Wikipedia will mark its 25th anniversary on January 15, 2026. No one could have predicted 25 years ago that Wikipedia would grow into the backbone of knowledge on the internet it is today — powering search engines, voice assistants, and generative AI tools.

Today, nearly 250,000 volunteers generously give their time and energy to update Wikipedia, add citations, build consensus, and more. They keep knowledge human. In 2025, people spent an estimated 2.8 billion hours reading English Wikipedia articles, according to data from the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. The top 25 most-read English Wikipedia articles of 2025 outlined below focus on politics, popular culture, and loss.

You can also check out our dedicated Year in Review webpage to dig deeper into data about Wikipedia.

#1: Deaths in 2025, 49,617,383
#2: Charlie Kirk, 46,493,112
#3: Ed Gein, 33,000,749
#4: Donald Trump, 27,489,965
#5: Pope Leo XIV, 22,884,665

The most-read article on English Wikipedia this year is “Deaths in 2025,” an article that has never been lower than third on our annual list of most-read articles. This annual article is updated by English Wikipedia’s volunteer editors when they find published obituaries that come out after the deaths of notable individuals. With eight billion people in the world, there are a large number of notable deaths to update the page with each day.1

Coming in just behind is Charlie Kirk, a US political activist, entrepreneur, and media personality who was assassinated in September at a university campus debate he organized. In the day afterwards, people viewed the article about Kirk nearly 15 million times, or an average of over 170 times per second. Across the first eleven months of the year, about 43% of the views on Kirk’s article came from outside the US.

One of those deaths in 2025 was Pope Francis. The first Latin American to become pope, Francis served for 12 years before passing away in April. The Catholic Church selected his successor, Pope Leo XIV, a few weeks later. As people rushed online to learn about Leo, traffic to all Wikimedia projects peaked at around 800,000 hits per second — more than 6x over normal traffic levels, and a new all-time record for us. Plenty of people came to learn more about Francis’ life too; his English Wikipedia article was the 11th most-read of the year.

US President Donald Trump entered the office for the second time on January 20, 2025. He is appearing on English Wikipedia’s annual most-read articles list for the eighth time. Since 2015, the English Wikipedia article about Trump has not appeared in that list only in 2022 and 2023.

“The 25 most-read articles on Wikipedia in 2025 show just how much people rely on it to understand the events that shape our lives. Built by a global community of volunteers, each article is a reminder that facts, context, and careful sourcing by humans matter deeply to everyone seeking a trusted place for knowledge,” said Anusha Alikhan, Wikimedia Foundation Chief Communications Officer.

Scroll down to learn more about the other top articles, and you can find the full list featured at the bottom.

#3: Ed Gein
#8: Sinners (2025 film)
#10: Superman (2025 film)
#14: Severance (TV series)
#16: Rob Reiner
#17: Dhurandhar
#18: Thunderbolts*
#19: Weapons (2025 film)
#23: Adolescence (TV series)
#24: KPop Demon Hunters

For about a decade, we have published a list of the most-read English Wikipedia articles. In almost all of those years, the film and television you consumed, binged, and enjoyed have held prominent positions. 2025 is no different. Part of the reason is the second screen effect, meaning as you watch the latest movie or TV show, you open Wikipedia to learn more about the production, actors, or more; others read Wikipedia’s plot summaries to get all the spoilers.

This year, ten articles highlighted this pop culture phenomenon:

• Ed Gein, the US serial killer, appears as a result of Netflix’s latest season of Monster. Only about half of the views to Gein’s article came from inside the US, demonstrating the show’s global reach despite being focused on US crimes. The subjects of Monster’s previous seasons (Jeffrey Dahmer and Lyle/Erik Menendez) were also highly popular on the English Wikipedia in 2024 and 2022, respectively.
• Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Zach Cregger’s Weapons were two of the most successful films this year at the US box office. Their powerful stories, visuals, and (in Sinners’ case) music led to them being the first-ever horror entries in all our years of doing these lists.
• The first season of Severance, a US Apple TV show, came out three years ago to rave reviews, but its cultural impact was nothing like this year’s second season. That change can be illustrated through the lens of the English Wikipedia: our page view data shows that it only received about five million hits in 2022, but nearly tripled that in 2025.
• Adolescence, a British Netflix show, has garnered wide attention not just for its acting and storyline, but for its episodes that were shot as one continuous take with no hidden cuts. Pageviews to this article peaked ten days after the show’s release, perhaps as more people discovered it.
• KPop Demon Hunters, the animated musical, has taken the world by storm since its release last June. According to Netflix, the film is their “most watched original animated film of all time.”
• Superhero mainstays from DC and Marvel include the latest Superman reboot and Marvel’s attempt to craft a “new Avengers” through Thunderbolts*.

These articles are joined by the filmmaker Rob Reiner, whose murder in December led people to read about his life and work on English Wikipedia over 12.6 million times.

