Not impressed with Wikipedia? Watch all of its activity in real-time

This is absolutely amazing. We know that Wikipedia gets additions, edits, and deletions all of the time, but without a visualization we just have to assume that’s the case.

With Wikistream, we can see exactly what’s happening on Wikipedia in real-time. The background image on the page updates randomly, and sometimes the stream goes so fast it’s impossible to even see what’s going on.

You don’t really have an idea of how much content gets tweaked on Wikipedia globally until you see this stream. Every type of topic you can imagine has dedicated people adding, removing, and deleting information every nanosecond.

If you don’t want to see the full global stream of Wikipedia activity, Wikistream lets you choose which country to follow, and lets you toggle which type of information you’d like to see in real-time. For example, you could watch a stream of just all of the new articles added to Wikipedia, and not updates, edits, or conversations.

If the stream goes too fast or you’d like to click-through to a particular page or edit, just tap your P button and the entire stream will pause.

Here’s how the project explains itself:

Hopefully wikistream provides a hint of just how active the community is around Wikipedia. wikistream was created to help recognize the level of involvement of folks around the world, who are actively engaged in making Wikipedia the amazing resource that it is.

The importance of Wikipedia is often forgotten, as it has replaced physical Encyclopedia’s in many cases. Remember when you used to have to wait for the latest volumes for your set of Brittanica books? Watch this stream for a few seconds and ask yourself if you’d like to go back to that. Probably not.

➤ Wikistream