What's really behind Elon's Wikipedia complaints
Elon's war on Wikipedia, crypto thaws, and going back in Wikipedia history.
🔔 Wiki Briefing
Elon’s War on Wikipedia
Last month the world's richest man made headlines for criticizing Wikipedia's fundraising appeals… no, he made headlines because, in that context, he publicly offered Wikipedia $1 billion to change its name to "Dickipedia". Har har. In a sense, there's nothing new here: Musk's sense of humor hasn't progressed beyond middle school, he's very much known for offering to pay absurd sums for web properties on social media, and he has an extensive history of railing against Wikipedia–including earlier this summer, as recounted in the September 2023 WikiWise newsletter. As noted by Slate last year, Musk has a longstanding habit of complaining about Wikipedia, especially about his own Wikipedia entry, going so far as to issue demands for changes and creating headaches for Wikipedia editors.
The red-pilled mega-billionaire has company. Notwithstanding the site's "neutral point of view policy", right-wingers dissatisfied with Wikipedia's content have long claimed the site has a systemic bias against them. Political scientists have observed a breakdown in "shared facts" in the current era, and even relentlessly-neutral Wikipedia is not exempt. Nearly a decade ago, The Wikipedian blog chronicled a conflict between far-right website The Federalist and Wikipedia editors about left-leaning astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. In recent weeks, Australia's Spectator criticized Wikipedia's account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which was echoed by the Washington Examiner under the headline: "Is it possible to save Wikipedia?" The further right the question-asker, the more likely the answer is no.
📰 In the News
Crypto Thaws, Traffic Rises
A recent report in cryptocurrency news outlet Crypto News observes that the Wikipedia article about Bitcoin is tied very closely to the price of the best-known (and most resilient) cryptocurrency. As Bitcoin's price has recovered about half of what it lost in the crypto crash of 2022, so too has the Bitcoin Wikipedia article reached its highest traffic in more than a year. (However, it's still nowhere near the heights of 2017–18, when Bitcoin first came to prominence.)
It's always worth remembering: when you're in the news, you can't be sure which news article people will read about you. But the one article you can be sure newshounds will eventually check is the one on Wikipedia.
🧩 Wikipedia Facts
For many years, Wikipedia's archives did not go back to the very beginning, owing to changes in software and hosting in its early days. In 2008 Wikipedia archaeology took a leap forward when Wikimedia Foundation developer Tim Starling discovered, on a hard drive, a series of edits dating back to Wikipedia's very first day in existence. What was the first edit? An update to the site's home page at 19:27 (UTC) on January 15, 2001: "This is the new WikiPedia!"
💡 Tips & Tricks
Ever wonder which editor added a specific word or phrase to Wikipedia? A little-known tool created by an independent Wikipedia editor makes it possible to find out exactly that. It is called WikiBlame, and all you need to do is enter the name of an article and a phrase you wish to identify the first instance of. It has limitations, though: because such a search could overwhelm Wikipedia's API, it recommends using a "binary" search to ping pong back and forth between revisions, rather than plowing through every single edit in reverse order. It's a little more complex, but all the more satisfying when you find the answer you were looking for.
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