#2: Charlie Kirk
#4: Donald Trump
#6: Zohran Mamdani
#7: Elon Musk
#12: Jeffrey Epstein
#20: JD Vance
#25: Karoline Leavitt

Politics was another major subtheme in the English Wikipedia’s most-read articles of 2025. Seven of the top twenty-five articles fall into this category. In addition to Charlie Kirk and US President Donald Trump, discussed above, three other articles are related to people who hold or have held prominent roles in the US administration: Vice President JD Vance, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and former senior advisor Elon Musk.

#9: Ozzy Osbourne
#15: 2026 FIFA World Cup
#21: Cristiano Ronaldo
#22: MrBeast

Four articles on the list came from popular culture outside the bounds of film: Ozzy Osbourne, the upcoming 2026 World Cup, Cristiano Ronaldo, and MrBeast.

Ozzy Osbourne, the rock singer/reality show star that was also known as the “Prince of Darkness,” passed away in July. Football/soccer icon Ronaldo appeared on this annual list for the sixth time, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup joined him after a December 5 ceremony where the tournament’s seeding was announced.

Finally, MrBeast — the internet personality with the most-popular YouTube channel on the planet — entered this annual list for the first time. Although millions of people have watched his YouTube videos for years, views to his Wikipedia biography spiked in January after he expressed an interest in buying TikTok.

The top 25

For a more in-depth look across a planet’s worth of Wikipedia activity over 2025, please see our dedicated webpage.

1. Deaths in 2025, 49,617,383
2. Charlie Kirk, 46,493,112
3. Ed Gein, 33,000,749
4. Donald Trump , 27,489,965
5. Pope Leo XIV, 22,884,665
6. Zohran Mamdani, 21,805,460
7. Elon Musk, 21,462,884
8. Sinners (2025 film), 19,072,450
9. Ozzy Osbourne, 18,490,296
10. Superman (2025 film), 17,703,390
11. Pope Francis, 15,610,627
12. Jeffrey Epstein , 15,214,143
13. United States, 14,851,017
14. Severance (TV series), 14,457,583
15. 2026 FIFA World Cup, 14,037,618
16. Rob Reiner, 13,955,892
17. Dhurandhar, 13,525,394
18. Thunderbolts* , 13,203,209
19. Weapons (2025 film), 12,684,066
20. JD Vance, 12,339,381
21. Cristiano Ronaldo, 12,290,689
22. MrBeast, 12,012,142
23. Adolescence (TV series), 11,884,240
24. KPop Demon Hunters, 11,856,384
25. Karoline Leavitt, 11,813,280

Twenty-five years ago, Wikipedia was just a dream. Today, it is the backbone of knowledge on the internet.

The free online encyclopedia’s 25th birthday is coming on 15 January. It will be a time to celebrate the accomplishments of the nearly 250,000 volunteers who help maintain the site every day by keeping its content neutral, its facts cited to reliable sources, and more. Their work represents humanity at its best — the humans of today, organizing themselves to benefit the humans of tomorrow.

You can learn more about Wikipedia’s importance in the video below and witness our coverage of Wikipedia 25 on our website.

Written by Ed Erhart, Communications Specialist at the Wikimedia Foundation

Appendix

*While Wikipedia’s strict privacy policy means that we do not have a number for repeat visitors to the “Deaths in 2025” page, our assumption is that a good portion of these views are regular and returning readers that come to read those updates. In addition, Wikipedia’s volunteers split the article into smaller month-by-month lists to keep its overall length at a reasonable size. As of publishing time, the page covered December 2025 — but in 2026, the page was redirected to Wikipedia’s “Lists of deaths by year.”

This list was originally published using English Wikipedia data pulled by the Wikimedia Foundation covering 1 January to 10 November 2025. In January 2026, the list was updated to encompass the entire previous year and expanded to 25 entries. Several articles entered the list at that time: Jeffrey Epstein, 2026 FIFA World Cup, Rob Reiner, Dhurandhar, KPop Demon Hunters, and Karoline Leavitt. One fell off it: The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Please see our 2025 Year in Review page for other kinds of yearly data.

Data notes:

• All of the pageviews include direct and indirect navigations to the pages in question.
• This list has been screened for false positives. (1) Cross-referencing the pageviews against the percentage of views they received from desktop devices, as extreme values of less than 2% or more than 80% correlates strongly with spam, botnets, or other concerns. This affected articles like Cleopatra, a long-time false positive; XXXTentacion; and .xxx. (2) Looking at the number of pageviews that did not have a referrer and removing articles with extremely high values. This impacted a number of articles about large websites, such as Facebook, and browsers like Google Chrome. We suspect that a significant number of the pageviews without referrers are mistakes that occur when viewers are trying to access those.
• We are proud to have published lists of most-read English Wikipedia articles since 2015. You can read that archived content for 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.

