Think back, if you will, to the internet of fifteen, twenty years ago. The internet was more than just a bunch of apps on your phone, more than just Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and whatever else is the social media du jour. There were myriad websites with a variety of diversions. There were fan pages for the Mega Man games, there were forums for discussing the minutiae of Tolkien and Bionicle, there was YTMND and the Pi Song. It was a wilder time, one where not everything was about monetization or reaching the top of the algorithm. It was a different internet.
Over time, a lot of these sites have faded. Flash died, forums got overtaken by contemporary social media, people don’t make fansites anymore. Things pivoted to video; the internet became browsed through links on a social media feed. But, Wikipedia is still there.
Wikipedia is such a bananas idea. An encyclopedia that anyone can edit? Anyone on the internet? An internet that, when given the option, voted to name a scientific research vessel Boaty McBoatface? And yet, it worked. Somehow Wikipedia has flourished into a massive encyclopedia with a remarkably high editorial standard and insistence on citation. It’s done all this while maintaining a clean site design and without succumbing to the need for intrusive advertising.
To say nothing of its depths of information. Where older digital encyclopedias like Encarta fell out of date quickly, Wikipedia not only stays up to date but, by virtue of its communal authorship, has so much more information on its topics. (I remember looking up Star Wars in Encarta when I was around twelve and being disappointed with how little information there was; Wikipedia is a veritable fount of knowledge in comparison). I’ve found that when I travel now I will instinctively look up the city or country on Wikipedia and start reading up, following the hyperlinks to more specific topics and somehow getting a crash course on the place’s history. It’s useful, it’s readable, and it’s free.
I love Wikipedia. I love the idea of it. I love that in one corner of the internet there is a community driven to sharing knowledge. And I love how much it’s managed to stay the same even as the rest of the internet has changed around it. It’s the end of the year again and Wikipedia is doing a donation drive. This is the second year I’ve donated to the project because it’s something I believe is important and valuable. Because where else am I going to be able to read about the origin of the concept of a week in one window and the history of the high five in another?
Essays, Not Rants! 