Âé¶¹´«Ã½

Technology

Wikipedia has seen a spike in people editing pages during the pandemic

By Chris Stokel-Walker

1 March 2021

Âé¶¹´«Ã½. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

With not a lot to do during the pandemic, people turned to Wikipedia editing

Shutterstock/vovidzha

Bored of the pandemic and stuck at home, many of us passed the time editing Wikipedia pages, according to data on the collaborative website’s changes over the past few years.

An analysis of 223 million edits to Wikipedia between 2018 and 2020 shows a 20 per cent increase in the number of changes made to pages on the English-language version between January and September 2020. Similar rises were recorded on 11 other language versions of the online encyclopaedia.

The impact wasn’t immediate, however: the…

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. We'll also keep you up to date with Âé¶¹´«Ã½ events and special offers.

Sign up

To continue reading, today with our introductory offers

or

Existing subscribers

Sign in to your account
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop