Nupedia's failure demonstrates that grafting the institutional transaction-cost model onto the web doesn't work: its seven-step expert workflow created seven points of potential stalling, and as a voluntary effort it produced only about a dozen articles in nine months—whereas Wikipedia succeeded by replacing organized process with massive perennial peer review where everything is provisional.

causalpending

Speaker

Clay Shirky

Evidence Quote

the nupedia story is in many ways the story of the failure of the institutional model of transaction cost to be grafted successfully on the web

Source

Clay Shirky on Coase, Collaboration and Here Comes Everybody 10/20/2008EconTalk
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:28:59 AM

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