“Get ready to click through the digital pages of history as we delve into 15 captivating Wikipedia facts. Wikipedia, the modern oracle of information, is more than just a website—it’s a treasure trove of knowledge, surprises, and curiosities. From the world’s shortest Wikipedia article to the epic edit wars that have raged behind the scenes, join us on a journey that reveals the fascinating, weird, and wonderful aspects of the world’s favorite online encyclopedia. So, don your virtual explorer’s hat and let’s start our adventure through the digital universe of Wikipedia!”
1-5 Fun Facts About Wikipedia
1. Wikipedia boasts an impressive repository of knowledge with over 55 million articles spanning across more than 300 languages.
2. The collaborative spirit is alive and well on Wikipedia, with a dedicated community of over 280,000 editors contributing to its content every month.
3. It’s a truly global platform, with 1.5 billion unique devices accessing Wikipedia’s wealth of information every month.
4. In a historic moment in 2017, astronaut Paolo Nespoli recorded his spoken voice while aboard the International Space Station, specifically for his Wikipedia article, marking the first content created in space for Wikipedia.
5. Wikipedia ranks among the top 10 most visited websites worldwide, a remarkable feat considering it is the only major website of its scale run by a nonprofit organization.
6-10 Interesting Facts About Wikipedia
6. Transparency is key on Wikipedia. Every article has a comprehensive revision history, allowing users to trace its development step by step.
7. Wikipedia has even reached celestial heights, with an asteroid named after it. The 274301 Wikipedia is a Vestian asteroid in the inner region of the asteroid belt, measuring about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in diameter.
8. The platform evolves rapidly, with over 1.9 edits per second made by editors from across the globe.
9. Wikipedia’s vigilance against vandalism is notable, with a single bot detecting 40 percent of all vandalism, boasting an impressively low false positive rate of only 0.1 percent.
10. In a quirkier anecdote, a Wikipedia admin once accidentally deleted the main page, leading to the creation of a Wikipedia guidance essay aptly titled “Don’t delete the main page.”
11-15 Surprising Facts About Wikipedia
11. Despite the immense success of Wikipedia, its founder, Jimmy Wales, is known to have a net worth of approximately $1 million, a relatively modest sum considering the platform’s global reach and influence.
12. Wikipedia has prohibited edits from any IP address held by the Church of Scientology.
13. It even had to prohibit IPs from Congress from updating each other’s entries.
14. Two brothers altered Wikipedia, giving an animal the fictitious name Brazilian Aardvark. This nickname was taken up by news outlets and eventually became an accepted term.
15. A remarkable anecdote: virtually the entire Scots version of Wikipedia, comprising 57,000 articles, was authored by a 19-year-old from the United States who had no prior knowledge of the Scots language.
That’s it for this post guys, I hope you had fun while reading about 15 Facts About Wikipedia.
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