrollable chaos and absolute disaster, yet completely counter to intuition, it has produced the oppos... See more

Wikipedia survives and retains its passionate community also becuase it is social. You never know whom you will meet, strike up a conversation with, and as a consequence, learn from. Every Wikipedia article has a discussion page, to encourage debate and the exchange of ideas with others in the community. Imagine taking an online bulletin board, dis... See more

There are a range of topics that are always being disupted between inclusionists and deletionists. It's the borderline cases that are the hardest. A long-running battle has been about whether or not to have an article about each and every school that exists. Each college or university certainly deserves one, but what about each and every middle or ... See more

A core idea Wikipedia embraced, borrowed from the original MeatballWiki, was to assume good faith (AGF) when interacting with others. The guidelined promoted optimistic production rather than pessimistic nay-saying, and reds, "unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt... See more

Eventualism has become an accepted norm in the community, because by default since the beginning of the project, starting from nothing, articles have overwhelmingly benefited from multiple eyeballs (and edits).

The Wikipedia community also reinforces another Web 2.0 value - reuse and rmix. If you can build and learn from the work of others, this unbridled content can evolve much faster.

Since the Web 2.0 era is about user-generated content, it can be a show to newcomers who are not used to the idea when they come to Wikipedia. The community practice of not waiting for a fancy solution and just getting your hands dirty has spawned a special mantra (or admonishment): SOFIXIT.

One Wikipedian, with the handle of Durova, is pessimistic about the ability of Wikipedia to remain personable. She came up with a formulation that seems to track Wikipedia's evolution: