I first stumbled across Wikipedia sometime around 2003, not long after I discovered the wonders of tabbed browsing. For someone like me, that was a really dangerous combination. I was still using dial up, so I’m sure I missed a lot of unimportant phone calls because of all the time I sank into trying to learn everything about everything. (Everyone close to me knew they could call me on my cell phone that was only a phone and couldn’t text or do anything else.)
Most everyone understood you couldn’t trust Wikipedia as authoritative, of course, but in my mind, that actually made it superior to the traditional encyclopedias that many people did blindly trust. I saw a fair amount of vandalism, but in those early days, it was usually done for a laugh, so the vandals wanted it to be easy to spot. Most editors just wanted to write about subjects they were passionate about. The talk pages were often far more interesting and informative than the articles themselves. Sometimes the arguments got a little heated, but it was a great way to learn about different viewpoints from the people who actually believed them, and that’s so much better than exclusively reading one side of any controversy.
Above all, I remember feeling optimistic about how knowledge was becoming increasingly accessible, but I also remember feeling some trepidation, because I’ve studied a bit of history, and I know how tenuous humanity’s attachment to truth can be. I knew even then that no matter how easily attainable knowledge became, it would never eliminate wilful ignorance. I’m deeply saddened to see how far Wikipedia has fallen, but I’m certainly not shocked.