Wikipedia is now 25 years old — world’s 7th most popular website now has over 7 million English articles and 7 billion monthly visitors

(Image credit: Nohat Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0)

Wikipedia is 25. Founded in 2001, this community contributor-driven site has convincingly usurped what were once the default general reference works of choice, like Encyclopædia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta. Since its launch, this free resource has risen to become the world’s 7th most popular website, with over 7 million English articles, and around 7 billion monthly visitors. Wikipedia is the most successful non‑commercial, non‑social, non‑search web destination.

The first entry on Wikipedia was a computer-ritually headed "Hello, World!" and began with the rather amateurishly optimistic line “This is the new Wikipedia!” Co-founder Jimmy Wales, a former financial trader and best known as the face of Wikipedia (better known than Larry Sanger, anyway), uploaded the first Wikipedia edit. As an aside, this first page was recreated as a non-fungible token (NFT) in 2021, making $750,000 at auction.

First edit — iMac used by Jimmy Wales to make the first edit to Wikipedia. (Image credit: Steve Jurvetson Attribution 2.0 Generic)

Since we are a hardware site, it is worth remembering that Wales used one of the bulbous, All-in-One Apple iMac computers of the era to type his first Wikipedia entry. That first iMac was notable for several milestones. The translucent, candy‑colored computer was the first major product under the renewed leadership of Steve Jobs, and would pioneer USB ports and put a sizable nail in the floppy disk coffin.

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Early criticism to roaring success

We’ve already mentioned the amateurish first edit of Wikipedia. From its humble but creditable beginnings, it took quite some time to find its feet and earn a decent reputation.

Critics would initially highlight that ‘anyone could edit it’ as a major failing, regarding the reliability of Wikipedia encyclopedia entries. Even when much more fully grown, the community-driven knowledge base faced issues such as vandalism and edit wars.

Like any human-sourced knowledge repository, Wikipedia also suffered (suffers) from bias. Every contributor has their own opinions, world view, politics, and other flaws. In some encyclopedia topics, such personal lenses can cause conflicts. There were also sizable wrinkles caused by the platform possessing no editorial board, a formal fact-checking system, and so on.

The Wikipedia ship slowly turned round in the mid to late noughties, with slow structural changes being made to solidify the reputation and reference value of this now massive knowledge base. By this time, the site started to feel less like a free-for-all, and studies around this time began to show the accuracy of Wikipedia wasn’t that far removed from respected tomes like Britannica.

We made it on to Wikipedia — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Into the 2010s and beyond, Wikipedia began to be widely regarded as a trustworthy resource. It has long been integrated into Google, for example, as a primary data source of the ‘knowledge graph.’ That’s earned its place, and it is worth repeating, as the world’s top non‑commercial, non‑social, non‑search web destination. It isn’t just English, either, as Wikipedia is now available in 342 languages.

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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

6 Comments Comment from the forums

ekio

And if you are tired of the gigantic bias from Wikipedia articles that omit negative things on purpose and even actively deleted contributions to point facts in the articles, when it doesn’t fit their narrative, and on the other side, insist on minor events to make people sound evil when they have different takes about society, there is grokipedia !
Reply
Shiznizzle

"Critics would initially highlight that ‘anyone could edit it’ as a major failing, regarding the reliability of Wikipedia encyclopedia entries."

Indeed.

As a former editor, publisher of whole new pages on living people, maintainer and contributor, i can also tell you that what you write is not guaranteed to stay there either, as it is not the publisher, the actual writer of the text posted, that decides if it stays online or not. The "truth" is decided by the behind the scenes administrators.

Wikipedia is not interested in the truth. They will suppress the truth even when supported by facts so their little peon admins do not lose face. I stopped editing there. I stopped donating money. I do nothing for them anymore.

Public figures of all shades are able to suppress, through proxies, uncomfortable facts that they wish to conceal from the public at large. Subjects of articles are not "allowed" to edit their own pages yet they do it anyway using others.

Have an affair you do not wish to draw attention to even though this info is in public hands?

That was one area i liked to "correct" on wikipedia. When i was seriously warned for editing a page to include a public affair of an individual i made the choice to leave the platform. Wikipedia is not interested in the truth. Wikipedia is run by a few thousand people who decide issues and they are the ones who say what the truth is.

Want to see what goes on in the background behind the scene? Click that little "Talk" button that is at the top of the page. That is where the real battles to have "content" approved take place. That is where you will see authoritarian behavior that makes a mockery of the truth.
Reply
hotaru251

Shiznizzle said:
Wikipedia is not interested in the truth. They will suppress the truth even when supported by facts so their little peon admins do not lose face.
duh?
Thats basically everything that gets large enough as someone has to own it and control it thus a bias is going to exist.
this is also why you can't cite wikipedia as a source. (though you can use it to find sources which is its biggest benefit)
Reply
ekio

hotaru251 said:
duh?
Thats basically everything that gets large enough as someone has to own it and control it thus a bias is going to exist.
this is also why you can't cite wikipedia as a source. (though you can use it to find sources which is its biggest benefit)
Ok, what’s your cynical point?

The issues is that wikipedia is SO biased that they literally lie by omission in almost every article, and they are throwing people under the bus when their despots don’t like them.

Even one of the founder of wikipedia said it became crap.
Reply
ezst036

Bias at Wikipedia seems a bit overplayed. You have people who pick up one source and run with it instead of grabbing as many sources as they can and building for themselves a consensus form of edit with at least 3 sources but better like 5 or 6 sources.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen Wikipedia bias. Many times it stems from Wikipedia's bizarrely worded editing rules which are easily weaponized by someone familiar with 10 rules against one person who barely knows 1 of Wikipedia's editing rules.

Another track of bias, and this one is my favorite, is when you see an article that gets picked apart by seemingly disconnected vulture editors. One comes in and invalidates source number 1, another editor comes in and invalidates source number 2, and the next thing you know after pick pick pick pick the final vulture comes in feigning cluelessness and requests for the page to be deleted since its entirely unsourced. It's a brilliant scheme to force topics into the memory hole of forgetfulness.

There were sources in the history? What? I don't see any sources. In fact I don't see any history. Just delete the page. Its easy to achieve a manipulated consensus for deletion of an unsourced wiki article when you remove the sources one-by-one with disparate accounts.

So the bias does exist. But it is pumped up with hype. One person loses their favorite one-time edit and they're scorned forever.

Nah bro. You just didn't do it right. That's not Wikipedia's bias. That's your laziness.
Reply
Findecanor

I remember one innocuous article that was created, then deleted for some bullshit excuse and for absolutely no reason blocked from being recreated again with better sources. It took a decade before it eventually came back.
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