Image credits

• Header image: Candle by Rolf Schweizer Fotografie, CC BY 2.0; Ronaldo by Ludovic Péron, CC BY-SA 3.0; KPop Demon Hunters poster by Netflix/Sony Pictures Animation, fair use; Ozzy Osbourne by John Mathew Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0; Pope Leo by Edgar Beltrán, CC BY-SA 4.0; Charlie Kirk by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0; Superman poster from Warner Bros., fair use; MrBeast by Steven Khan, CC BY 4.0; Ed Gein, public domain; Pope Francis by Quirinale.it; Zohran Mamdani by Bingjiefu He, CC BY-SA 4.0; Thunderbolts* poster from Marvel Studios/Walt Disney, fair use; Weapons poster from Warner Bros., fair use; Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore, CC BY 2.5; Sinners poster from Warner Bros./Proximity Media, fair use; flag by Noah Wulf, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Top five: Candle by Rolf Schweizer Fotografie, CC BY 2.0; Charlie Kirk by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0; Ed Gein, public domain; Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore, CC BY 2.5; Pope Leo by Edgar Beltrán, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Politics: Charlie Kirk by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0; Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore, CC BY 2.5; Zohran Mamdani by Bingjiefu He, CC BY-SA 4.0; Elon Musk by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0; Jeffrey Epstein, public domain.
• Pop culture: Ozzy Osbourne by John Mathew Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0; 2018 World Cup qualification — Wales by Steindy, CC BY-SA 3.0; Ronaldo by Ludovic Péron, CC BY-SA 3.0; MrBeast by Steven Khan, CC BY 4.0.
• Entertainment: Ed Gein, public domain; Sinners poster from Warner Bros./Proximity Media, fair use; Superman on a bus stop by Newell Reinvention, CC BY-SA 2.0; Adam Scott by Kevin Paul, CC BY 4.0; Rob Reiner 1971 by unknown author, public domain.

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• Lessons from Wikipedia - Wikimedia Foundation
• 7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia - Wikimedia Foundation
• In the AI era, Wikipedia has never been more valuable - Wikimedia Foundation

Announcing Wikipedia’s top 25 most-read articles of 2025 was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On Wikipedia, disagreement is never a sign of failure. It’s evidence that people care deeply about getting the facts right.

Volunteers have debated topics from the seemingly light and mundane — whether there should be a Wikipedia article about Kate Middleton’s wedding dress or if the Bee Gees are a British or Australian group — to more heavy and serious topics like documenting COVID-19. They decide what content to include on Wikipedia based on notability criteria and by following Wikipedia policies. These practices ensure editor independence, invite diverse views, and prevent undue influence from any one person or organization. Even the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia, has no say in content disputes on Wikipedia.

Instead, editors from around the world debate in the open how an article should describe a contentious topic, which sources best represent the evidence available at the time, or whether a claim meets Wikipedia’s high standard of neutrality. Because of how editors carefully consider these questions, Wikipedia continues to evolve as one of the most reliable sources of information in the world.

So how does that actually happen?

No one decides alone

A single editor on Wikipedia cannot unilaterally settle a content dispute, particularly on a contentious topic. Every contribution is transparent to the public and available to review, and every edit is open for more comment and input. Authority on Wikipedia comes from reliable sources and open dialogue — in this way, everyone contributes equally.

When Wikipedia contributors disagree, they explain their arguments on article “talk” pages, where anyone can see and join the discussion. These talk pages are the heart of dispute resolution on Wikipedia; they are public spaces where arguments are examined, evidence is weighed, prior discussions can be reviewed, and consensus can gradually emerge.

This approach prioritizes debate, disagreement, and collaboration. Disputes don’t end when someone “wins”, rather many volunteer editors reach a shared understanding of what the best available sources offer on a specific article or topic at the time.

Relying on reliable sources

Wikipedia’s guidelines encourage editors to focus on verifiability, neutrality, and sourcing — never on personal opinion. Instead of asking “who’s right?”, editors ask “what do the reliable sources say?” Over time, this collective referencing process shapes what reflects the current state of available information.

When a debate on Wikipedia stalls or needs more input beyond talk page discussions — like when consensus could not be reached on if the “Monty Hall problem” is a puzzle of probability or game theory — editors can use a structured process called a “Request for Comment (RfC)”. This helps flag the debate for more members of the Wikipedia community to weigh in on the outcome. RfCs are intended to gather diverse viewpoints, helping to break deadlocks by ensuring more input. RfCs also provide a record for past decisions, so that future decisions can build on the discussions and evaluation that came before it. Most RfCs are structured around a specific question, such as whether a detail belongs in an article or how to interpret a policy, and they are resolved when a clear consensus emerges.​

Radically transparent decision-making

In a time when digital spaces often amplify polarization, Wikipedia shows that transparency and structure can turn disagreement into progress by collecting diverse feedback from many different voices. Research has shown that the more people who take part in building a Wikipedia article, the higher-quality the knowledge becomes and those who participate leave the process less extreme in their views and more open-minded.

