It’s hard to imagine, but it’s true. Wikipedia has been around for a quarter of a century, providing information that we often can’t find locally.
The ubiquitous, nonprofit, user-driven reference site celebrated its 25th anniversary on January 15. Though it is threatened by AI and censorship in the United States and the United Kingdom, Wikipedia remains an impressive accomplishment and a rare highlight of the modern internet. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales made the site’s first edit on January 15, 2001, using an iMac G3, which was state-of-the-art at the time. According to Wikimedia Statistics, the free encyclopedia recorded 27 billion page views from seven billion unique visitors in December, only a few decades behind the current estimated world population of eight billion. Yet, Wikipedia is one of the few places on the internet that is not flooded with ads and trackers; it only has a few donation requests per year.
In 2020, Guinness World Records recognized Wikipedia as the world’s largest encyclopedia when it reached 50 million articles across all languages. However, this recognition came a little late. Wikipedia is generally accepted to have become the largest encyclopedia in human history in 2007, just six years after its inception. The 2007 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica notes that Wikipedia surpassed the original size of the Ming dynasty’s Yongle Encyclopedia in 2007. The Yongle Encyclopedia was previously the largest such collection in human history, but it now exists only in part. However, being at the top for 600 years isn’t so bad.
Wikipedia is famous for two things: its free access and the fact that anyone can edit it. Thanks to its enthusiastic editors and commitment to sourcing, Wikipedia is a popular starting point for amateur and professional research projects alike. However, Wikipedia‘s successes are somewhat overshadowed by the latest challenges facing the site. In August, it suffered an ambiguous defeat in its fight against the UK’s invasive online security law. In early 2025, Columbia District Attorney Ed Martin, appointed by Trump, threatened to revoke the non-profit status of the Wikimedia Foundation on false charges, including allowing foreign actors to manipulate information and spread propaganda to the American public.
Martin’s threats did not lead to any immediate results, and he was appointed US Attorney for Pardons. In this role, he oversees the government’s questionable pardon decisions for individuals such as Changpeng Zhao, a crypto billionaire who coincidentally entered into a business agreement with the Trump family’s cryptocurrency startup, World Liberty Financial, around the same time. Nevertheless, Wikipedia remains a bête noire for American conservatives, alongside transgender women, immigrants, and Minneapolis residents.
In October, the Wikimedia Foundation announced that it was experiencing unusually high AI-related bot traffic while the number of human readers fell by 8% due to AI chatbots and generated responses in search results. The foundation is taking steps to combat this issue.
Source: PCGamer, Wikimedia Statistics, Guinness World Records, China Daily, NY Times
