44 Essential Wikipedia Statistics for 2024: Data on Users, Readers, & Milestones

Anyone who has access to the Internet must have gone to Wikipedia at some point. As the most popular online reference source around, the online encyclopedia is powered by a wiki application, a robust collaboration software used by the majority of the public, enterprise, and personal wikis. Beyond its powerful engine, Wikipedia is run by volunteer contributors from all over the globe. These volunteers are responsible for the information gathering, content creation, editing, and publishing of Wikipedia articles, content, and more.

Over the years, Wikipedia has earned quite a share of accomplishments. In this article, we share with you some of the most relevant and recent Wikipedia statistics that we have gathered.

Wikipedia’s Historical Milestones

Established in 2001, Wikipedia was first conceived as a “feeder project” for Nupedia, which was another online encyclopedia. Unlike Wikipedia, Nupedia had much stricter guidelines when it comes to its volunteer contributors—only highly qualified ones could be approved and all content must undergo a complex peer-review process.

Nupedia’s strict standards, however, resulted in having a very low volume of content and, therefore, traffic. To boost Nupedia’s numbers, Wikipedia was created and immediately started gaining more recognition in its first year. In the list below, we will share with you some of the highlights in Wikipedia’s history from the time of its conception to now. Most of these are indicated in the Wikipedia statistics portal.

• Thus far, the only Wikipedia articles that have crossed the 5 million mark are those written and published in English and Cebuano. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• Wikipedia’s first 100 pages were created within four days from January 15 to 19, 2001. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• More than 20,000 Wikipedia entries were submitted in its first year alone. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• The “Philosophy” page was created on January 15, 2001 and became the first page that is not Wikipedia-related. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• Wikipedia pages have been edited a total of 1.016 billion times since Wikipedia was established. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• Wikipedia currently has more than 53.2 million pages, including talk pages, redirects, etc. Only more than 6.2 million of these pages are content-specific. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• There are currently 315 active bots in English Wikipedia. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• As of April 2021, Wikipedia statistics page views had reached a total of 5.4 billion with a daily average page view of 258 million. (Pageviews, 2021)
• As of February 2021, Wikipedia ranks 13th in Alexa’s top 50 most popular global sites. (Alexa, 2021)
• 86.64% of Wikipedia’s traffic source comes from organic web searches. (Similarweb, 2021)
• In terms of Wikipedia statistics by language, there are 319 versions of Wikipedia in different languages as of 2021. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• Wikipedia has been blocked/censored in 15 countries over the years. It is still currently blocked in China. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• As of March 2021, Wikipedia has accumulated a total of 5.72 billion visits. (Similarweb, 2021)

Wikipedia Users and Contributors Statistics

Wikipedians or the site’s volunteer contributors make up the Wikipedia community. They are the people responsible for writing and editing Wikipedia content, which they achieve via asynchronous collaboration long before remote work and remote work tools became a thing. In the Wikipedia statistics below, we will look into the demographics of Wikipedia’s diverse group of volunteers (Wikipedia, 2021).

• There are more than 41.4 million registered users in the English Wikipedia.
• 84% of Wikipedia English editors are male.
• 59% of the editors are between 17 to 40 years old and 13% are 16 or younger.
• 20% of the Wikipedia editors reside in the United States.
• As of March 2021, more than 46,000 editors have been active in the last 12 months.
• The most active editors in the last 12 months are those who live in the US (26k), followed by editors in Canada (4k).
• There are more than 128,400 new users who registered with Wikipedia from April 2020 to March 2021.
• 66% of editors are mostly dedicated to editing articles; meanwhile, 42%  spend the majority of their time researching articles and only 28% consider writing new articles as their primary duty.
• When asked about their reasons for being a volunteer contributor, 71% of Wikipedia editors said that they like the idea of sharing knowledge.

