It's easy to get sucked into the never-ending Wiki-hole. And with more than 7 million English articles, it's also easy to get completely lost.
What may have begun as necessary research for a school or work project can quickly spiral into an interesting 2 a.m. read about the paleontological classifications of capybaras - something you never knew you needed to know. And you probably didn't, but here we are sacrificing sleep for a deep dive into the depths of Wikipedia...
"With a total word count of over 5 billion words, it would take one person about 38 years to read every English Wikipedia article," reveals the Pew Research Center. But there are hundreds more articles added to the site every day, so that 38 years can easily increase dramatically.
Wikipedia turned 25 this year, and since its launch, the site has seen its fair share of controversies. By Wikipedia's own admission, its "open-editing model, which allows any user to edit its encyclopedic pages, has led to concerns such as the quality of writing, the amount of vandalism, and the accuracy of information on the project."
While a dedicated team of editors does police the articles, it's impossible for them to catch everything in time. And some of the stuff that slipped through the cracks has caused everything from first- and secondhand embarrassment to collective roars of laughter.
British pop star Robbie Williams was once left reeling after vandals edited his Wikipedia page with a rather bizarre and shocking addition. It claimed that the singer ate hamsters in a pub for a living “in and around Stoke.”
Then there was the Sepp Blatter incident. Someone updated the Swiss former football administrator's name to Joseph "Sepp Bellend" Blatter. "This hoax nickname added to Blatter’s entry resulted in the South African government unwittingly referring to FIFA President Sepp Blatter as a 'Bellend' — a popular British slang name for the tip of a [male private part]," reports Memeburn.
In 2008, the Telegraph reported that an entire village had fallen victim to Wikipedia hackers. "Readers of the site have been misinformed that Denshaw is the home to an obese population of sun-starved, sheep-hurling yokels with a brothel for a pub and a lingering tapeworm infection," read the Telegraph's article.
And the hackers didn't stop there...
At the time, the Wikipedia entry claimed that Denshaw, a village on the northeastern fringe of Greater Manchester, "attracts people from many different locations mainly due to the competitive sports held in the village including rock rolling, cow shooting and sheep hurling."
It added that "Due to the complex hill formations surrounding the village, sunlight is only visible for four hours a day, some say a contributory factor in the local population's health problems such as obesity and severe malnurishment (sic)."
Wikipedia has since deleted the fake information.
Then there was the time a teacher discovered that Wikipedia's entry on Plato read that he was an ancient Hawaiian weather man and surfer, writer of Cosmo Girls, and founder of Punahou in Ancient Florida. And we just have to hope that not too many unsuspecting students got caught out while doing research for school projects.
