One of the most visited websites in the world, or the 6th most visited website to be exact, is Wikipedia. Just like Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, Wikipedia is one of those pages that people turn to every day. It is a goldmine of useful articles, which are written by thousands of contributors all across the globe. And the best part is: it’s completely free.
Wikipedia will not make your quest for knowledge miserable with countless ads and a lengthy registration process (you still need to register if you are going to edit articles). Instead, it relies on donations from the people that read it and love it. In order to grasp how awesome Wikipedia really is, let’s take a look at some of the facts about it.
Wikipedia Has a Theme Song
Wikipedia has an official theme song, named “Hotel Wikipedia”, which is a cover of the famous “Hotel California” by The Eagles. Although Wikipedia states that the single was issued way back in 2004, the citation for that reference is curiously missing. For those who wish to challenge its accuracy, Wikipedia has issued a “warning”, claiming that “much bureaucracy will be involved” in order to achieve such a feat.
Wikipedia Numbers Are off the Charts
Don’t believe us? Let’s check out some of the numbers. Each day, 864,000 edits are done on Wikipedia, which is 36,000 edits each hour, or 600 minutes per minute. In case you were wondering about the article that has undergone the highest number of edits, that would be the article about George W. Bush, perhaps indicating its popularity, or notoriety, among the readers.
At the time of this writing, there are over 4.5 million English Wikipedia articles. German Wikipedia has over 1.5 million articles, and French Wikipedia comes in third with over 1.3 million articles. Britannica, by comparison, has “just” 40,000 articles.
Bet on Wikipedia and Win
This is a bet you might not want to win. The bet involves guessing what the last ever article on Wikipedia is going to be. Although it’s hard to imagine a world without Wikipedia, the sad fact is, it cannot run on donations forever. And you can never discount the possibility of some natural or digital disaster that’s going to spell the end of the internet. Perhaps Skynet will become self-aware… OK, some of us are “Terminator” fans, we admit. You can also bet on other milestones, but this one seems to be the most popular.
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