What motivates volunteers? They cite the following (Wikipedia, 2021):

• 71% – To share knowledge
• 69% – Believes that information should be free
• 63% – Contributing is fun
•   7% – Professional reasons

Wikipedia Readers and Usage Statistics

Wikipedia readers do not participate in any part of the writing or editing process, but they supply the traffic that places Wikipedia among the world’s most visited websites. In this section, let us take a look at the general demographics of Wikipedia’s readers, their interests based on the viewership of articles and pages, as well as how and from where they access Wikipedia.

• The average age of Wikipedia readers is 36 years old. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• 45% of Wikipedia readers are women. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• Nearly 50% of Wikipedia regular readers visit the website more than once a week. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• Wikipedia is accessed from more than 46.4 million mobile devices and over 23.4 million desktops on a daily basis. (Pageviews, 2021)
• 24.05% of Wikipedia’s traffic comes from the US, followed by the United Kingdom (5.60%), and Germany (5.32%). (Similarweb, 2021)
• In the US, Wikipedia is the most visited website thus far in 2021 with monthly traffic of more than 1.134 billion. (Hardwick, 2021)
• English Wikipedia has the most number of users at more than 41.4 million, followed by Spanish Wikipedia and French Wikipedia with over 6.2 and 4.08 million users, respectively. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• The top 3 most viewed articles in 2020 about public figures are Donald Trump (57.06 million views), Kamala Harris (49.47 million views), and Joe Biden (35.41 million views). (Wikipedia, 2021)
• US politics dominated the top most-viewed articles with 15 of them ranking in the top 50, including the 2020 US presidential election, which garnered more than 25 million views. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• The death of Kobe Bryant propelled his article to be the most relevant sports-related content in Wikipedia with nearly 33.3 million views. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• The South Korean film Parasite also took its own spot among the most popular articles in 2020 with almost 18 million views that peaked a day after it won four Academy Awards. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• Wikipedia visitors spend an average of 00:03:56 and click on an average of three pages per visit. (Similarweb, 2021)

Wikipedia’s Role in Battling COVID-19

In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) partnered with the Wikimedia Foundation to help ensure that critical information about COVID-19 would be easily accessible to everyone. Under this partnership, WHO utilizes Wikimedia’s open-source and license-free portals, so anyone, including Wikipedia editors and contributors, can use and share all videos, infographics, images, etc., from WHO for free.

• Over 250,000 Wikipedia editors work on expanding Wikipedia’s COVID-19 coverage with the help of the data provided by WHO. (WHO, 2020)
• There are currently more than 5,200 articles in Wikipedia related to coronavirus. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• The COVID-19 articles are available in 175 languages. (WHO, 2020)
• The “Covid-29 pandemic” article became the most viewed article in 2020 with nearly 84 million views. (Wikipedia, 2021)
• Eight of the top 50 most-viewed Wikipedia articles in 2020 are about the coronavirus. (Wikipedia, 2021)

How reliable is Wikipedia as a source of information?

The debate on Wikipedia’s reliability as a source of information has been the subject of both casual and intense discussions. The general consensus is the nature of Wikipedia’s content creation, which revolves around often uncredited contributors that can lead to the publication of inaccurate information. Moreover, the fact that the articles and pages can be edited by virtually anyone only adds to the skepticism toward Wikipedia’s trustworthiness. There, however, are several studies suggesting that, although Wikipedia has articles and pages that contain inaccurate information, the overall accuracy rate is still high (80%) but lower than the accuracy rate of other sources, such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dictionary of American History, and American National Biography Online.

When using Wikipedia as an information source, it is highly recommended to also check the sources cited in the page or articles. Also, verifying information by checking multiple sources should be a habit when conducting research. Finally, while Wikipedia is not recommended to be the main source of research data, it is an ideal tool that can be used as a starting point for your research or study.

References:

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By Jenny Chang

Jenny Chang is a senior writer specializing in SaaS and B2B software solutions. Her decision to focus on these two industries was spurred by their explosive growth in the last decade, much of it she attributes to the emergence of disruptive technologies and the quick adoption by businesses that were quick to recognize their values to their organizations. She has covered all the major developments in SaaS and B2B software solutions, from the introduction of massive ERPs to small business platforms to help startups on their way to success.