Wikipedia appreciation thread!

[Melooon]

Wikipedia!

I just wanted to take a moment to think about Wikipedia and to encourage people to take part in it if they have time!

If you did not know; Wikipedia (the online encyclopaedia site) is a free community run site. It has no ads; its entirely run by its community. That community has to write articles, update articles constantly with new info and manage all the spam and rubbish that any large internet site receives on a daily basis!

Its one of the few and last parts of the true early web spirit of free information.

The best thing you can do to support Wikipedia is to write and update articles there! If you see info that is outdated, update it! If you know of something that's missing from the site, make an article for it!

It does not have to be perfect to start with, other people will improve it over time; the point is that without this kind of work, we may one day loose the site, and I think that would be super sad. Wikipedia servers billions of people, but less than a hundred thousand actually contribute articles to it.

Here is their guide to editing articles.
and here is their official guide to starting your first article.

[Cobra!]

I'm a regular editor for the Scots Wikipedia, and help Wikimedia host Editathon events bimonthly. People should definitely put more effort into fixing the problems with the Wikis, it is community driven after all.

Despite all of the work we do, people are still quick to judge and say the Wiki sucks, not knowing how much work we're doing. Was especially rough during the controversy in 2020, one of the admins got doxxed and nearly got driven to suicide by online harassers.

So it's nice to see a thread here showing appreciation for what we do!

[Memory]

Idk about that, I was once called out on a discord server for using the site because "it can't be trusted" and point out about all the stuff that's going on with the wiki's co-founder and the wiki it's self.

But that was a year ago so things might have changed, but currently I don't want to take part in that.

[ArtisTheFox]

I love Wikipedia. I read articles on there practically daily. My favourite subjects are cities, influential events and obscure/funny factoid pages. And I've donated to the site in the past and have corrected information. A fully new article isn't something I've ever done yet. Hm, what would be something that I know enough about, that isn't already on Wikipedia? That's like a good icebreaker question.

[Melooon]

Hm, what would be something that I know enough about, that isn't already on Wikipedia? That's like a good icebreaker question.

There's no articles for the web revival, the yesterweb or a bunch of other niche web related stuff (although they may not be relevant enough to have articles yet). I imagine the same is true for a lot of smaller things!

And totally, I love looking up countries that I don't know much about; particularly if I see them in a movie or in the news!

But that was a year ago so things might have changed, but currently I don't want to take part in that.

So I was inspired to start this thread by this documentary; I'm not sure if it will answer your question, but it might demystify the site for you and help you form your own opinion!

[Kitchen Staff]

I don't go onto Wikipedia but it's cool to look around sometimes. I'll go on there to look up stuff about my favourite things and I'll learn something new about it.

[Gans]

Wikipedia. Fantastic for tables of Formula One race results or facts of an animal species in great detail. But politics... hair-raising admin fights over the so called "truth". For me, Wikipedia is a topic-dependant pig in a poke really.

Evil companies have infiltrated wikipedia, too. Akamai Technologies was the first example, I've whitnessed. And the company guy even introduced himself in the comments section as "Hello, I'm the PR Consultant for this company and would like to give you more happy in-depth information about us." Swooosh, the critique section was gone.

With some topic awareness in mind, yes, Wikipedia is a fantastic tool and such a great example for what a world-wide community can achieve. And the best thing is, you don't even need an account to start writing or improving a typo here and there.

[tenkai_no_perusona]

Despite its many, many flaws and shortcomings, I can't imagine the internet without Wikipedia (and its sibling projects).

I can't imagine myself without it. There's no better place to serve as the pillar for my trivia-collecting habits than it.

[myleszey]

I started editing Wikipedia a few weeks ago. Once you really get into it you start to realize it's really just a few people working day-in day-out to make all this info available to the world! It's crazy!!!

Every topic has its own "WikiProject" dedicated to working on articles in their own domain... I learned that there are only about 20 or so people that are currently maintaining all the articles related to chemistry!!!