What Were the Top 10 Wiki Edits of 2014?

TalentZoo.com | Beyond Madison Avenue | Digital Pivot | Beneath the Brand

Archives | Categories

By: Shawn Paul Wood

You ever been on Wikipedia looking up what to copy and paste for your college exam because original content is so hard to come by these days? I mean, it’s late, you are having difficulties coming up with a topic, and you are slightly engrossed in your bedside hookah, so off to Wikipedia you go.

Of course, if you ask any college professor, Wikipedia should never be used as a source, because although what goes into an initial page is usually well done, it’s the editing by certain know-it-all, surreptitious forces that can’t be trusted. At least, that’s the rumor.

So, when VentureBeat came out with the "10 most edited Wikipedia articles of 2014," we should have been very interested. If the headline doesn’t get you, then the crowdsourced video below should — it’s Wikimedia’s first-ever year in review offerings.

“We had to get creative to make this happen, we couldn’t just throw money at it,” explained Wikimedia Foundation Producer Victor Grigas. “This video was made with everyday tools: a computer, an Internet connection, lots of deep, patient thinking, research and collaboration, and the free content that ordinary people uploaded to Wikipedia.”

Before you delve into this crafty, crowdsourced #Edit2014 video by ordinary people (why so rude, Wiki folks?), here are the top 10:

Deaths in 2014 (19,324)
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (10,166)
Japanese dissidence during the Showa period (8,101)
Ebola (7,644)
ISIS / ISIL (7,312)
Israel / Gaza conflict (6,485)
Michael Brown shooting (5,419)
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (5,147)
Pacific typhoon season (4,954)
Eugene Guillaume’s works (4,229)

Death, disease...but dissidence?! And why in the blue hell are so many people interested in some French sculptor from the late 1800s? Anywho, while we can’t explain a couple of these, for many of these it makes sense why so many people want to verify and authorize information for the others.

More than three million articles on Wikipedia, and this video helps break down the aforementioned top 10. Enjoy.

blog comments powered by Disqus

About the Author

Shawn Paul Wood is a hack-turned-flack with more than 20 years of collective journalism, copywriting and marketing communications experience. Shawn Paul is founder of Woodworks Communications in Dallas, Texas. If you need him, ping him here or follow him on Twitter @ShawnPaulWood.