Trust in the information ecosystem is built on the willingness of people to carefully debate how to weigh different sources, admit mistakes, and pursue a shared objective of getting to accuracy together. The Wikipedia model works not by avoiding conflict, but by ensuring every conflict is handled openly, civilly, and based on reliable sources.

Read the series

• Keeping information reliable in the digital age: Lessons from Wikipedia
• The 3 building blocks of trustworthy information: Lessons from Wikipedia
• Transparency builds trust: Lessons from Wikipedia

More installments will be published in the near future.

The art of disagreement: How Wikipedia navigates disputes was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How many times have you seen a post pop up on an app or social media feed and wondered where the information really came from? In today’s digital landscape, viral news and forwarded messages often lack clear attribution, reliable sources, or any way for you as the reader to trace how the story began. People try in vain to check where these facts come from, only to find a blur of broken links, anonymous users, and vanished content. This frustration is universal: when there’s no transparency in how information is created, trust quickly breaks down.

Transparency has become a rare currency online — and one of the most necessary. Contrary to those posts you find on other platforms, every edit and every discussion on Wikipedia is open to public review. Even small changes like typo fixes can be vetted. This level of openness makes it easier to trust that what you see is the full story, and research shows that the more people review, discuss and debate a Wikipedia article, the more accurate and reliable it becomes. This deep transparency has helped make Wikipedia one of the most trusted sources on the internet. Transparency is built into Wikipedia in many ways:

Every page has a history

Every article on Wikipedia comes with its own “History” tab. By clicking its history at the top of the page, readers can see each change — from small corrections to complete rewrites — and even compare versions side by side. This history isn’t curated or limited; it’s freely visible to anyone. Readers can watch information improve and evolve in real time, and editors can gain more understanding about complex or changing information.

This public record turns what could be an opaque editorial process into an open, collaborative conversation. Most Wikipedia edits ever made can be reviewed by anyone. Mistakes aren’t hidden, they’re corrected. Disagreements aren’t erased, they’re documented, debated, and resolved and everyone can see. Every article is an invitation for readers to look deeper at the history and get involved.

Talk pages: Debate in the open

Next to every article is also a “Talk” page tab: a space where volunteer editors discuss what belongs in the article, how to balance sources, and how Wikipedia’s policies should be applied. Wikipedia has no editor-in-chief — it runs on consensus decision-making. The path to achieving consensus can be spirited and lengthy, but it all takes place in plain sight. People can follow these exchanges to understand how consensus forms and even work to build a new consensus themselves.

This culture of open deliberation is what turns transparency into accountability. Editors must be able to justify their work using reliable sources and Wikipedia’s core content principles — neutrality, verifiability, and no original research. These policies, applied openly, ensure that the knowledge on Wikipedia is accurate and trustworthy.

Real-time reviews and safeguards

Transparency on Wikipedia isn’t just about visibility; it’s also about vigilance. A live public feed tracks every edit made across millions of pages each minute. Thousands of volunteers monitor these changes, ready to revert vandalism, flag misinformation, or fix factual errors. Automated tools assist them, catching patterns of disruption and alerting human reviewers. This constant, public activity makes it very difficult for bad information to remain unchecked.

Dispute resolution in public

When conflicts arise — whether about editing behavior on a controversial topic or adherence to Wikipedia policies — Wikipedia resolves them through open, documented processes. Editors can escalate issues for broader community input or formal arbitration from selected volunteer committees, with outcomes and rationales published for all to see. This standing record creates institutional memory and keeps community power accountable.

This commitment extends far beyond Wikipedia’s article histories and talk pages. Every six months, the Wikimedia Foundation publishes a detailed Transparency Report which shares every request the Foundation has received to alter or remove content, or to disclose nonpublic user information across its projects. The latest report, just published, breaks down the type of requests, how many required actions, and how Wikimedia protects the privacy and rights of its users. Readers and contributors can see how Wikimedia responds to these kinds of requests from governments and other organizations, but can also get answers that further explain the Foundation’s legal and policy work.

At a time when many online spaces rely on hidden algorithms and untraceable edits, Wikipedia’s open and transparent record offers an alternative: a place where accountability is built in, not added later. Transparency doesn’t guarantee perfection — but it allows everyone to see how information is created, questioned, and improved.

Every edit tells a story. On Wikipedia, you can read all of them.

Read the series

• Keeping information reliable in the digital age: Lessons from Wikipedia
• The 3 building blocks of trustworthy information: Lessons from Wikipedia
• The art of disagreement: How Wikipedia navigates disputes

More installments will be published in the near future.

Transparency builds trust: Lessons from Wikipedia was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The world is experiencing an erosion of shared standards for what counts as trustworthy information — and whose voices are deemed credible. Institutions once seen as stewards of knowledge — science, journalism, academia — face declining levels of public trust. At the same time, many people are turning to online spaces and personalities that feel more relatable, even if they are less reliable. To rebuild a shared baseline, we need consensus on what trustworthy information should look like.

