The free encyclopedia anyone can edit, launched on 15 January 2001 as a side project to a failed expert-written one, which by 2007 had made 'don't cite Wikipedia' the most-ignored instruction in education, and which is now the one large website that has not got worse. The record notes the 'Wikipedia rabbit hole', the 'Wikipedia race' to Hitler, the annual fundraising banner and the fact that every AI model was trained on it, and that it still asks for $3.
Correction to the headnote: Wikipedia was not coined, it was noticed. Someone said it, someone else screenshotted it, and the screenshot is the coinage.
The record notes that 'according to Wikipedia' is said apologetically by adults and confidently by everyone else, and that the adults then check Wikipedia.
For whoever reads this in ten years: Wikipedia arrived in 15 January 2001 and for about a month it was the only correct response to anything. Then it became a response to itself.
What does it mean? Write it the way you would say it out loud.
