Abstract

Ever since the invention of writing in Samaria some five thousand years ago, people have tried to store what knowledge they had in a better manor than just pure memory. They had wanted to save their achievements, the achievements of their whole society, for the generations to come. It is therefore not surprising, that, amongst the earliest written testimonies of our modern society, we can not only find documents on peace treatises, law, history and legend, but also taxation bills and financial contracts, all of which where preserved through time on small clay tablets by what one can only consider as luck. It is the foundation of our knowledge and the slow but steady evolution of this knowledge has resulted in what today has become known to us as almanacs, dictionaries and encyclopaedias.

This paper will try to portray one of the world’s largest and most extensive forms of storing information – the encyclopaedia known as Wikipedia. The Paper will try to show Wikipedias achievements but also its flaws; its success in the competition with and its comparison to other established, older encyclopaedias as well as the underlying organisational structure, of this: the worlds largest, democratically organized archive.