Exploring (and building) the depths of Wikipedia

After a long day of yelling obscenities at a Michigan football game, I quietly retreat to my messy, dimly-lit room. Laying on my bed, covered in my sheets, I open up Wikipedia. There, I read up on the newly-created page for Dominic Zvada, Michigan’s starting kicker and, in my opinion, one of the best players on our new team. The article is considered an “orphan,” meaning no other Wikipedia articles linked to the page. I quickly find several articles on Wikipedia that mention Zvada’s name, and link his page to them. 

The next day, procrastinating writing a philosophy paper, I open up Wikipedia and read through an article about a streaker run that once took place on the University of Michigan campus. I  discovered this article while exploring the University of Michigan Wikipedia template. A Wikipedia template organizes several articles relating to a topic (in this case, the University) into one neat box. Before finally starting my paper, I check out the images and sounds of Wikimedia Commons, an online collection of free-use files.

Surprisingly, my weird and nerdy behavior is far from uncommon. Viewing unusual Wikipedia articles has become a common activity for many, in no small part due to the social media account Depths of Wikipedia. With more than 1.4 million followers on Instagram, the account highlights various odd, bizarre or otherwise interesting articles on the website. Some of my personal favorites include articles about the Kentucky Meat Shower (when red meat fell from the sky), the Chicago rat hole (a rat-shaped hole in a Chicago sidewalk that gained worldwide notoriety), Steak and Blowjob Day (an unofficial holiday) and “nowhere girls” (a Chinese term that describes my little sister very well).

I first discovered the account while casually scrolling through X; it was one of the few bright spots on a website saturated with toxicity. It embodied everything I loved about scrolling through Wikipedia: not just the wacky articles, but also the fun of discovering a topic you otherwise never would have considered (How many times do you ponder inventors killed by their own inventions?). I was always excited when the account posted something new; even after it stopped posting on X, I found and followed the account on Instagram. 

The mastermind behind the account is Wikipedia fanatic Annie Rauwerda, U-M and The Statement alum. Naturally, I had to interview her. 

Rauwerda’s enthusiasm for Wikipedia radiated throughout the interview. As soon as I mentioned I edited Wikipedia, she asked for my username and we fell into a discussion about how Wikipedia helped us gain appreciation for everyday things. I mentioned how I had found a new appreciation for Grand Rapids, our shared hometown, by perusing Wikipedia’s Grand Rapids article and template. Previously, I had dismissed the city as rather boring with nothing to do, but Wikipedia highlighted its rich history, artwork and culture — aspects I had never previously noticed. Most notably, I learned that my city staged a city-wide lip dub video, which critic Roger Ebert called “the greatest music video ever made.”

“There are a lot of things that I’ve gained appreciation for because of Wikipedia. … There’s a group of people from Wikimedia Spain who are really into documenting manhole covers on Wikimedia Commons,” Rauwerda said. “Now I notice manhole covers more. … I appreciate them because the designs are unique sometimes, especially if you’re traveling to different cities or countries.”

Hoping to cultivate an appreciation of my Korean American heritage, I began to look through articles on Korean history. Wikipedia provided a vast repository of English-language articles about Korea and its history, something I rarely found anywhere else. There was, however, a serious problem with the articles: Whoever had written them was clearly not a native English speaker. The articles, though well-sourced, were rife with grammatical errors. It bothered me so much that I began to edit these articles to correct them, embarking on my journey as a Wikipedia editor. 

Editing soon became a hobby for me, something I only realized when I found myself accumulating more than 3,000 edits on the website. Though many would consider editing to be a chore, it’s a bizarrely relaxing habit to me. There’s just something so satisfying about making improvements to a Wikipedia page. It’s like finding and solving an error in a computer code. Rauwerda feels the same compulsion.

“The main reason (I edit) is not a very noble one,” Rauwerda said. “It’s just that it’s annoying when things are wrong. And when things could be better. It feels very exciting. It makes me feel like I have a little bit of power.” 

This excitement is only compounded by the knowledge that someone, somewhere in the world, will eventually see the result of your edits. 

“I recently saw a Tiktok (whose creator) had read an article that I wrote,” Rauwerda said. “The person was explaining a topic in the exact order that the Wikipedia article was structured, and sometimes the phrases felt oddly similar. I wish that the person said, ‘Hey, by the way, thanks to Wikipedia for this information.’ My reaction was really a lot of happiness and pride and I was so happy that I was useful.” 

However, if anyone, including myself, can edit Wikipedia, is it truly reliable? I, like many others, remember our teachers ardently forbidding us from using Wikipedia for schoolwork. Part of this, I think, stems from a misunderstanding of what editors actually do for Wikipedia. Editors only add already-available information from reliable, published sources to Wikipedia; original research is strictly prohibited and an unreferenced edit will almost certainly be “reverted,” or undone. In addition, unlike many other sources, Wikipedia makes it clear where its references come from — even featuring a guide that shows which sources it considers trustworthy (and which sources it doesn’t). 

