Everipedia

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Everipedia
Everipedia logo.svg
Type of site
 Encyclopedia[1]
Available in English[2]
Founded 2014[3]
Headquarters Los Angeles, California[1]
Area served Worldwide[1]
Owner Sam Kazemian, Theodor Forselius[1]
Founder(s)
  • Sam Kazemian[4]
  • Theodor Forselius[4]
  • Travis Moore[4]
  • Mahbod Moghadam[4]
  • George Beall[5]
  • Christian Deciga[6]
Industry Dot-com company[7]
Slogan(s) The Encyclopedia of Everything[8]
Website everipedia.org
Alexa rank Increase 19,277 (As of 26 December 2017)[9]
Registration Required for editing[10]
Users 17,000[7]

Everipedia (ev-ree-pee-dee-a[3]) is a for-profit, wiki-based online encyclopedia[11] launched in December 2014[3] as a fork of Wikipedia.[12] The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.[1] As of December 2017, Everipedia advertises itself as the biggest English-language encyclopedia,[2] with more than six million articles.[13][14][non-primary source needed]

Everipedia was co-founded by Sam Kazemian, Theodor Forselius, Travis Moore, Mahbod Moghadam,[4] George Beall,[5] and Christian Deciga,[6] with Kazemian serving as chief executive officer,[11] Forselius serving as chief executive officer,[1] Moore serving as chief technology officer,[1] Moghadam serving as community manager,[15] and Deciga serving as executive editor[3] and iOS developer.[16] In December 2017, the site announced that co-founder of Wikipedia Larry Sanger joined as chief information officer.[7]

Everipedia intends on building the most accessible online encyclopedia, and not be as restrictive as Wikipedia.[10] The company aims to address the critical factors commonly cited for Wikipedia's downturn in participation, such as deletionism.[11] It is like popular sites, such as Facebook.[17] Everipedia adapted social media elements such as letting celebrities communicate with fans.[17] Everipedia allows users to create any page on anything[11] and anyone can contribute to a page by registering an account.[10] The site has been criticized for presenting false information early on in wiki pages on breaking news events.[4]

On December 6, 2017, the company announced plans to convert to using EOS blockchain technology, and work on a cryptocurrency token called IQ to encourage generating information.[18] The IQ tokens are intended to be exchangeable for Bitcoin or equity in Everipedia.[15] One of the goals of the company is to stop certain countries from blocking the content, by the integration of the blockchain model.[19]

History[edit]

Everipedia was launched in December 2014.[3] In 2015 the site began with an intention to be a more innovative and inclusive alternative to Wikipedia, according to the company.[1] It started as a small project of Sam Kazemian and Theodor Forselius in Kazemian's college dormitory room at UCLA in December 2014.[20] Forselius met Kazemian during his visit to UCLA.[4] Moghadam was planning to retire after a harsh departure from the firm he co-founded, RapGenius but was speaking at UCLA when Kazemian approached him and showed him the Mahbod Moghadam entry on Everipedia.[21] Moghadam had been frustrated that the Wikipedia article about him kept getting deleted.[21] In a 2016 interview with Breitbart News, he explained how the experience of seeing his Everipedia article "moved" him, helping him to understand Kazemian’s idea better.[21] In May 2015, Moghadam joined Everipedia as a co-founder.[22] Dave Liebowitz began editing Everipedia in 2016 after reading a Facebook post from Moghadam regarding internships.[20] After recognizing the company could be a great opportunity for him he spent his summer learning how to be a skilled contributor on the site.[20] Liebowitz is an executive editor at the company, a position that was offered to him in 2016 by Moghadam.[20] Navin Vethanayagam is an executive editor and one of the founding team members at Everipedia since 2016.[6] Romi Ezzo is an executive editor at Everipedia.[23] Angel Ordaz is an executive editor at Everipedia.[24] In October 2015, George Beall was introduced to the founders of Everipedia at a conference at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.[10] After departing from Touch Tiles,[16] Beall joined the group of co-founders in January 2016.[25] Beall planned to go back to the University of Pennsylvania by the fall of 2016 to continue his education.[10] Beall is no longer at the company.[26] As of June 2016, there are six co-founders and a group of about ten people.[27] As of January 2017, they have eight full-time workers including two developers.[24]

In November 2015, Everipedia stated it had 10,000 pages,[15] and by March 2016 said it had about 200,000 published pages.[10] It reported roughly 100,000 page views per month in November 2015.[15] As of December 2017 it reported it has about 2 million to 3 million distinct users monthly and about 3.5 to 5 million page views monthly.[28] The Alexa ranking of web traffic is at 5,820 in the US, as of December 2017.[9] The site in 2015 had a small community of US editors.[15] There are communities in Brazil, China, Germany, and India.[24] The company said in 2017 it has 17,000 registered editors and 2,000 active editors.[7] The site has readers in more than 100 countries.[29]

The company has raised capital and brought in angel investors.[22] As of April 2016, the company had raised $120,000 from Mucker Capital and $400,000 from angel investors.[22] They raised close to $130,000 on Wefunder.[30] As of January 2017, they raised $700,000 from angel investors.[24] Angel investors include David Segura and David Petersen, the co-founder and CEO of BuildZoom.[28] The company stated in 2016 Everipedia is worth $10 million.[10] The company in 2017 was valued at $22 million, according to Forbes.[29] As of November 2015, the revenue model was to publicize business's Everipedia articles on other articles under a "see also" section.[15] As of June 2016, the site had around three advertisements on every article.[27] In 2016, the site generated most of its income from advertisements.[20] In 2017, banner advertisements generated around $150 to 300 every day.[31]

"Wikia, like Wikipedia, uses really old software that was built in 2001. Meanwhile there are all these new, modern crowd-knowledge sites like Rap Genius, Quora and StackOverflow, but nobody ever tried to attack the original beast - a wiki of everything - with the new, modern tools. That is what Everipedia aims to do."
 —Sam Kazemian, told to Boing Boing in 2017[11]

On December 6, 2017, the company announced plans to move to generating edits and storing information using the EOS blockchain.[18] The blockchain is a secure, visible and decentralized cloud storage and transmission technology.[32] They plan on working on a cryptocurrency token called IQ to encourage the generation of content.[18] They will be combining the EOS blockchain and the InterPlanetary File System, which is somewhat of a decentralized server, that will be used to house the heavier data files such as video and images.[18] On December 6, 2017, Everipedia also stated that are building a peer-to-peer wiki network that adds an incentive system.[1] They are utilizing the concept of Bitcoin by incentivizing editors with tokens that have legitimate monetary value.[33] Every account receives IQ for its editing, which are intended to be redeemable for Bitcoin or equity in Everipedia.[15] After the blockchain is implemented, the company will convert the points into a token currency.[34] The tokenized system lets every user become a stakeholder in the wiki network.[1] Each editor will put their token into play for each edit.[34] If their contribution is accepted, the user gets back the token, which will have obtained value in proportion to the content added.[34] If the edit is not accepted, the user does not get their token back.[7] The company hopes this tokenized system will produce more accurate and reliable information compared with a conventional wiki, which does not provide any such monetary compensation for editors.[35]

An unpublished draft of Everipedia’s whitepaper given to CoinDesk in 2017 states, no less than half of the entire 100 million IQ tokens will be allocated in an initial coin offering (ICO) and 30 percent will be minted across the next 100 years to pay contributors and validators for their edits;[36] 20 percent of the tokens will be reserved to cover development costs.[36]

On December 6, 2017, they announced that the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, joined the company as chief information officer.[1] Sanger joined Everipedia because the blockchain enables the site to get past the limitations that resulted in him leaving Wikipedia.[7] Sanger writes, "We'll not only make Everipedia more comprehensive than Wikipedia; in my role, I'll help create a neutral framework enabling the world to find the best encyclopedia articles on every topic."[1] Everipedia hopes that by storing information in a peer-to-peer network, which gets rid of hosting costs, will reduce the need to backup its content with advertisements and donations.[2] The blockchain model does not have centralized servers, therefore eliminating the cost of servers.[37]

By decentralizing via blockchain the content cannot be censored.[38] In Turkey, for instance, Wikipedia is blocked, but if it were decentralized, the government would not be able to stop its people from accessing the site because it would have to block a countless number of addresses.[38] "Technically, it's impossible to censor these sites. Once we launch Everipedia in blockchain, people will be able to access the articles on our platform — and Wikipedia — without any country being able to do anything about it," Theodor Forselius stated.[38] The blockchain will be initiated in early 2018.[39] Earlier in 2017, Lunyr first proposed plans for a blockchain-centered encyclopedia.[7] But based on Lunyr's timeframe, Everipedia will reach the market first.[7]

Content[edit]

The company's intention is to be the most accessible online encyclopedia and to share and generate information in a manner that is not as restrictive as Wikipedia.[10] It aims to address the critical factors commonly cited for Wikipedia's downturn in participation, such as deletionism, inferior mobile editing choices, and a lack of excitement for inclusiveness.[11] Everipedia intends to build a different group of editors.[7] "We allow more information, more pages, and have a better user interface than Wikipedia and tackle the innate bias of Wikipedia's ‘legitimacy' rule," George Beall said.[40] "Wikipedia is largely older white men," Forselius said.[7] "We’ve tried to focus on getting a lot of female edits, younger editors, and diverse background and ethnicities," Forselius added.[7] "Some people say Wikipedia determines who gets a page on their site if they are white and a male," Moghadam stated in an interview in 2016.[21] "Our focus every day is on how to improve the user experience and make things like registering for an account, building a comprehensive wiki article, and engaging other users in the community as easy as possible," Travis Moore said.[29] The largest distinction between Everipedia and Wikipedia, is resemblance to popular sites, such as Facebook.[17] Wikipedia does not have social elements on their pages, as opposed to Everipedia uses social media elements which, for instance, allow celebrities to communicate with fans.[17] As it feels like Facebook feels, it provides a facet of adherence for consumers, which lets them to adopt to products faster.[17] Articles contain images, videos, and GIFs.[29]

Anyone can contribute to a page by registering an account.[10] As of June 2016, between 10 to 20 people registered an account every day.[27] One of the ways the site verifies the validity of the content is after a registered account adds 15 pieces of information the account is locked until the contributions are reviewed.[27] New accounts are not granted full editing rights very quickly.[29] They have to build their IQ numbers and status before their privileges increase.[29] Everipedia allows users to create any page on anything as long as the content is cited[11] and neutral,[20] even on non-notable topics.[4] Startups, celebrities and other contributors are permitted to create their own articles, as long as the content is sourced.[29] Acceptable sources include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.[4] Everipedia cannot be used as a primary source except for verified accounts, in which case they are permitted to "self-cite" regarding topics where they have personal knowledge.[11] There are verified accounts for academics, celebrities, and journalists.[41] The Everipedia community can up and downvote any citation and when one receives too many downvotes it gets deleted.[11] The layout is easy enough that content can be added using a phone.[17] Everipedia places more attention on improving mobile workability and usability than with desktop.[29] Editors can add videos and GIFs to articles.[42] Anyone can add comments directly to the articles.[43] Editors can get merit badges for their work.[24] Editors who create a significant number of college-related articles can be designated Campus Reps.[17] As of June 2017, there are around 20 Campus Reps.[11]

