34 votes

Twenty-five years of Wikipedia - an interactive retrospective ~fifteen minute read

4 comments

  1. [3]
    AnthonyB
    Link
    That was fun, I'm a sucker for an interactive like that. That is wild. Feels like just yesterday my highschool teachers were yelling about how (pre-citation) Wikipedia is unreliable because...

    That was fun, I'm a sucker for an interactive like that.

    When Pope Leo XIV was elected, the Wikimedia Foundation clocked as many as 800,000 hits per second as people came to read about his life.

    That is wild. Feels like just yesterday my highschool teachers were yelling about how (pre-citation) Wikipedia is unreliable because "anyone can edit it.*"

    *Except me, as I could never keep my name up on the page for my DOB.

    6 votes
    1. [2]
      CptBluebear
      Link Parent
      How that became the default answer for teachers worldwide remains a mystery. I received the same dreck as a response to Wikipedia. It just made me go to the links in the footnotes instead and...

      How that became the default answer for teachers worldwide remains a mystery. I received the same dreck as a response to Wikipedia. It just made me go to the links in the footnotes instead and copy source from there.

      1 vote
      1. h3x
        Link Parent
        And me. It wasn't until I got to university that I was told "Wikipedia is fine if all you need is a broad overview of xyz topic. But for the level of detail we expect, Wikipedia's article is far...

        And me. It wasn't until I got to university that I was told "Wikipedia is fine if all you need is a broad overview of xyz topic. But for the level of detail we expect, Wikipedia's article is far from sufficient. At the bare minimum look at the footnotes, but really you should go to the library."

        Which felt more reasonable, tbh. I also spotted two of my uni lecturers updating the Wikipedia pages for areas closely related to their fields of expertise, so yaknow. If PhDs in Sino-Japanese relations are proposing edits to the page about the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, I think I'd trust what they're putting there :P

        11 votes
  2. Dr_Amazing
    Link
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segata_Sanshiro This was the first Wikipedia article I ever read. I'd heard of Wikipedia in passing but didn't really pay attention. Then that page got linked in a...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segata_Sanshiro

    This was the first Wikipedia article I ever read. I'd heard of Wikipedia in passing but didn't really pay attention. Then that page got linked in a message board conversation. I was amazed that an encyclopedia would have an article about such a hyper specific topic

    3 votes