Get Weekly Updates on the Most-Edited Wikipedia Entries

Illustration for article titled Get Weekly Updates on the Most-Edited Wikipedia Entries
Photo: Alexey Boldin (Shutterstock)

With so much competing media coverage—between the pandemic, the police violence against people of color, the upcoming elections, a particularly active hurricane season—it’s a lot to take in. At the same time, though, you still might want to be aware of what’s happening in the world. If you’ve found yourself doomscrolling a lot over the past few months, there’s another way to scratch that itch of soaking in copious amounts of detailed information. It comes in the form of a weekly newsletter highlighting the hot topics on Wikipedia. Here’s what you need to know.

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How to sign up for The Weeklypedia

As you’ve probably gleaned from that heading, the name of the newsletter is The Weeklypedia, and once again, the nice people at Recomendo were the ones who tipped us off. You can sign up here for the weekly newsletter, though anyone can access this week’s roundup (or any of the back issues) by visiting the site. The newsletter is also available in 20 languages other than English, and appears as though you can put in a request for another language if yours is not currently listed.

Each week, you’ll receive an email listing the top 20 Wikipedia articles with the most changes, the 10 most actively edited new articles created in the past week and the most active discussions on Wikipedia. So no, it’s not the same as reading the news, but does offer interesting insight into what people around the world care about enough to add to or edit Wikipedia.

Examples of what’s covered

Here’s some of what’s in this week’s newsletter:

Top 5 articles with the most changes

  1. 2020 Republican National Convention (951 changes by 128 authors)
  2. 2020 Atlantic hurricane season (792 changes by 170 authors)
  3. Tropical Storm Laura (2020) (789 changes by 145 authors)
  4. Deaths in 2020 (496 changes by 87 authors)
  5. Coronation Street timeline (470 changes by 2 authors)

Top 5 most actively edited articles created in the past week

  1. Hurricane Laura (789 changes by 145 authors)
  2. Shooting of Jacob Blake (467 changes by 126 authors)
  3. Miron Sher (196 changes by 6 authors)
  4. Results of the 2020 Northern Territory general election (182 changes by 14 authors)
  5. Ice Cream (Blackpink and Selena Gomez song) (162 changes by 66 authors)

Top 5 most active discussions

  1. Swati (Pashtun tribe)
  2. Shooting of Jacob Blake
  3. Steve Bannon
  4. Kamala Harris
  5. Ayurveda
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Did you wake up this morning hoping to learn more about the long-running British evening soap opera Coronation Street? Probably not. And of course, all the usual Wikipedia caveats apply (anyone can edit it, check the original links/references, etc) and this is not the way to hear about breaking news. But it is an interesting insight into what’s on the world’s mind (or at least the minds of those who use and edit Wikipedia).

Dr. Elizabeth Yuko is a bioethicist and adjunct professor of ethics at Fordham University. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, CNN & Playboy.

DISCUSSION
https://lifehacker.com/get-weekly-updates-on-the-most-edited-wikipedia-entries-1844883659
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