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Wikipedia is 25 years old
Here are six surprising facts about your favorite encyclopedia, without which it is impossible to imagine the modern Internet.
On January 15, 2026, Wikipedia turned 25 years old. Now the project, created by entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and philosopher Larry Sanger , ranks ninth on the list of the most visited sites in the world (and was once even in the top five). Documentaries are being made about the free digital encyclopedia, it is referred to as one of the last arguments in the dispute, and a monument was even erected in its honor. And, of course, they try to copy Wikipedia (most often unsuccessfully). In honor of the anniversary, Meduza talks about the most interesting and unusual facts from the history of this popular encyclopedia.
Wikipedia has articles in 342 languages. There was even a section in Klingon
By the beginning of 2026, Wikipedia will have 342 language sections. In fact, even a little more: another 16 sections are closed and inactive, and 11 are in the so-called incubator, where languages new to the encyclopedia are tested.
The most popular version by a wide margin remains the English version, which has more than 7.1 million articles. For comparison, in the German section, which is in third place, there are only three million. Russian Wikipedia (eighth place) contains slightly more than two million articles. But it’s almost impossible to guess who takes second place. More than six million Wikipedia articles are written in Cebuano, a language spoken in the Philippines.
There is an explanation for this paradox. In 2012, physicist and programmer Sverker Johansson wrote a bot for the Swedish section that automatically uploaded simple articles to the encyclopedia. They were created using the same template, and information was taken from open sources. Soon the program was adapted to Cebuano (the native language of Johansson’s wife) and Warayan (another language of the Philippines), and taught how to create more complex texts. Now the bot continues to upload texts only to the Cebuano Wikipedia, and they are marked with a special icon.
The Tigre language, spoken in Eritrea and Sudan, is currently the most unpopular language, with only 43 articles written in it. Interestingly, there were more texts even in Klingon. Yes, a version of Wikipedia in the fictional language of one of the races from the Star Trek universe existed for an entire year, from June 2004 to August 2005. The archive of the Klingon Encyclopedia is still available .
Most often, Wikipedia visitors are interested in deceased celebrities. And Donald Trump
In honor of its 25th anniversary, the Wikimedia Foundation shared with Popular Science a list of the most popular topics on Wikipedia since 2008—it simply does not have earlier statistics. It turned out that the most visited page (almost 650 million views) during all this time was an article about famous deceased people broken down by year. In second and third place, respectively, are texts about the United States and Donald Trump, but each of them was visited almost half as often.
The top five also included articles about the British Queen Elizabeth II (253 million views) and India (210 million). Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (209 million) became the most popular among athletes, Michael Jackson (168 million) among musical performers.
In a separate report on the English-language Wikipedia for 2025, representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation note that the list of deceased celebrities has never fallen below third place in the statistics. However, this time the article gave way to a text about American activist Charlie Kirk , who was killed in September. Moreover, 43% of users who were interested in it were not from the United States.
It is also interesting that the third place on the list was taken by the American serial killer Ed Gean, who died in 1984. This surge in interest is explained by the release on Netflix of the third season of the anthology series “Monster,” dedicated to this criminal. But the English-speaking audience is not so actively interested in sports - Ronaldo is only in 19th place on this list.
Wikipedia is completely blocked in three countries. Russia is not among them (yet)
At the moment, there are only three countries in the world where Wikipedia is completely inaccessible. One of them is the DPRK, where the vast majority of residents, in principle, cannot connect to the global network. They use internal resources approved by local authorities and are unlikely to have ever visited Wikipedia.
The Chinese authorities first had complaints about Wikipedia in 2004 - of course, due to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. On June 3, on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the brutal crackdown on protesters, access to the online encyclopedia in the country was completely closed for almost three weeks. Subsequently, the Chinese government blocked Wikipedia several more times until it finally cut off access to the Chinese version in 2015. And in 2019, access to all other languages was closed.
