I, Wikipedian, Wish Wikipedia A Very Happy 25th Birthday
By Nikki Wordsmith
hello@nikkiwordsmith.com
WhatsApp: 07905 456704
From a humble impossible dream until today exactly 25 years later, Wikipedia has democratized information, powered AI, informed journalism, and embodied humanity’s best collaboration—proving that collective curiosity and trust can build something truly extraordinary for everyone.
Indeed, the purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come.
Denis Diderot[2]
I am not rich.
Not because I have chosen to be a writer for a living, although that much is true.
However, not being rich does not automatically mean I am poor.
Oh no. Stand aside old money. Sit down the nouveau riche.
I, like you, am one of the richest human beings alive because we are born in the Age Of Free Information At Our Fingertips.
And with the advent of ChatGPT et al in the last three years the tree of free knowledge keeps growing.
“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.”
— Jimmy Wales Wikipedia co-founder, 2004.
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger birthed this radically open experiment in collaborative knowledge.
From its humble launch on January 15, 2001, as an “impossible dream” of a free, volunteer-written encyclopedia, it has grown into the world’s largest open knowledge resource.
Their radical step forward was that Wikipedia invited anyone to edit its pages, thus creating a living, self‑correcting knowledge base for all.
According to the history of Wikipedia entry on Wikipedia of course, its first days saw rapid growth as volunteers around the world added and refined articles.
What began as a side‑project quickly evolved into one of humanity’s largest collective information archives.
One key factor is Wikipedia’s low‑data design text-first design.
It keeps pages lightweight and fast by avoiding tracking cookies, minimizing stored user information, and relying on simple, text‑first layouts that load quickly even on slow connections.
Elon Musk has said a couple times about how you can fit the whole of Wikipedia on your mobile phone.
On August 31, 2023, replying to John Carmack he tweeted: “Data storage technology is incredible! You can fit Wikipedia on your phone with room to spare.”
Be Bold
In 2010 I decided to make the leap and become a Wikipedian Editor.
I was given a mentor Jen Hawk.
It was very daunting because it is all anonymous.
It feels a lot like what I would imagine shouting into the void of space is like.
I was ravaged by anxiety and used to rock on my chair half-hoping half-praying a line one of my many many please help me Obi Wan Kenobe the would get answered.
And they did. Many many times. In amazing grammatical and contextual detail.
And I learnt to be bold.
And since then my editorial contributions have been:
70M Readers Read Wikipedia Every Day
If, like me, you love nothing more than lying down on a bed and listening to multiple stores of information, knowledge and wisdom, inhaling verified, neutral point of views and pluralistic ideas like they are coming into fashion, then truly what a time it is to be alive.
Platforms such as Wikipedia means everybody everywhere can learn about everything we know to date.
When Wikipedia launched in the early noughties, it changed my life.
Specifically my worklife. The hours I used to spend on company time downloading music, I now spent looking up incredibly important music facts: song lyrics, track-listings, bios, personal stories,
This was a deep-dive sea-change in my cultural world.
As well as reading and getting lost down music rabbit holes for hours, there is a whole world of knowledge to discover.
Today it stands as the world’s largest open knowledge repository, with over 66 million articles across 342 languages (English edition alone exceeds 7.1 million articles and 5 billion words as of January 2026).
It’s the backbone of the internet—powering search engines, voice assistants, generative AI tools, and journalism. — while attracting billions of views annually (English edition readers logged ~2.4 billion hours in 2025 alone).
Its biggest cultural impacts include democratizing information globally, fostering collaborative editing by ~250,000 monthly volunteers, and serving as a trusted, human-curated counterpoint to misinformation and AI-generated content.
Wikipedia shapes public discourse on politics, pop culture, and current events (e.g., topping read lists in 2025), preserves collective memory, and embodies ideals of free, accessible knowledge for everyone — proving crowdsourced truth can endure in a digital age.
I still feel monumentally indebted to my new found IQ and how it helped me start up as a freelancer.
To this day I contribute time and money to pay it forward in my own small way to the original spirit of Denis Diderot.
Made in Lancashire
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Thanks Brett. Just had to give the blog a quick edit and re-write so hopefully a much better and broader read.
Yes Wikipedia really helped me when I was first starting out. It is such a great organisation. A real development of our knowledge base. Letting us mere mortals edit is a quantum leap forward.
That’s true Nikki, Wikipedia is such a useful tool and I have noticed how it’s all grassroots and people can edit it when they see more info is required(or that it’s inaccurate). ☺️
Very interesting Nikki, I didn’t know you were a Wikipedia editor ☕⚽ Fair play to that! Hard to think it’s been 25 years. I used Wikipedia briefly today to look up a diverse range of people from Winona Ryder to George Szamuely. Good post
How’s your writing and Norway getting on?
Hey Nikki!☕ I’m enjoying the writing thanks. I started in May 2024 and have found the biggest challenge is time, both writing and engaging with other’s work. I have also found that I’ve written about quite a variety of things. So hopefully I’ll get my next piece out relatively soon.
Norway’s great, I’ve been here for 15 years now. Funnily enough, since I wrote my last piece there’s been a ton of snow. ☕⚽
Yes writing is very time consuming because it uses a diffent part of the brain. You literally think differently! And you need to be able to process and reflect to get the benefit of that beautiful creature hindsight. I bet Norway looks beautiful in all the snow. Did you get enough to cool off and cover all the data centres?
We’ve certainly had a lot of snow recently, including in Bortelid where I made the blog. But here in the southland there’s also alot of rain which means you’re left with beautiful scenery but lots of scary ice(thankfully not always)☺️⚽️⛄️❄️
Thanks a lot for sharing this interesting article!
Happy Anniversary, Wikipedia ❣️❣️❣️
Thank you Luisa! I’m just giving it a quick edit and polish up seeing as I wrote and scheduled this blog quite a while back!
It will be a much better read in a couple of hours :-))) HNY! I hope you and your family have a great 2026.