On its 20th birthday, Wikipedia might be the safest place online

SAN FRANCISCO — Wikipedia is a thing that shouldn’t work, but somehow does. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers, without pay, collectively trying to document every corner of human knowledge, including history happening in real time.

This month, the online encyclopedia‘s strengths and quirks were on full display as hundreds of volunteers furiously worked to create a page for the Capitol riots as events unfolded Jan. 6. As it transitioned from a protest to something more violent, Wikipedia’s volunteer editors added key details while debating the article title, as shared by editor Molly White. Was it a protest, an insurrection or a riot? It ended up the “2021 storming of the United States Capitol.” Hundreds of people were working on the ballooning document at a time, which has now been touched by nearly 1,000 editors, is more than 10,000 words long and has been viewed nearly 2 million times.