As part of the vast and varied online information ecosystem, Wikipedia has managed to build global trust thanks to three simple but powerful policies. They are the foundation of how reliable information on Wikipedia is built and offer a model for all:

• Neutral point of view: Wikipedia articles must present information fairly as far as possible without bias.
• Verifiability: All information must come from published, reliable sources that readers can check themselves.
• No original research: Wikipedia doesn’t publish personal opinions or new interpretations — it summarizes what has already been published elsewhere from reliable sources.

These policies, created in Wikipedia’s early days 24 years ago, still guide the work of hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors who add content to the site and underpin an encyclopedia read by more than 15 billion people each month. They are not just rules for a website — they are standards the wider information ecosystem can learn from.

Neutral point of view: Balance through collaboration

Neutral point of view (NPOV) is one of the most distinct and important principles of Wikipedia. It asks volunteer editors to “represent fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.” Editors are not tasked with deciding which view is correct; their role is to document what each credible source has published.

This stands in sharp contrast to most online platforms, where content thrives by taking sides. Wikipedia, by design, is written not for one audience or ideology but for everyone.

Of course, no individual can write perfectly free of bias. That’s why Wikipedia’s collaborative model matters: through discussion, edits, and consensus-building, neutrality is something achieved collectively. In fact, research on Wikipedia has consistently shown that articles tend to improve in quality and reliability as more people contribute to them.

The reason is straightforward: each editor brings different knowledge, cultural context, and potential biases. When these are openly surfaced and debated among volunteers, the final article reflects a negotiated consensus rather than one person’s individual perspective. Mistakes are quickly spotted, gaps are filled, and sources are checked against each other. When a Wikipedia article has numerous editors contributing, the outcome is an article that is reflective of a plurality of viewpoints from the available sources.

New initiatives to guide neutrality

Maintaining neutrality is an evolving challenge. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts Wikipedia, has collaborated with volunteer editors to introduce several new efforts reinforcing this commitment. These are intended to support and guide Wikipedia contributors on the concept of neutral point of view on the encyclopedia:

• We recently launched a new neutral point of view module on the WikiLearn platform, part of the Wikimedia Core Curriculum. Short videos break down key practices — be encyclopedic, write without taking sides, write for the whole world, and avoid undue weight.
• The Foundation also convened a working group of editors, trustees, researchers, and advisors to study how NPOV is applied across languages on Wikipedia. The working group has published an initial analysis of NPOV on Wikipedia, and will be sharing additional recommendations for how NPOV standards might evolve globally.

These efforts show that neutrality is not static. Wikipedia articles are frequently updated as new sources come out. This ensures that readers gain access to a comprehensive understanding of the topics that matter to them, and that the information on those topics may also grow and evolve. It requires constant reflection, debate, and adaptation — the same qualities needed in broader conversations about trustworthy information online.

Verifiability and no original research: Building with sources

The other two core policies — verifiability and no original research — ensure that Wikipedia does not exist in a vacuum of opinion. All content must be grounded in published, reliable sources including books, research, news articles and academic publications.

“Verifiability” means every fact can be checked by readers; citations link directly to the source from every article. If you’re skeptical, you can click through and decide for yourself. “No original research” reinforces this safeguard, prohibiting personal interpretation, unpublished claims, or unverified data.

This approach counters some of the internet’s worst tendencies: rumor without attribution, personal speculation presented as fact, and viral misinformation. Instead, it redirects readers back to published sources and embeds accountability within the article itself. These principles are also supported by tools and bots that preserve citations so that when webpages and links to sources may change, a record of them is always accessible on Wikipedia.

What qualifies as a “reliable source”? This question sparks constant discussion and debate among Wikipedia editors. Accuracy, fact-checking processes, transparency, and correction policies of primary source publications all play into decisions. For example, peer‑reviewed research and journals or established news organizations with documented editorial standards are generally considered reliable, while self‑published blogs, partisan outlets, or outlets with no history of issuing corrections are usually not.

Further, on Wikipedia, the reliability of a source isn’t fixed. Volunteers may together reassess and change their view on a source’s reliability as new information becomes available. Reliability isn’t based on any one editor’s opinion, but on how other publications and evidence evaluate the source in question.

Why these policies matter beyond Wikipedia

Wikipedia’s three content policies require effort, discussion, and continuous enforcement through millions of edits every year. They remain even more relevant than ever as people need trustworthy information on the internet.

At their core, these policies provide an operational definition starting point for trustworthy information:

• Written without taking sides.
• Backed by a verifiable source.
• Never invented or speculative.

This is not just Wikipedia’s formula for reliability — it is a blueprint for rebuilding collective trust in knowledge. There is much to learn from how Wikipedia has embedded these standards into everyday practice at global scale.

