I feel like not enough people appreciate the simple fact that Wikipedia is essentially the most well-organized and complete collection of human knowledge in existence, and furthermore, it's available to everyone who has access to the internet for free in dozens of languages.

There are tens of thousands of individuals collaborating every hour of every day to collect knowledge and share it with the rest of the world purely out of the desire to document and teach, and millions of people spending hours in the Wikipedia rabbit hole learning about subjects that they would have had no opportunity to without it.

Wikipedia is amazing. It's the modern Library of Alexandria.

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[–] QubaXR@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wikipedia and Archive.org are two of the most fantastic projects in existence. Their contributions to humanity rival NASA imho.

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I agree. And this makes me wonder: of they both disappeared due to some catastrophic event, would it be remembered through the ages in a similar way to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria?

[–] macintosh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Internet archive? Likely. It has an archive of a large portion of the beginnings of the internet, which will likely be a major historical source in the future.

Wikipedia? I’m unsure. It’s a collection of information obtained via various sources, most of which would still be extant. Not to put down the work of their project, it is very important. But it’s not impossible to replace like the way back machine.

[–] CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Wikipedia isn’t going anywhere unless most of humanity and our tech is gone. Tons of people take “backups” of it all the time. (Shout out to my fellow datahoarders). If you only get the text, it’s not very large at all.

It’ll easily fit on phones these days.

https://www.howtogeek.com/260023/how-to-download-wikipedia-for-offline-at-your-fingertips-reading/

[–] wutamisposedtodo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Oh man, how could I have forgotten to mention archive.org??

My favorite thing on there is the Old Time Radio Researcher's Group who maintain a huge archive of radio shows produced between 1920 and the 1960s (and some from later years as well such as CBS Radio Mystery Theater).

I've been listening through the most well-known shows for about the last 10 years and I still haven't even listened to them all and there are dozens of other more obscure shows!