Wikipedia: Why The World's Encyclopedia Still Matters

I am an editor for Wikipedia. Maybe many of you are also editors or maybe many of you haven't edited Wikipedia at all. What does editing for Wikipedia mean? Lots of things, from fixing someone else's grammar, to adding new references, to fact checking, to writing entire new articles. I've done each of those and more in my 6+ years volunteering for the site off-and-on. What good is Wikipedia, really, and why is it all the more important today than ever before? 

You could read about the history of the site on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia. I use Wikipedia as a general reference - it is good for giving a broad overview of a topic, as well as giving you links/references to go deeper. The site is widely reliable, there is even a Wikipedia article about that very topic (Can I trust that article?). Overall, its great, but not without its flaws. 

Far far less people make edits to the site, and less still make edits that actually persist. On the surface level, this makes sense. If the majority of visits to the site are readers (those looking to learn more), then that implies that it does its job well. Who is editing Wikipedia? According to a 2023 YouGov poll, 7% of all US adults have ever edited the site and a further 20% considered it, but never went through with it. Seven percent of all US adults is over 18 million. Every demographic asked in that YouGov poll had at least one member who had edited the encyclopedia ever before. So yes, I think its fair to say that "everyone" is editing Wikipedia. Which is in-line with its goals and intentions.

The "globe" logo, representing the fact that this project is a collaborative one (puzzle pieces), that it is still incomplete, and that it belongs to all of us (many different languages pictured).

How does Wikipedia interact with both the formal education system (primary, secondary, tertiary schooling), and the continuing education process (after you finish school)? At first, schools rejected it. Anyone who attended school from about 2001 to 2016 can say they've had a teacher or professor say to not use or trust anything on Wikipedia. This skepticism made sense initially - quality did suffer in the first few years of the site. Eventually, the site matured and started to clean up its well-read articles. In-line citations became essentially mandatory and editors would use the {{citation needed}} tag liberally across articles. This quality, along with its popularity, helped to improve Wikipedia's image in the eyes of schools and colleges across the world. Pulling from my own experience, teachers and professors in the last five years have been more open about using Wikipedia in the way it's designed - as a general reference. They still do not want you to cite it in a paper (nor should you), rather they want you to go directly to the source. 

Outside of school, and in the "continuing education process", I think Wikipedia has made an even bigger impact. It remains the one single place to learn about nearly anything in the world. With articles from ancient China to modern-day warfare, there really is an endless amount to learn. And it presents these articles factually and in an easy to access manner.

I've been talking about how great this site is. Why is it so? At its core, it is its neutral point of view policy. This principle helps to ensure that articles aren't biased in any one direction and instead focus on the science, on the history, on the facts. Biased information is a superweapon; one that has been used to influence politics across the world. Wikipedia's model fights against that, and builds readers who are more skeptical of biased news sources. 

So today, when you look something up, how many of you go to Wikipedia? Again, pulling from that YouGov poll, 75% of US adults utilize Wikipedia at least occasionally. And 58% (of the whole) say they trust the site the same or more than other online sources. Those are really great numbers for a free, openly editable encyclopedia. 

So, Wikipedia is important because it is a general reference that is written in a neutral point of view and with citations backing up all of its claims. This type of work - an encyclopedia - is an important and critical work for the general public in learning and education. Let me ask, how many of you use Wikipedia as a news aggregator? Be honest, how many of you looked at the 2026 Iran War article for updates, instead of going to the big news conglomerates? I would wager that many people use the site for that purpose, even though Wikipedia wasn't built in mind to serve that function. This is fairly unique the site, as print encyclopedias could never be updated with enough speed to be useful in that way. Of course, this isn't the main purpose of Wikipedia, and in truth it serves many, many different functions. To you looking up the four U.S. presidents who were assassinated, to you wanting to know more about amortization. 

You already read Wikipedia. Consider helping it out. Lend your writing skills and edit an article. Maybe  you see grammar that needs to be fixed, or maybe an article in incomplete in some area. Take pictures and upload them to the site. Or, instead of donating your time, donate your money. Wikipedia as a public resource is not owned by any governmental entity. Its not like a public library in that sense. It is owned, most directly, by a non-profit. Its text is owned by each contributor. We own Wikipedia, do not let that change.