Hello and Happy Sunday! In today’s deep dive, we go down the Wiki rabbit hole… which — like 59 million other people, places, and things across 336 languages — has its own Wikipedia page. Join us as we untangle the internet’s biggest web of references.
A site to behold
In the words of Michael Scott: “Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information”. And, in some ways, Scott isn’t wrong. Wikipedia’s open-access format has seen it become the 7th most popular site in the world, with English language Wikipedia alone counting some ~6.7 million articles in its library.
Wikipedia had humble beginnings. In 2001, on a day now known as Wikipedia Day, the site's first edit was posted: a homepage stating "This is the new WikiPedia!". Since then, it's been these edits, provided by a surprisingly small active user base, that have given life to the platform — arguably the largest collaborative knowledge project in human history.
Check mates
Indeed, despite Wikipedia’s hundreds of millions of users, just ~122,500 have edited pages in the last month, and, of these “Wikipedians”, a mere 881 admins wield the ultimate power to block, delete, and edit protected content. This means that startlingly few actually add anything to the site: if you make 1 edit, you rank in the top 30% of all Wikipedia users; if you make 10, you’re in the top 5%.
But, if you’re serious about becoming a “super editor”, you have a long way to catch up. Wiki’s golden boy, Steven Pruitt — or, as he’s known on the site, Ser Amantio di Nicolao — has made a mind-boggling 5.7 million edits, more than a typical month of edits on the entire site (last month saw ~4.7 million).
Named one of TIME’s most influential people online in 2017, Pruitt’s impact on the site stretches over one-third of all English language articles, as well as contributing articles on influential women to help correct Wikipedia’s gender imbalance — a project slightly more important than another user, who has single-handedly changed the term “comprised of” 47,000+ times.
Citation needed
The community of volunteer editors that Wikipedia’s vast pages rely on distinguishes it online — where else can you read about tautological place names, the colors of noise, or one 18th century soldier’s insatiable appetite, simply because someone possessed the time and interest to write it up? Even so, both Wikipedia’s beauty and unreliability stem from the fact that anyone can write anything — one example came in 2014, when Wiki banned IP addresses from the House of Representatives after several anonymous changes were made on politicians’ entries by computers within Capitol Hill.
In Wiki we trust?
For the most part, however, the mechanics of the site might actually galvanize it against bias: popular articles are edited and reviewed countless times by Wiki’s volunteers, admins, and bots to improve reliability. Media experts have even argued that a highly edited article on Wikipedia may actually be among the most reliable sources of information — compared with traditional academic articles, for example, which are often only peer-reviewed by a handful of people. Interestingly, in a time of political polarization, both American and British people report trusting Wikipedia at least as much as mainstream media outlets.
Wiki’s collectivism inspires some confidence, but the recent AI boom could threaten its open-access model. Many of the groundbreaking AI models released this year include Wikipedia citations in their training data. If Wiki's content ends up regurgitated by chatbots owned by big tech, the incentives for Wikipedia’s contribution system — mostly goodwill and personal interest — could collapse.
Wiki-nomics
Wikipedia could be a billion-dollar business almost overnight were it to offer advertising. But the decision to keep the site not-for-profit has arguably been its masterstroke, freeing the site from monetary conflicts... though keeping everything running is increasingly costly.
In 2004, the WMF was racking up just $23,463 in annual expenses. Last year operating expenses reached nearly $146 million, ~60% of which was spent on salaries and wages, while various expenses — such as putting on conferences, handing out awards and grants to the growing Wiki-community, and hosting core websites — also cost millions each.
As WMF operates on “whatever monies it receives from its annual fund drives”, this rise in spending has been matched with donations: last year saw cash contributions reach $160 million. Some will remember the donation-appeal banner that used to head Wikipedia articles a few years back — controversial, even at the time, with Wikipedians arguing that the doomsday depiction of Wiki’s finances was misleading.
Hit search
Often when we check something we’ve just heard about, we go straight to Wikipedia, so it follows that an estimated 83% of Wikipedia traffic is generated from organic searches. In this sense, the most viewed pages give a decent indication of public interest. Indeed, the deaths of notable figures, such as Elizabeth II in 2022, or global pop culture events, like the summer blockbuster Oppenheimer or Netflix hit Squid Game, nearly always correspond with huge spikes in page views.
Facts of life
However, as Wikipedia captures the zeitgeist, it also reflects public distress in the wake of global catastrophes.
Wikipedia had been around for only 9 months when the 9/11 attacks occurred — an event that highlighted the weaknesses of communication methods at the time. As cell phone networks faltered and radios failed, swathes flocked to the internet to understand the full impact of the tragedy. When a link to Wikipedia’s page on 9/11 cropped up on Yahoo News, traffic to the site spiked — in response, Wikipedia soon had over 100 pages related to the attacks. A jump in readers followed, marking the inception of the Wiki-hub we know today.
The recent, devastating events in Israel and Palestine have also, by Wiki’s measures, captured the world’s attention: on Tuesday, 7 of the 10 most viewed pages on Wikipedia were related to the conflict. But, as we outlined when violence in the region escalated in May 2021, sensitive topics such as these — when misinformation can have serious implications — sharpen the focus on Wiki’s open-edit format and its admins.
WikiNow
As AI proliferates, expenses rise, and more people opt for quick mobile phone queries over desktop Wiki-binges, the key to the site’s somewhat-uncertain future is, in the words of founder Jimmy Wales, in its “lack of commercialization…and no sense that your labor is being farmed… it is a genuinely collaborative project”. So, Wikipedians keep on Wikipedia-ing: as one joke goes, Wikipedia works in practice… which is good, because it definitely doesn’t work in theory.
Thanks for stopping by!
