7 Ways To Learn Something New Every Day With Wikipedia

Affiliate Disclosure: By buying the products we recommend, you help keep the lights on at MakeUseOf. Read more.

Advertisement

learn something new wikipediaWikipedia is packed full of content. At the time of writing there are over 4 million articles contained within the English language version, with more being added all the time. All of these pages are free to view, not lumbered with ads, and are edited by people like us. It’s a resource that everybody knows about, but which very few people truly make the most of.

Part of the problem is that most people only head to Wikipedia when they have something specific in mind they want to learn more about. They then search for that subject matter, read the relevant article, and then scoot back off to whatever dark corner of the Web they crawled out of. But wait, there is more to Wikipedia than that. Much more, in fact. The tricky part of the equation is knowing how to find interesting content.

Thankfully that’s why MakeUseOf exists. Having previously pointed out interesting people on Wikipedia Wacky Wiki: 6 Fascinating People on Wikipedia Wacky Wiki: 6 Fascinating People on Wikipedia Most people approach Wikipedia as they approach Google: they head there with a search term already in mind. But that approach may mean you miss out on much of what Wikipedia has to offer. It... Read More and unsolved mysteries that have actually been solved on Wikipedia 6 Unsolved Mysteries Solved On Wikipedia 6 Unsolved Mysteries Solved On Wikipedia Wikipedia is often mocked for its perceived lack of truth. Because it's an encyclopedia built entirely on the contributions of random people, it has a reputation for not always being accurate and truthful. In some... Read More , here is a glimpse into the methods used to gain such insights. What follows are seven ways you can use to find new and interesting content on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia

learn something new wikipedia

We begin with the Wikipedia homepage, which may seem a little obvious, but if my experience is anything to go b, it is a page some of you never land on. It’s often much easier to search for something on Google The Best Google Search Cheat Sheet: Tips, Operators, and Commands to Know The Best Google Search Cheat Sheet: Tips, Operators, and Commands to Know These special Google search tips, operators, and commands will help you narrow down your search results and always get the exact results you're looking for. Read More than it is to head to Wikipedia itself, but that means you miss out on an immense resource for information junkies 5 Interesting But Useful Ways Of Using Wikipedia For Information Junkies 5 Interesting But Useful Ways Of Using Wikipedia For Information Junkies There are many ways to look at and browse through Wikipedia. From browser extensions and plugins to web apps that make browsing Wikipedia more than a scholarly exercise. The vast bank of human knowledge stored... Read More .

The Wikipedia homepage contains a portion of a featured article, links to pages that will be of interest to those following news and current affairs, a ‘Did You Know…‘ section containing new content, and an ‘On This Day‘ section with links to pages detailing historical events.

Portal

learn something new wiki

Next up is the Wikipedia Portal, which is like an entrance to the inner sanctum. What lurks here are shortcuts to a lot of the best content available on Wikipedia, with overviews, lists, indexes, timelines, and glossaries all served up for you to take advantage of.

It came as a revelation to me while researching this piece to find that Wikipedia has an A-Z index, with all 4 million-plus pages laid out in alphabetical order. Be warned that once you crack open Wikipedia in this way it’s hard to put the stopper back in the bottle.

Featured Articles

learn something new wiki

One of the pages spinning off from the portal is dedicated to Featured Articles. These are the articles considered by the editors to be the best Wikipedia has to offer, with “accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style” being the key criteria in deciding what makes the grade.

As usual with Wikipedia, reading one article usually leads to reading others, and it’s here that the Featured Articles section proves its usefulness. Find a subject that interests you from this list and you’ll likely find many more that also interest you.

Most Popular

learn something new wiki

Another page spinning off from the portal is the Most Popular page. Clicking on it means you’ll be redirected to the Wikipedia page of the individual user who generates the list. He does this once a week, detailing the 5000 most-accessed articles on Wikipedia over the previous seven days.

The list comprises a healthy mix of ever-present pages (Facebook, YouTube, Sex) and those being visited because of current newsworthiness (The Great Gatsby, Iron Man 3, Cinco de Mayo). While popularity isn’t everything, this list does provide an interesting insight into what people are searching for.

