Fun facts about Wikipedia
Image by the Wikimedia Foundation
“Wherefore, the things of all nations shall be made known; yea, all things shall be made known unto the children of men.”
One possible fulfillment of this prophecy is seen in Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia in the world. Here are 40 interesting and fun facts about Wikipedia.
40 Fun facts about Wikipedia
Fun Fact #1
Wikipedia contributors have written more than 22 million articles.
Fun Fact #2
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger began Wikipedia in 2001.
Fun Fact #3
“Wiki,” means shared website, “pedia,” is a shortened word for encyclopedia.
Fun Fact #4
Wikipedia does not have any online advertisements.
Fun Fact #5
Wikipedia’s mission is to make the sum of the world’s information available in every language.
Fun Fact #6
A mere 13% of Wikipedia editors are female.
Fun Fact #7
Anyone can sign up and become a Wikipedia editor.
Fun Fact #8
Wikipedia Day is January 15th, commemorating the day the Wikipedia domain was launched in 2001.
Fun Fact #9
Wikipedia used to be on Wikipedia.com before being on Wikipedia.org. It changed domains to better reflect it’s non-profit mission.
Fun Fact #10
Articles on Wikipedia are available in over 285 languages.
Fun Fact #11
Members of the Wikipedia community are called Wikipedians.
Fun Fact #12
Writers have made more than 1.3 billion edits to Wikipedia articles.
Fun Fact #13
On average each article has had 62 edits.
Fun Fact #14
Richard Farmbrough has edited more than 750,000 Wikipedia articles.
Fun Fact #15
On Alexa.com, Wikipedia is ranked the 6th most popular website worldwide.
Fun Fact #16
Wikipedia has over 365 million readers worldwide.
Fun Fact #17
The average age of Wikipedia contributors is the mid-20s.
Fun Fact #18
Easy-to-comprehend articles are written on Simple Wikipedia.
Fun Fact #19
Most Wikipedia donations are made online. Some donations come from fund-raising events. Other donations include technological donations, including bandwidth, hosting capacity and server storage donations.
Fun Fact #20
The Wikimedia Foundation (in charge of Wikipedia) raised 23$ million in 2010.
Fun Fact #21
Donations made to Wikipedia are used accordingly: 44% is used to maintain the site and improve the software, 12% is used to expand Wikipedia’s global reach, 18% is used to pay for administration, 9% is used to support to volunteers, 11% is used to carry out funding campaigns, and 6% is used to found research and pay for travel and training of the Board of Trustees.
Fun Fact #22
The average donation in 2010 was $40.10.
Fun Fact #23
There were 573,568 individual donors in 2010.
Fun Fact #24
Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects reach over 492 million people each month.
Fun Fact #25
The Wikimedia Foundation employs about 138 people.
Fun Fact #26
There are over four million English articles, 1.43 million German articles, 1.27 million French articles, 900,000 Spanish articles, 908,000 Polish articles, 939,000 Italian articles and 875,000 Russian articles.
Fun Fact #27
69% of editors became contributors to fix an error. 73% of editors contribute because they like sharing knowledge.
Fun Fact #28
19% of editors have a Masters degree. 4.4% of editors have PhDs.
Fun Fact #29
31% of Wikipedia readers are women.
Fun Fact #30
The Wikimedia Foundation operates 11 free knowledge projects: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Mediawiki, Wikispecies, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Metawiki, Wikiversity, Wiktionary and Wikisource.
Fun Fact #31
US Conservatives believe that Wikipedia has a liberal bias, so they’ve started up a competing Conservapedia
Fun Fact #32
Over 27 million users have made edits on Wikipedia.
Fun Fact #33
In 2006 Wikipedia editors were named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
Fun Fact #34
Wikipedia servers are hosted in Florida.
Fun Fact #35
India held 95 anniversary events on Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary (January 15, 2011). The United States held 52 anniversary events.
Fun Fact #36
The Wikipedia page about George W. Bush has been edited more than any other Wikipedia article and viewed 4.5 million times in 2010.
Fun Fact #37
Wales on Sunday published the first media report about Wikipedia on August 26, 2001 in Cardiff, UK.
Fun Fact #38
Gangadhar Bhadani is an Indian banker who’s made more Wikipedia edits than any other Indian (192,400 edits).
Fun Fact #39
Wikipedia’s offices are located in San Francisco, California.
Fun Fact #40
Wikipedia has approximately 100,000 active volunteers and contributors worldwide.
“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”
- Jimmy Wales
Personal Notes: For Scripture News articles I refer to Wikipedia more than any other website. I love the vision of Wikipedia- creating a free resource for everyone in the world. I love how the internet has enabled passionate producers to pursue their dreams and make a living from donations or advertisements.