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.
