Wikipedia celebrates 20th birthday with virtual party, music, trivia and special guests

Wikipedia on January 15, 2021, celebrated its 20th anniversary since going live. One of the most visited websites on the world wide web, Wikipedia, organized a virtual birthday party with music, trivia, and special guests online for the readers in collaboration with NYC Media Lab. Furthermore, the site plans to host a virtual chat at 1 pm ET with Wikimedia Foundation CEO Katherine Maher and host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour, Manoush Zomorodi, who will speak about Wikipedia’s role in the ongoing fight against disinformation, and “address some of the biggest misconceptions you hear about Wikipedia, and discuss how research and knowledge sharing may change over the next 20 years.” 

In a blogpost, Wikipedia informed that since beginning in 2001, the free access information site has exemplified the idea that people could collaborate together and build a robust knowledge portal with volunteers who share their knowledge, the community organizers who host convenings and new editors, donors, developers who make sure that Wikipedia is fast and accessible for the readers. The website informed that it will be streaming a live community celebration which will include remarks from Wikipedia volunteers about their experiences with the website for the past 20 years with a word from the founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales and the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. 

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Wikipedia's history

The online encyclopedia of free knowledge was founded by an American-British entrepreneur Jimmy Wales, and supported by a non-profit foundation. It is now the seventh-most popular website in the world which hosts millions of users and now exists in 300 languages. Annually, the website attracts close to 15 billion hits from visitors and nearly 250,000 writers worldwide contribute to the site’s content each month. Wikipedia hosts 55 million articles and 6.2 million individual content pages in English language with 20 billion page views per month and nearly100 million edits. As a free content, non-profit institution, the website thrives on Friedrich Hayek’s concept of “The Use of Knowledge In Society.” Using that inspiration, the volunteers and contributors have updated the site with information on a variety of subjects over the past two decades. 

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