You're listening to The Economist's Ask, I'm Anne McKelvoy and this week we're asking,

is social media still a force for good?

Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia, aka the free insight to Peter that anyone can

edit.

It celebrates its 20th anniversary on January the 15th and it does so as the biggest and

most-read reference work ever.

Wikipedia hosts more than 55 million articles in hundreds of languages all written by volunteers.

And yet it's an oddity among digital platforms.

It uses vast network effects to grow and share a knowledge base on pretty much anything

you might want to ask about.

Yet it defies the Silicon Valley recipe for success.

The site has no shareholders, it's generated no billionaires and it sells no advertising.

So how does the wiki machine really work and how much can we rely on what we read there?

Jimmy Wales founded the all-knowing internet giant so what does he make of a much-search

subject, recently moved by other media giants to silence the newly impeached President

Donald Trump?

We'll dive into that and a lot more.

Jimmy Wales, welcome to The Economist Ask.

Thanks for having me, it's great to be here.

I suspect everyone listening will have read at least one Wikipedia article if not several

thousand or tens of thousands in their lives, but not everyone will know how it works.

So give us a quick recap if you could of how the site gets written and what are the

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