12.2. THE IMPACT OF USER-GENERATED CONTENT
According to Wikipedia, the 2010 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica—the last to be
printed—was “written by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4000 contributors,
including 110 Nobel Prize winners and five American presidents.” While there is a cer-
tain irony to this Wikipedia entry, it raises a question that is central to the study of UGC:
How will UGC affect existing media markets and the economy more generally?
In contrast with the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia (and other UGC platforms)
have a self-organizing authority and do not rely on the standard institutional arrange-
ments for assigning authority, such as credentialing or restrictions on resources. Critics
often argue that the grass ...