User:Smably/Sandbox/Thinking

Wikipedia as a BitTorrent Tracker

Traditionally, knowledge was disseminated in a peer-to-peer fashion. When you wanted to know something, you asked a friend, a family member, or an expert on the subject. This worked well as long as your peers were knowledgeable about the subjects that interested you. The problem came when no one you knew could answer your question; then, you had to go to an outside source. This was a relatively difficult and time-consuming process, so someone decided to get these experts together and create a central knowledge repository. Thus the first encyclopedia was born.

A traditional encyclopedia is like a server: many clients (readers) connect to it, download whatever knowledge they need, and disconnect. This model is remarkably efficient for the reader, but it introduces some problems for the publisher. Compiling and maintaining a massive repository of changing information is a difficult task, and the publisher may choose to stop providing readers with the information at any time. Enter Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is like a giant BitTorrent tracker for knowledge. Wikipedia doesn't provide this knowledge; instead, it provides a framework for it to be recorded and disseminated. Each peer who connects to Wikipedia can upload or download knowledge, and since there are many peers in the network, no single one must do an inordinate amount of work.

Also, GFDL!!