With all eyes on AI, you may have missed your invitation to Wikipedia’s 25th anniversary celebration. Wikipedia’s story began with the earliest edit to an article on the online, crowd-sourced encyclopedia in January 2001, but Wikipedia at 25 has evolved. Once considered an unreliable source, it is now a “key source of knowledge on the internet,” according to the Pew Research Center. This credibility is underpinned by its massive size (both the number of articles and the audience), ease of searchability, and foundational rules and pillars that require articles to be verifiably accurate and to include citations to reliable, independent, published sources (such as news articles) rather than personal interpretations or opinions.
Size Matters When it Comes to Wikipedia
For Wikipedia, the number of articles and the size of the audience make it one of the Top 10 most visited websites in the United States. Other interesting statistics include:
- There are more than 7 million unbiased, cited articles about everything from A (an explanation of the first letter of the Latin alphabet) to Z-machines (a virtual machine used by Infocom for text adventure games) on Wikipedia’s English-language platform.
- The second-largest Wikipedia is in German with over 3M articles.
- According to Semrush, Wikipedia had more than 4 billion visits in January 2026, during which visitors spent more than nine minutes on the site and viewed an average of 3.35 pages.
- Wikipedia articles have been viewed 1.9 trillion times since 2016 (about 508 million views per day, on average, according to Pew’s analysis).
Easy Searchability Creates Learning Pathways
You’ve likely heard of “Pinterest paralysis” and “doomscrolling.” On a more positive note, there is the “wiki rabbit hole,” “wiki walk,” or “wiki black hole,” which are described in an article on The Conversation as “endlessly hopping from topic to topic” on the site. Wikipedia calls it a “learning pathway” that users create by following links from one topic to the next.
Here’s what Glenn Newcomer created for Wikipedia to visualize a Wiki Walk:
The ability to move seamlessly via hyperlinks enables a more thorough exploration of a specific topic and, according to The Conversation, is a “testament to the site’s easy navigation.” It’s also likely behind the average of nine minutes per visit. If you scroll down to the Notes and References at the bottom of any given Wiki article, you will find links to even more articles and resources for potential exploring. That wiki walk may never end.
Foundational Rules and Pillars Support Searchability and Credibility
Hyperlinks and citations not only enhance Wikipedia’s searchability; they also reinforce its credibility as the key source of knowledge described by the Pew Research Center. In fact, the site makes it clear that if there aren’t any reliable sources to be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. That may seem harsh, but it’s necessary to maintain the veracity of the content. A few other important suggestions and guidelines for contributors include:
- Rule 2. Learn the five pillars: All editors are expected to adhere to the “five pillars” of Wikipedia and, most importantly, the site “is not a publisher of original thought or research.” So, no pet peeves or theories, no unpublished results, no getting onto your favorite soapbox, either. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a blog or an op-ed.
- Rule 6. Cite, cite, cite: Wiki outlines their “strict inclusion policy” that demands verifiability in this rule. Editors and submitters are encouraged to attribute each statement to a reliable, published source, giving “preference to secondary sources (such as reviews or book chapters) that survey the relevant primary research over research articles themselves.”
The five pillars include a few things that may seem obvious from what you’ve read so far: Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia with articles written from a neutral point of view.
Why Should you Care?
It’s important as a consumer of information from Wikipedia that you can trust the sources used in the articles you read. The sources in those articles and Wikipedia itself play even bigger and more important roles in our AI-driven internet search experiences.
If you have searched for anything lately, your search engine of choice will feed you a generative AI overview with answers (usually in bullet form) that link to news stories. Where do they get these? From the news and from Wikipedia.
According to a Wikimedia blog, “Almost all large language models (LLMs) train on Wikipedia datasets, and search engines and social media platforms prioritize their information to respond to questions from their users.”
At 25, Wikipedia matters. In addition to its credibility, size, ease of searchability, and rules and regulations regarding verifiable information, it matters because it can ensure that your organization is included in AI-generated search results, a topic that we will explore in our next article.
The author, Margaret L. Brown, is an experienced writer, researcher, and Wikipedia editor. She often takes “wiki walks” on the site to help strengthen wiki articles through review, editing, adding relevant sources, and ensuring that hyperlinks to related articles are added when needed.