The third country where the encyclopedia is not available is Myanmar. There was a military coup there in February 2021. Two weeks later, the junta that came to power introduced an Internet censorship regime, under which Wikipedia was completely blocked in the country. This restriction has not yet been lifted.
In Russia, the encyclopedia continues to operate, although local deputies from time to time threaten to completely block access to the resource. But they cannot yet offer a worthy alternative: Russian analogues are either closed due to lack of funding or suffer from strict censorship.
The Belarusian authorities use other methods - they do not block Wikipedia itself, but put pressure on the community by harassing and arresting editors. However, this has not yet affected the content of articles in the Belarusian segment.
Several hundred edits are made to Wikipedia every minute. But not all of them are correct
Despite difficulties around the world (according to Wikimedia, editors are also persecuted in Syria, Saudi Arabia and other countries), the community is largely what makes Wikipedia what it is. Currently, about 250 thousand editors around the world work on the encyclopedia. On average, they make 324 edits to articles every minute. Moreover, five years ago this figure was much lower - only 114 edits per minute.
Almost all Wikipedians (the English equivalent of this word, wikipedian , was included in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2012) work for free. And quite often they cope with their tasks so quickly that they overtake world news publications. Some Reddit users even admitted that viewing the current events page on Wikipedia replaces reading the media for them.
However, what is written in this encyclopedia is not always worth believing one hundred percent. For example, in 2022, more than 200 fictional articles on the history of Russia were found in the Chinese section of Wikipedia. They were subsequently deleted, but one of the fake texts was translated first into English, then into Russian and a number of other languages.
Sometimes editors get so carried away that they start so-called “edit wars” (of course, Wikipedia has an article on this topic). There's even a long list of the strangest controversies. For example, the war of edits between residents of Mexico and Italy about the origin of Caesar salad has been going on for more than 16 years.
Wikipedia is the only site that has a full-fledged monument. It was installed in Poland
The significance of Wikipedia is also emphasized by the fact that a full-fledged monument was erected to this site. The monument, created by the Armenian sculptor Mihran Hakobyan, was erected in the Polish city of Slubice in October 2014.
The sculpture depicts four people standing on stacks of books. In their hands they hold the Wikipedia logo - an unfinished globe assembled from puzzle pieces. The height of the monument is a little more than two meters.
The place was chosen because the encyclopedia is quite popular in Poland. At the moment, Polish Wikipedia is in the top ten in terms of the number of articles (almost 1.7 million). And in the early 2010s, when the idea arose to erect a monument, this section was the largest among the Slavic languages.
On Wikipedia you can find articles about everything under the sun. Even about very minor events
And yet, the main value of Wikipedia is not in public recognition or incredible statistics, but in its texts. And this is not just a collection of articles in three hundred languages. Wikipedia is a unique digital resource that contains a huge amount of information about people, objects and events that other resources would consider insignificant and unworthy of mention. And all this information is clear and structured.
The meaning of an incomprehensible scientific term can be found in a dictionary, and the biography of a famous writer can be read in a regular encyclopedia. The history of the painting and its photo will probably be found in a museum catalog, and a description of the military conflict can be found in a history textbook. But finding a detailed article of almost fifty thousand characters explaining in detail the sharp jump in shares of the American gaming store chain GameStop at the beginning of 2021 is quite a task. Moreover, with links to almost three hundred primary sources.
Want to explore the history of an ancient meme or learn what skibidi toilets are? Read Wikipedia (or Meduza ). Are you interested in which films used the word fuck most often? A detailed list is at your service. By the way, the Canadian comedy Sram-TV is in the lead, and unexpectedly in third place is The Wolf of Wall Street with Leonardo DiCaprio.
What children in the 90s learned by chance in the yard (for example, what will happen if you put Mentos in a bottle of Coca-Cola) has become an article in a digital encyclopedia. How did the game console wars develop and how did they end? What are Nigerian letters ? Is it possible to cook fish in the dishwasher? Most often, people are not interested in all this and do not consider such topics important. But if a question arises, the first thing you should do is check Wikipedia. There is a good chance that the answer has already been found.
"Jellyfish"