Recent Changes Map

7 Ways To Learn Something New Every Day With Wikipedia wikipedia changes

The Wikipedia Recent Changes Map shows any edits made by unregistered users, with their IP addresses revealing their rough geographical location.

As dots are added to the map, a list of these changes continually refreshes at the bottom of the page. You can click on any of the Wikipedia links that interest you, and not only land on a new page but also gain an insight into the editing process.

Reddit/Wikipedia

7 Ways To Learn Something New Every Day With Wikipedia wikipedia reddit

The Reddit subreddit dedicated to Wikipedia boasts the subheading of “The Most Interesting Pages On Wikipedia,” and that is an accurate description of the content.

People submit Wikipedia pages they have discovered, with the front page at the time of writing featuring links to Anachronisms In The Book Of Mormon and The Bechdel Test, amongst others.

The Wiki Game

learn something new wikipedia

The Wiki Game is a website which makes use of Wikipedia as a source of fun as well as facts. You choose the game you want to play — including a Speed Race and Six Degrees Of Wikipedia (loosely based on Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon Learn About The 'Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon' Game Before Playing It Online Learn About The 'Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon' Game Before Playing It Online Read More ) — and then compete with others either on the site or through the iOS app.

This is just one of a number of Wikipedia games you can play 5 Wikipedia Games You Can Try Your Hand On 5 Wikipedia Games You Can Try Your Hand On Wikipedia will continue to get knocked down for credibility and accuracy but it is the best open source project we know of. And one we still depend on for a quick reference. Wikipedia is the... Read More . What they all have in common is their use of Wikipedia as a tool for edutainment. The gaming aspects are entertaining, but you’re almost guaranteed to learn something while playing them, hence they’re also educational.

Conclusions

My hope is that you now have the tools at your disposal needed to find new and interesting content on Wikipedia on a daily basis. We should surely all strive to learn more about the world we live in 5 Best Subreddits To Learn Cool Stuff 5 Best Subreddits To Learn Cool Stuff Reddit is more than just a time sink where you can look at pretty girls, read about nerdy stuff, and procrastinate as you build a memory of random trivia. Reddit can be used to learn... Read More , and Wikipedia offers a simple-yet-effective way of doing just that.

Do you know of any other methods of finding interesting content on Wikipedia? Do you trust Wikipedia as a source of information or is there still some doubt in your mind about the truthfulness of its contents? Please let us know your thoughts on the subject at hand in the comments section below.

Whatsapp Pinterest

Enjoyed this article? Stay informed by joining our newsletter!

Enter your Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  1. Scott M
    May 30, 2013 at 11:04 am

    I have always been fascinated by the arcane and seemingly trivial information since I was a child.I would read the set of encyclopaedias in our library every day.Wiki is like an old friend with much more to discover than I would be able find only through books,although I do read several books per week along with magazines and daily newspapers .I also read many news aggregator sites in the internet.

    • Dave Parrack
      May 30, 2013 at 3:05 pm

      You're not alone there. I spend far too much time learning new stuff, a lot of insanely interesting but quite unimportant!

  2. Zhong J
    May 30, 2013 at 3:48 am

    What it may not be obvious to someone but we tend to look for more information on things that someone share or discuss about, like the Boston Bombing which gains high interest among people. Others like me, just look for self point of interest.

  3. Lynne McCurdy
    May 30, 2013 at 1:55 am

    You forgot my favorite, "Random Article," found on the left sidebar of every page. :)

    • Dave Parrack
      May 30, 2013 at 3:04 pm

      Good shout! I purposely left that out as it's going to be included in a future article :)
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-ways-to-learn-something-new-every-day-with-wikipedia/
www.makeuseof.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-05
100935
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:WMPLJUFB3RKFKVKN2PFBLYJCFKA3Z7KP
<urn:uuid:c038c805-3754-4614-9588-017aca4ed9c6>
2020-01-19T11:38:54Z
52.5.188.120
text/html
sha1:7RR6FHHE264C4OESJGJKKPX6SJWQJH7A
<urn:uuid:70cb50f9-ec61-4dfe-b206-ad9ffea4d8f0>
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/7-ways-to-learn-something-new-every-day-with-wikipedia/
response
<urn:uuid:013a7b1d-58da-4193-bf35-a42570855907>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-05
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-129.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.16 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/