The review process became a bottleneck
Wikipedia’s predecessor, Nupedia, aimed to publish articles written by subject experts and checked through a formal editorial process. Contributors had to demonstrate relevant expertise, and drafts moved through multiple stages of review before publication. That approach promised reliability, but it also made each article a substantial volunteer commitment: an expert had to write carefully, respond to feedback, and wait for an editorial decision.
The bottleneck was not a lack of topics. It was the limited supply of qualified people willing to do all that work without pay. When only a small pool of contributors could write, and every draft required close review, the encyclopedia grew slowly.
A side project changed who could contribute
Wikipedia was created as a more open way to produce material for Nupedia. Instead of requiring credentials before someone could contribute, it let readers edit pages directly in a web browser. Other users could then review, correct, or expand those edits. This shifted the first step from “find an approved expert to write the article” to “let someone start, then let others improve it.”
That did not make expertise irrelevant. It changed where expertise could enter the process: a specialist could correct a claim or add context without having to author and shepherd an entire article through a formal pipeline. The open model also made errors easier to introduce, so the project depended on ongoing editing and review rather than treating approval as a one-time gate.
The consequential design choice was to make participation cheap and revision possible. A person who would never volunteer to produce a polished, fully reviewed encyclopedia entry might still fix one sentence—and that small contribution could become the starting point for many others.
