Wikipedia is today celebrating its 25th birthday, but its long-term future has never been less certain due to a range of threats with the potential to become a perfect storm …
Wikipedia turns 25
I rarely feel my age, but there are certain tech anniversaries that bring me out in a slight sweat; the idea that Wikipedia is now a quarter of a century old is one of those.
The site launched on this day in 2001 with just four pages. Today it has more than 65 million, and receives billions of views per month. The Wikimedia Foundation has celebrated the achievement with a new microsite.
Wikipedia was first founded on January 15, 2001. Today, 25 years later, it has become the backbone of knowledge on the internet, informing everything from day-to-day life and AI chatbots to journalism and trivia wins. Nearly 250,000 volunteers write, edit, and fact check its 65 million articles across 300+ languages, all guided by standards on neutrality and reliability.
You can watch a celebratory video, enjoy a historical look at key stages in the development of the site, take a quiz about your attitude to the future, and purchase Wiki merchandise.
Wiki faces multiple threats
But Wired notes that despite all its achievements, Wikipedia has never been under greater threat.
Forces on the political right have attacked Wikipedia for alleged liberal bias, with the conservative Heritage Foundation going so far as to say that it will “identify and target” the site’s volunteer editors. AI bots have relentlessly scraped Wikipedia’s information, straining the site’s servers. Compounding these issues is the struggle to replenish the project’s volunteer community, the so-called graying of Wikipedia.
Perhaps the biggest threat of all is an existential one.
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