I would argue that Wikipedia, like so many other platforms, can be both reliable and unreliable. When reading through Wikipedia, or any other source, it’s important to check the references linked to its claims. An unreferenced statement in any source should be treated with caution. 

“Yes, Wikipedia is unreliable sometimes,” Rauwerda said. “You should never cite it in a research paper, of course, but it’s the best thing that’s easily accessible online most of the time. And most of the time … it’s accurate, it’s good, it’s balanced.”

The website, of course, isn’t perfect. Its size means that there are always going to be plenty of disagreements. Often, edit wars — where editors disagree about what information to include on a page — arise around controversial articles. In these conflicts, edits are reverted, or undone, almost as quickly as they are written. The edit history of Yasuke, the black samurai announced as the protagonist of the new Assassin’s Creed game, shows the aftermath of a particularly bloody edit battle, littered with the corpses of reverted edits. 

Wikipedia’s foreign language counterparts, somewhat less well-monitored than the English version, have been victims to rampant misinformation. In one infamous case, an overconfident teenager from North Carolina was responsible for nearly half of the articles on Scots Wikipedia, the Scots-language edition of Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the teenager was not proficient in the Scots language, inserting random Scots words into English sentences. Because Scots is such a small language, the changes went largely unnoticed, though the website gained a reputation among Scottish speakers as being “legendarily bad.”

On a more serious note, between 2010 and 2011, far-right users took over the Croatian Wikipedia, editing several articles to deny the Holocaust. These editors also downplayed the crimes of the Ustaša, the Croatian fascist organization during World War II. Eventually, the larger Wikimedia Foundation stepped in, banning the administrator of the Croatian Wikipedia, and the site’s problems were largely fixed.

Wikipedia’s gender gap, for both editors and content, is also substantial: About 90% of the editors are male, and only 20% of the website’s biographical articles are about women. 

“It’s most noticeable to me when I read articles about things that I would consider to be rather feminine topics … topics that women tend to like more than men, like reality shows, influencers, makeup brands. I’m often a little bit surprised at how bad (these articles) are,” Rauwerda said.

She noted that many Wikipedia editors are attempting to rectify this gap with the Women in Red project. The project’s name originates from the fact that many women’s names appear in red instead of blue throughout the website because they have no article to link to. In perhaps the most egregious case, female Nobel prize winner Donna Strickland had no article on the website. The initiative aims to create more biographical articles about women and other gender minorities, so that they will be remembered in history alongside their male counterparts. 

Despite these problems, Wikipedia has become the dominant internet encyclopedia and among the most-visited websites globally, largely because anyone can edit it. For recent events, I head to Wikipedia for a summary of different news articles. Its quick-updating nature can be very useful. When unfounded claims of Haitians in Ohio eating cats began to spread, Wikipedia handily organized all of the sources debunking the hoax. The website’s easy accessibility is also an important tool against censorship, as Rauwerda wrote in her Slate article about suspicious Russian oligarch deaths.  

“It’s important for people to have free access to information. I think that that matters. … Wikipedia (and Wikimedia) is the largest and most accessible source of human knowledge that we have right now,” Rauwerda stated. 

There is also something so clean about Wikipedia’s organization. Every article page has a clear organization with distinct sections, littered with several blue links that take you to another relevant article. Like a Russian Matryoshka doll, each article has articles within itself. This function can help someone explore a topic deeper, but it’s also likely to distract, plunging them further into the depths of the website. Some have even formed a game with the links: Wikiracing has players attempting to navigate Wikipedia using only the links of the website.

“If you see something wrong, just fix it,” said Rauwerda, when questioned about Wikipedia’s reliability. “Start small. I always tell people to start by adding sources or copy editing an existing article.”

She also advised beginners not to concern themselves too much with the website policies or guidelines.

 “I don’t think anyone has read all of them; that would be ridiculous.” Rauwerda said.“The main thing to know when you’re a beginner is that you should cite everything, every piece of information that you’re adding and to not violate conflicts of interest.”

After writing this article, I plan to briefly edit a Wikipedia page or two. This hobby has become a sort of relaxation for me, and talking to Rauwerda, someone who shared my enthusiasm, made me feel much less weird. Will it be something I continue doing in the future, forever? I don’t know: Perhaps one day, I’ll become bored of it, but the website will always hold a special place in my heart as a vast collection of free information, one that anyone can access. Even if I do stop editing, I don’t think I’ll ever stop using the website; I can imagine myself 30 years later, scrolling through Wikipedia’s unusual articles.

Statement Columnist Ian Joo can be reached at joonebug@umich.edu. 

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