Everipedia provided a paid service called Everipedia Plus.[44] According to Kazemian, "paying customers can get a professionally edited and done encyclopedic article about themselves".[44] Everipedia+ is business service that allows users to protect pages and have their page verified and done by a paid user[duplication?].[45] The service offered a tailored Everipedia entry that gets "full-time monitoring for updates and preventing vandalism," beginning at $299 per year.[4] The service is now called Everipedia+, which is headed by Liebowitz.[46]

As of October 2017, the vast majority of pages on Everipedia were copies of Wikipedia articles.[4] A live bot forks Wikipedia content.[7] The forked English language Wikipedia articles are reorganized and redesigned.[29] As of December 2017, the site has over six million articles, more than in the English Wikipedia,[13] and over 1 million distinct articles created by the Everipedia community.[29] As of December 2017, Everipedia is the biggest English-language encyclopedia.[2] Everipedia could host hundreds of millions of articles, according to Sanger.[33]

Criticism[edit]

Several dozen vandals have been banned from the site.[11] The Everipedia community normally identifies a vandal in 5 minutes, according to Kazemian.[11] The site has been criticized for initially presenting false information in wiki pages on breaking news topics.[4] These were identifying the wrong people in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting[47] and the United Express Flight 3411 incident.[8]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Wikipedia Co-Founder Joins Everipedia to Build Encyclopedia on the Blockchain". Everipedia. PR Newswire. December 6, 2017. 
  2. ^ a b c d Greene, Tristan (December 6, 2017). "Wikipedia co-founder wants to put the world's knowledge on the blockchain". The Next Web. 
  3. ^ a b c d e "Everipedia, Inc". Crunchbase. 2017. 
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Christian, Jon (4 October 2017). "Everipedia is the Wikipedia for being wrong". The Outline. 
  5. ^ a b "George Beall". HuffPost. 2017. 
  6. ^ a b c Vethanayagam, Navin (2016). "How to land a job at the next big unicorn startup". PRSUIT. 
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rubin, Peter (6 December 2017). "The Wikipedia Competitor That's Harnessing Blockchain For Epistemological Supremacy". Wired. 
  8. ^ a b Pierce, Matt (12 April 2017). "No, the media did not identify the wrong David Dao as United's passenger". Los Angeles Times. 
  9. ^ a b "everipedia.org Traffic Statistics". Alexa Internet, Inc. 2017. 
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lee, Elaine (22 March 2016). "Wharton dropout creates Wikipedia alternative alongside Rap Genius co-founder". The Daily Pennsylvanian. 
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l James, Andrea (12 June 2017). "Can Everipedia remake collaborative encyclopedias to be inclusive and enjoyable?". Boing Boing. 
  12. ^ Larry, Sanger (12 December 2017). "Wikipedia's cofounder on how he's creating a bigger, better rival—on the blockchain". Quartz. 
  13. ^ a b Hebblethwaite, Colm (7 December 2017). "Wikipedia co-founder joins mission to build blockchain encyclopaedia". The Block: Blockchain Technology News. 
  14. ^ "Everipedia". Retrieved January 4, 2018. 
  15. ^ a b c d e f g Sitaraman, Viputheshwar (12 November 2015). "Q&A: Mahbod Moghadam — Cofounder, Everipedia". HuffPost. 
  16. ^ a b Beall, George (2016). "I dropped out of Penn and I'm glad I did". Influencive. 
  17. ^ a b c d e f g Chirag, Kulkarni (9 January 2016). "How to Disrupt any Industry in 3 Steps". Inc. 
