Wikipedia's unique place in human knowledge
The gist
Wikipedia turned 25 in January 2026, with 65 million articles viewed nearly 15 billion times a month.
Its human-edited model is pitched as a counterweight in the AI era.
How it unfolded
- Oct 17, 2025Wikimedia's Diff blog marks 25 years since Wikipedia's creation, saying its human knowledge is "more valuable to the world than ever before."
- Jan 14, 2026DW reports on Wikipedia at 25, contrasting Jimmy Wales's vision of universal access with Larry Sanger's skepticism that openness could guarantee neutrality.
- Jan 15, 2026The Wikimedia Foundation marks the anniversary, citing 65 million articles in over 300 languages viewed nearly 15 billion times a month and calling Wikipedia the only top-ten global website run by a nonprofit.
Key terms
- LLMs
- A machine learning model trained on huge amounts of text to generate, summarize, translate, and analyze language.
Source: Wikipedia