Wikipedia was founded on Jan. 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. By the end of the year, it had over 20,000 articles; today it has over 2.6 million articles in the English language, with 261 other languages having their own editions.
I looked up that information on Wikipedia. In the process of finding it, I opened articles on Jimmy Wales (whose previous occupation had been CEO of an adult-oriented Web site), the Yongle encyclopedia (completed in 1408, and held the record for largest encyclopedia for 600 years until Wikipedia unseated it), and the Time Person of the Year list (as the 2006 nod, "You," was generally considered to be heavily influenced by Wikipedia's success).
I, of course, clicked through on links in these articles to other, more interesting articles. Two hours later, I found myself simultaneously reading detailed character histories of Battlestar Galactica characters (a show that I've never watched) and biographies of the oldest women in the world.
It's a wonder that I ever get anything done.
Wikipedia's done more to change the face of information retrieval than the almanac, the card catalog, and the guard who purses her lips when she sees me carrying my soda into O'Neill. It's also done more to decrease productivity than Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Guitar Hero combined.
As an aficionado of absolutely trivial trivia, I think Wikipedia is a goldmine. Its ratio of useless-to-useful information is terrifyingly high. Where else could you find an encyclopedia where the Sailor Moon article is about seven times longer than the entry for Alexander Fleming, discoverer of Penicillin? Where the article for each Harry Potter book is longer than the article that covers the entirety of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu series? Where there is a 2,000-word article on Miles "Tails" Prower, Sonic the Hedgehog's sidekick, that cites 20 separate works?
Nothing is private anymore, nothing is sacred. The same Web site that gives excellent summaries of all 44 of our nation's presidents provides carefully worded and cited information about Angelina Jolie's love life. Sure, this is information that can be found in any tabloid rag, but the legitimizing that Wikipedia gives is intoxicating. I wouldn't be caught dead reading a copy of Us Weekly, but Wikipedia's article on Paris Hilton keeps me abreast of the celebutante's antics.
Thank goodness.
Further increasing Wikipedia's appeal is the fact that it consists entirely of user-generated content. In the words of Michael Scott of NBC's The Office, "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information."
Of course, the fact that just anyone can add to Wikipedia leads to all sorts of territorial infighting. One should try to stay away from the "Talk" pages of any given article, as they'll give you a glimpse into the psyches of those who write and maintain these articles. Such a glimpse can lead to a loss in faith in Wikipedia (and, to be honest, humanity itself). Check out Elvis Presley's talk archives for pages upon pages of pages of argument over whether the article should include detailed accounts of his sex life.
I would tell these people to get a life, if I had one myself.
I'll jump online to check some facts about recent presidential elections, and find myself four hours later reading the character biographies of the puppets in Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, with little memory of how I got there, but an undeniable urge to keep clicking, keep clicking.
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