Wikipedia is not complete, finished, or flawless. But it offers a working, living example of how a broad community can strive to build reliable knowledge together. In an age of fractured information, its three core policies are a model worth building on within the wider digital ecosystem.

Read the series

• Keeping information reliable in the digital age: Lessons from Wikipedia
• Transparency builds trust: Lessons from Wikipedia
• The art of disagreement: How Wikipedia navigates disputes

More installments will be published in the near future.

The 3 building blocks of trustworthy information: Lessons from Wikipedia was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the past few years societies everywhere have seen seismic shifts in how information online is created and shared. Many studies suggest that fragmented and polarized corners of the internet are dramatically affecting people’s trust in what they see and believe online. Young people are finding communities in digital spaces and forums that did not exist even a few years ago. Misinformation is flooding our feeds, and the very idea of neutral, reliable facts is being challenged.

In the face of this, Wikipedia has evolved into one of the most trusted websites on the internet and a main source of data for everything from ChatGPT to Siri to whatever you look up on your phone. It offers important lessons that everyone can learn from in building knowledge that people can rely on and trust.

Most people use Wikipedia. However, not many people understand how Wikipedia works. It is supported by systems that help keep information trustworthy, and it is constantly improved by users who update it constantly, every day and every hour.

That’s why we are launching a series to share the policies, rules, systems and ways of working that have guided its growth on one of the Internet’s most iconic platforms.

Each day, hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors apply these systems to build and improve the world’s largest online encyclopedia that has more than 15 billion visits monthly. They work together to prevent bias, fight misinformation, resolve disputes, and make sure Wikipedia remains a place where knowledge is collected and shared responsibly.

Below we outline the many layers of protection that form the foundation of content creation on Wikipedia and ensure the integrity of the information you read. This article will be the first in a series that explores all of these layers of protection, and provides a deeper look into more about a model that can build consensus around what reliable information looks like in a changing world.

Core content policies

Everything starts with three core policies that guide how articles (the encyclopedia entries on Wikipedia) are written:

• Neutral point of view: Wikipedia articles must present information fairly as far as possible without bias.
• Verifiability: All information must come from published, reliable sources that readers can check themselves.
• No original research: Wikipedia doesn’t publish personal opinions or new interpretations — it summarizes what has already been published elsewhere from reliable sources.

Together, these create a set of standards intended to govern all content. When editors work on complex or controversial topics, they often debate which sources to use and how to reflect them fairly. Over time, as new information becomes available, the articles evolve and improve. These policies have proven highly effective in preventing the kinds of misinformation or unchecked propaganda seen elsewhere online.

Transparency of articles and discussions

Every Wikipedia article comes with its own time machine. Click the “History” tab at the top of a page, and you can scroll through every edit ever made — from a tiny typo fix to a major rewrite — and watch how knowledge evolves in real time. Alongside that, each article has a “Talk page” tab, where anyone can see how editors hash out disagreements, debate reliable sources, and interpret Wikipedia’s policies in plain sight; and get involved if they see ways to improve the article themselves! This radical transparency — showing both what changed and how people collaborated to get there — is what makes Wikipedia uniquely trustworthy.

Real-time review and safeguards

Wikipedia provides tools where anyone can monitor new edits as they happen. A live feed shows every new edit the moment it happens, and volunteers around the world scan it constantly — ready to catch vandalism, bias, or harmful content within seconds. Vandalism on Wikipedia is typically reverted in minutes, if not seconds. Machine-learning systems also help by automatically flagging obvious problems, such as offensive slurs. Together, human and automated review make it very difficult for vandalism to go unnoticed.

Dispute resolution

When editors disagree about content, there are structured dispute resolution processes. Editors can seek additional opinions, involve third parties such as other volunteer editors, or formally request broader community input. These processes create space for collaboration and compromise — helping turn potential conflict into constructive problem-solving.

Administrators

On Wikipedia, some experienced volunteer editors are trusted with extra responsibilities — they’re known as Administrators, or simply “admins.” Elected by the community, admins have special technical permissions to step in when needed: they can block disruptive accounts, delete problematic pages, and enforce both content and behavioral policies. Most of the time, editors resolve issues collaboratively, but when conflicts can’t be settled, admins provide the balance of authority and trust that keeps Wikipedia running smoothly.

Article protection

Most articles are open for anyone to edit, but in cases of repeated vandalism or disruption, protection tools can temporarily limit who can make changes. Usually, this means only more experienced editors can update the page, giving space for thoughtful discussion and consensus-building before new edits go live. For example, an extended protection policy on English Wikipedia allows editors with at least 30 days of activity and 500 prior edits to make changes to protected pages. This level of protection doesn’t lock an article away — it simply raises the bar for participation, signaling that edits should come from contributors who understand Wikipedia’s content policies. This still allows others to discuss the content on the talk page. The goal is to slow things down, encourage thoughtful debate, and ensure policies of neutrality and reliable sourcing guide important changes.

