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It's Wikipedia's Birthday

In honor of the free encyclopedia's birthday, here's our coverage from the past few years.
(Photo: Radu Bercan/Shutterstock)

(Photo: Radu Bercan/Shutterstock)

Happy birthday, Wikipedia! The online encyclopedia giant turns 15 today, and whether you used it to write your 10th grade book report or to learn about the "Geospatial Summary of the High Peaks/Summits of the Juneau Icefield" (weirdly enough, 2015's most edited page), you've no doubt read one of the site's 38,247,946 English language pages.

In honor of the free encyclopedia's birthday, here's our coverage from the past few years.

  • "War and Peace, on Wikipedia," by Nathan Collins
    Imagine Wikipedia were a society; how would its wars start? A researcher at Indiana University used Wikipedia page edits to examine how conflict originates.
  • "The Political Controversy of Wikipedia Science Articles," by Nathan Collins
    Unsurprisingly, pages on politically controversial science topics are edited more frequently than non-controversial ones. Another reason not to use Wikipedia as a source, especially if you're writing about global warming.
  • "Who Killed Wikipedia?," Virginia Postrel
    Volunteers keep Wikipedia running as a labor of love, but their culture of competitiveness and vigilance scares away newcomers. On its 15-year anniversary, we re-visit the question: Are Wikipedia's guardians also its executioners? 

Craving more Wikipedia? Feel free to edit our page.

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