Just to meta-meta this conversation and the article in new and confusing ways, Wikimedia also hosts a map server, using OSM's data, @ https://maps.wikimedia.org/ :)

True. I sort of meant "similar"in a wider sense: large scale, community effort to do something useful. Wikipedia represents a lot about what we that the internet, and internet culture was.^

Remember how big a deal Wikipedia is. A lot of that "human knowledge at your fingertips" is Wikipedia.

Maybe that applies at a bigger level, with "similar"things being implemented as part of something. I suspect that a big part of the reason Wikipedias don't get started now is that they get implemented as startups.

Anything showing promise on that scale is a "unicorn" and in 2018 Jimmy Wales would have had a choice between private/startup and internet-owned. That's a billion dollar choice. For example, stack overflow could have been built like a Wikipedia. If it was done in 1996, that would be a sensible choice. In 2018, a founder would be forgoing an unthinkable sum of money, and also resources to make it happen with.

^I guess all this needs to be caveated with "other than OSS."