Arbitration committee

At the highest level, some Wikipedias — including English Wikipedia — have an elected Arbitration Committee (ArbCom), made up of experienced volunteer contributors. Often compared to a “Supreme Court” of Wikipedia, this panel of trusted editors handles complex disputes about how Wikipedia contributors follow Wikipedia’s rigorous policies. All of ArbCom’s enforcement actions are logged publicly and can be appealed, ensuring transparency and accountability.

Research and improvement

Finally, Wikipedia’s openness makes it a rich subject for academic research. Hundreds of studies have been published on its quality, bias, and community governance. Because the entire site’s data is freely available, researchers can replicate findings, test assumptions, and suggest improvements. The Wikimedia Foundation supports such research because it helps identify challenges and provides evidence-based recommendations for the community of editors. The Wikimedia Foundation actively encourages this research to strengthen the encyclopedia over time.

An open door to make Wikipedia even better

No single layer is enough on its own. Together, these layers of protection create a resilient system that continuously protects and improves Wikipedia. At the heart of Wikipedia is its volunteer community: people who debate, learn, and work together to uphold the vision of a free and reliable encyclopedia for everyone. These volunteers also build on the layers of protection outlined in this post by customizing policies for different language communities (there are more than 300 language Wikipedias!).

As an online encyclopedia that is free for everyone, Wikipedia is more accessible than the often expensive bound books of the past. It has become one of the most reliable and trusted sources of knowledge in the world. Governed by standards that protect the integrity of information, it exists to serve the public interest — unlike any other platform of its scale on the internet.

Wikipedia seeks to inform, not to persuade or convince.

It has billions of readers, millions of supporters, and hundreds of thousands of volunteer contributors from across the United States and on every continent. Wikipedia is supported by people from more than 200 countries and Americans from all 50 states, who give an average donation of about fifteen dollars to support Wikipedia’s educational mission. This is a website that is designed for and owned by ordinary people.

Wikipedia is always improving. As the largest collaborative digital endeavor in human history, it is humble about its imperfections. Volunteers editors make and correct mistakes every single day. In fact, Wikipedia transparently shares examples of errors that have been made and corrected in the past. Editors meticulously discuss, debate, and integrate information from diverse sources and viewpoints in articles where a consensus is reached. Articles can still be changed with new reliable information or additional sources.

Wikipedia is also open for anyone to make it better. Research has shown that the highest quality articles are those with the most contributors and the most diverse viewpoints. The best way to improve Wikipedia is for individuals to get involved, edit by edit.

As we navigate an era where information is more contested than ever, Wikipedia offers a living example of what it takes to build trust at scale. Its systems show how openness, accountability, and collaboration can create knowledge that people around the world rely on every day.

This series will explain those systems, layer by layer, to share how Wikipedia really works and how it can inspire new standards for our times. By understanding these many forms of protection on Wikipedia, we can all start to imagine a future where trustworthy knowledge isn’t the exception online, but the expectation.

Read the series

• The 3 building blocks of trustworthy information: Lessons from Wikipedia
• Transparency builds trust: Lessons from Wikipedia
• The art of disagreement: How Wikipedia navigates disputes

More installments will be published in the near future.

Keeping information reliable in the digital age: Lessons from Wikipedia was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Chris Albon and Leila Zia, Wikimedia Foundation

Not too long ago, we were asked when we’re going to replace Wikipedia’s human-curated knowledge with AI.

The answer? We’re not.

The community of volunteers behind Wikipedia is the most important and unique element of Wikipedia’s success. For nearly 25 years, Wikipedia editors have researched, deliberated, discussed, built consensus, and collaboratively written the largest encyclopedia humankind has ever seen. Their care and commitment to reliable encyclopedic knowledge is something AI cannot replace.

That is why the Wikimedia Foundation’s new AI strategy doubles down on the volunteers behind Wikipedia.

We will use AI to build features that remove technical barriers to allow the humans at the core of Wikipedia to spend their valuable time on what they want to accomplish, and not on how to technically achieve it. Our investments will be focused on specific areas where generative AI excels, all in the service of creating unique opportunities that will boost Wikipedia’s volunteers:

• Supporting Wikipedia’s moderators and patrollers with AI-assisted workflows that automate tedious tasks in support of knowledge integrity;
• Giving Wikipedia’s editors time back by improving the discoverability of information on Wikipedia to leave more time for human deliberation, judgment, and consensus building;
• Helping editors share local perspectives or context by automating the translation and adaptation of common topics;
• Scaling the onboarding of new Wikipedia volunteers with guided mentorship.

We believe that our future work with AI will be successful not only because of what we do, but how we do it. Our efforts will use our long-held values, principles, and policies (like privacy and human rights) as a compass: we will take a human-centered approach and will prioritize human agency; we will prioritize using open-source or open-weight AI; we will prioritize transparency; and we will take a nuanced approach to multilinguality, a fundamental part of Wikipedia.

