The Verge: “…Wikipedia is the largest compendium of human knowledge ever assembled, with more than 7 million articles in its English version, the largest and most developed of 343 language projects. Started nearly 25 years ago, the site was long mocked as a byword for the unreliability of information on the internet, yet today it is, without exaggeration, the digital world’s factual foundation. It’s what Google puts at the top of search results otherwise awash in ads and spam, what social platforms cite when they deign to correct conspiracy theories, and what AI companies scrape in their ongoing quest to get their models to stop regurgitating info-slurry — and consult with such frequency that they are straining the encyclopedia’s servers. Each day, it’s where approximately 70 million people turn for reliable information on everything from particle physics to rare Scottish sheep to the Erfurt latrine disaster of 1184, a testament both to Wikipedia’s success and to the total degradation of the rest of the internet as an information resource…

When governments have cowed the press and flooded social platforms with viral propaganda, Wikipedia has become the next target, and a more stubborn one. Because it is edited by thousands of mostly pseudonymous volunteers around the world — and in theory, by anyone who feels like it — its contributors are difficult for any particular state to persecute. Since it’s supported by donations, there is no government funding to cut off or advertisers to boycott. And it is so popular and useful that even highly repressive governments have been hesitant to block it. Instead, they have developed an array of more sophisticated strategies. In Hong Kong, Russia, India, and elsewhere, government officials and state-aligned media have accused the site of ideological bias while online vigilantes harass editors. In several cases, editors have been sued, arrested, or threatened with violence…”