  18. ^ a b c d del Castillo, Michael (December 6, 2017). "Encyclopedia Blockchainica: Wikipedia Co-Founder to Disrupt His Own Creation". CoinDesk. 
  19. ^ Wallenbergtorsdag, Björn (14 December 2017). "Wikipedia-grundare ansluter till utmanare startad av svensk 22-åring" (in Swedish). DiGITAL. 
  20. ^ a b c d e f Bowman, Bryan (7 December 2016). "From UMass to Silicon Valley: An interview with 'Everipedia' founders". Amherst Wire. 
  21. ^ a b c d Nazarian, Adelle (9 February 2016). "Everipedia: The Wikipedia Competitor for the People". Breitbart News. 
  22. ^ a b c Gregoire, Waylae (13 April 2016). "Exiled Rap Genius Founder Plans to Overtake Wikipedia, Wants to Suck Mark Zuckerberg's Dick". NextShark. 
  23. ^ "Romi Ezzo". LinkedIn. 2017. 
  24. ^ a b c d e Malankar, Nikhil (12 January 2017). "Mahbod Moghadam: Journey From Rap Genius To Everipedia". Tell Me Nothing. 
  25. ^ Beall, George (2017). "Why I LOVE Everipedia". Influencive. 
  26. ^ Everipedia community (2017). "George Beall". Everipedia. 
  27. ^ a b c d Jafari, Hamed (9 June 2016). "Interview with the Founders of Everipedia AKA the "Thug Wikipedia"". TechRasa. 
  28. ^ a b Ngo, Diana (7 December 2017). "Wikipedia Co-Founder Joins Blockchain Startup Everipedia as CIO". CoinJournal. 
  29. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Olenski, Steve (9 May 2017). "What This Startup Can Teach CMOs About SEO". Forbes. 
  30. ^ Christian, Jon (30 November 2017). "Who funds the crowdfunders?". The Outline. 
  31. ^ "Everipedia". Wefunder. 2017. 
  32. ^ Andy (12 December 2017). "Everipedia, l'encyclopédie en ligne basée sur la blockchain" (in French). FZN. 
  33. ^ a b Brown, Mike (December 6, 2017). "Wikipedia Cofounder Tells Us His Plan to Build Encyclopedia on Bitcoin Tech". Inverse. 
  34. ^ a b c "Un fondateur de Wikipédia passe à la concurrence" (in French). 20 Minutes. December 7, 2017. 
  35. ^ Hughes, Neil (December 6, 2017). "Wikipedia cofounder will help build new encyclopedia on the blockchain". One World Identity. 
  36. ^ a b "Wikipedia's Co-Founder Joins Everipedia as CIO". FinTech Reporter. December 18, 2017. 
  37. ^ Perez, David (December 7, 2017). "Everipedia: la alternativa del cofundador de la Wikipedia basada en blockchain" (in Spanish). Omicrono. 
  38. ^ a b c Müller, Leonardo (December 8, 2017). "Conheça a Everipedia, uma versão da Wikipédia 'movida a blockchain'" (in Portuguese). TecMundo. 
  39. ^ Osaemezu Emmanuel, Ogwu (December 8, 2017). "Everipedia Set to Become the First Blockchain Encyclopedia". BTCManager. 
  40. ^ D. Evans, Brian (22 February 2017). "Tap for Improvement: Boost Productivity This Summer With These 8 Hot New Apps". Business.com. 
  41. ^ Weindling, Jacob (11 January 2017). "An Interview with Mahbod Moghadam, the Co-Founder of Everipedia and Rap Genius". Paste. 
  42. ^ Rubino, Kathryn (12 December 2016). "Controversial Former Biglaw Attorney Relaunches His Career As Internet Mogul". Above The Law. Breaking Media. 
  43. ^ "Everipedia, la alternativa a Wikipedia" (in Spanish). Grupo RPP. 30 December 2015. 
  44. ^ a b Moon, Jiwon (31 July 2017). "Everipedia Update | Part 1: Intro to Everipedia and New Features Since Campaign". Wefunder. 
  45. ^ "Everipedia+". 2017-07-19. Retrieved 2017-12-31. 
  46. ^ "David Liebowitz". LinkedIn. 2017. 
  47. ^ Baird, Addy (2 October 2017). "White House-credentialed media outlet falsely accuses 'far left loon' of Las Vegas shooting". ThinkProgress. 

External links[edit]

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Everipedia&oldid=818684931"