On its 20th birthday, Wikipedia might be safest place online
San Francisco — Wikipedia is a thing that shouldn’t work, but somehow does. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers, without pay, collectively trying to document every corner of human knowledge, including history happening in real time.
On Wednesday, the online encyclopedia’s strengths and quirks were on full display as hundreds of volunteers furiously worked to create a page for the Capitol riots as events unfolded. As it transitioned from a protest to something more violent, Wikipedia’s volunteer editors added key details while debating the article title, as shared by editor Molly White. Was it a protest, an insurrection or a riot? It ended up the “2021 storming of the United States Capitol.” Hundreds of people were working on the ballooning document at a time, which has now been touched by nearly 1,000 editors, is more than 10,000 words long and has been viewed nearly 2 million times.
Like most Wikipedia articles, it will continue to change, a fluid draft of history meant to stick as closely to dispassionate facts as possible while regularly swatting off attempts to insert opinions and disinformation.
“I think the large number of editors helps to make sure different viewpoints are considered,” said White, who has put in 12 hours of editing on the page and related wikis since last week. “Any changes must be carefully sourced, and there are constant discussions to ensure neutral tone and appropriate weight to topics within the page . ... It is the lower-profile pages that are more susceptible.”
Wikipedia turned 20 years old on Friday, and in the midst of heightened concerns about the spread of disinformation and misinformation, its pages on controversial topics or current events can be a balm. The page for QAnon gets straight to the point in its first line, saying it “is a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory.” The page for the Proud Boys is equally straightforward, calling them “a far-right, neo-fascist, and male-only political organization that promotes and engages in political violence in the United States and Canada.”
Founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia is an ad-free site edited by volunteers and hosted by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. It’s one of the 20 most popular sites on the Internet, and its pages are regularly the top results for Google searches. Anyone interested in changing an article is allowed, and people with more experience can gain more privileges. Some editors have specialties, others are generalists, and they all donate their time and energy to try to keep the resource clean and informative in multiple languages. Editors follow a few basic tenets, including that posts should have a neutral point of view, they should treat each other with respect and that there are no firm rules.
They’ve had a busy year. Like many other sites, Wikipedia saw an increase in use during the pandemic, especially the early months. In addition to having more time to contribute, editors have also had an unending stream of news topics to work on.
Many conversations happening between Wikipedia’s editors reflect what’s happening inside news publications and tech companies, but are being played out largely in public. You can see a history of revisions for each story and some of the back and forth between people editing it under the Talk pages, which show discussions between editors. It’s a real example of the word tech companies frequently throw around when discussing their controversial moderation decisions: transparency.
What’s most striking about Wikipedia is its sheer size. Like the number of posts (55 million), the number of volunteers (270,000 active editors a month) and even the number of edits that have taken place (it just passed a billion).
“It is remarkable that it exists when you think about the history of knowledge in the world and who has access to it and the very idea that people can participate in it,” said Katherine Maher, CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation. “It is a somewhat radical act to be able to write your own history, and in many places in the world this is not a thing people take for granted.”
Wikipedia still has its share of errors and incorrect information, though it says most “vandalism” is removed within five minutes. There’s a rich history of hidden pranks and hoax entries; partisan protest edits, like the repeated deletion of Donald Trump’s entry; and angry vandalism, like when Beyoncé’s fans attacked Beck’s page when he beat her out for a Grammy. Last year it was discovered that an American teenager had created nearly half of the Scots language Wikipedia pages, without actually knowing the language. Screenshots of these temporarily altered entries can go viral and be seen long after the pages are fixed. Given its size, smaller errors can go undetected for years.
The site has also struggled with diversity among its editors, who skew largely white and male for English-language entries. Wikipedia says that less than 20% of its editors identify as women, and a 2018 survey conducted by Wikimedia found 14% of editors had experienced some form of harassment.
But it doesn’t face the same kinds of issues with disinformation that the big tech companies do. Everyone from Facebook and Twitter to Snapchat have struggled with moderation, attempting to balance a desire for not wanting to be seen as censoring users with an overwhelming volume of problematic, violent and racist user-generated content.