Providing freely accessible knowledge to anyone on the planet is Wikipedia’s mission, one that has only grown in importance since the rise of generative AI. Its success is why Wikipedia is at the core of every AI training model. With this new AI strategy, we are making a promise and a commitment to the world we serve and the volunteers who have made — continue to make — Wikipedia the largest encyclopedia that humanity has ever known.

You can read the Wikimedia Foundation’s new AI strategy over on meta.wikimedia.org.

This Wikimedia Foundation blog was written by Chris Albon, our Director of Machine Learning, and Leila Zia, our Head of Research.

Our new AI strategy puts Wikipedia’s humans first was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Great photography is more than pressing a button — transforming ordinary into extraordinary is an art. Timing, composition, and instinct must all harmonize at singular moments in time. Split-second decisions must be made to adjust focus and angle, all while maintaining the patience needed to capture the right light.

Donatas Dabravolskas, the winner of this year’s Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest, put all the pieces together early one morning last April. Although clouds threatened his chance to shoot Rio de Janeiro’s world-famous Christ the Redeemer, he ignored his doubts and hailed a car. When the clouds subsided, Dabravolskas and his drone were ready; he snapshotted a remarkable view of the statue lit by a rising sun reflecting off the-now low rolling clouds.

One contest judge said that Dabravolskas’s work brought together “the landscape, the backlight and the open frame in dialogue” in a way that conveyed “the concept of redemption” — just like the name of the statue.

Dabravolskas was also the winner of Wiki Loves Monuments 2021, making him the first two-time winner of the contest.

Wiki Loves Monuments is best known for being the world’s largest photo contest. It highlights and documents humanity’s cultural heritage through the buildings, structures, and other assets that have gained importance due to their artistic, historic, political, technical, or architectural significance.

This mission and its goals have “brought together people from literally all over the world,” their organizing team said. One of them is this year’s ninth-place winner Hadi Dehghanpour, who said that they submit photos to the contest each year because they “consider it a reference and source for introducing and archiving the world’s sights.”

In 2024, over 4,500 participants in 56 countries submitted nearly 240,000 photos to Wiki Loves Monuments. These photos were first judged in individual nation-level contests, each organized by teams within those countries, before 55 finalists were forwarded to a nine-person expert jury, who took several months to closely examine and identify 25 winners.

Over its fifteen years in existence, Wiki Loves Monuments photographers have collectively donated over three million images to Wikimedia Commons, a freely licensed media repository that supports Wikipedia and other websites. Each photo adds another nugget of knowledge to the world’s collection, and you (yes, you!) can use those images for just about any purpose with only a few stipulations.*

Check out all of the winners from the 2024 Wiki Love Monuments contest below.

Second place: A symbol of Ukrainian education, Kyiv’s Red University Building was photographed on this cold evening by Oleksandr Ryzhkov. Although he is more likely to be found photographing natural beauty, Ryzhkov was motivated to turn his camera on Kyiv due to the destruction wrought by Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia. “I want the whole world to see how beautiful it is here and remember that it can be destroyed,” he said.

Third place: Ioannis Ioannidis had only taken up photography a year before capturing this shot of birds flying around Greece’s Monastery of Rousanou. They and a friend were already going to travel south for a business trip, so they woke up early to take a detour to this religious building that is precariously perched on a rock outcropping. In the words of Wiki Loves Monument’s judges, Ioannidis’ photo “vividly captured both natural and human history in a single frame.” They commended the photo’s color, noting that the pinks “created a fantastic atmosphere that feels almost mythical.”

Fourth place: This is Serbia’s Museum of Contemporary Art as seen through the lens of long-time Wikipedia editor and Wikimedia Commons photographer Petar Milošević. Milošević’s motivation was simple: he wanted to demonstrate that Brutalist socialist architecture is “not just poor concrete”. The contest judges certainly believed that Milošević was successful in this quest, as they commended his compositional choices. These included the use of height to convey the museum’s architecture in a way “that cannot be appreciated from any other angle”, as well as Milošević’s decision to photograph the building when lit by its own lighting to best see its sharp lines.

Fifth place: A prolific black and white photographer, Filipe Salgado’s haunting portrait of a single individual in Porto’s typically bustling Bolhão Market looks like it could have been taken in a different century. The contest judges called out the photo’s clever and symmetrical perspective, while Salgado themselves thought that it portrayed “a unique moment in a powerful way”. Their skills managed to place two photos in the top 25 of this year’s Wiki Loves Monuments; you can find their other winner at #11.

Sixth place: Photographer Marika Caruana narrated the story behind this photo from Malta for the contest organizers:

The moment I took this shot was a crazy moment. My partner and I were on our way back home feeling disappointed after an unsuccessful attempt to photograph moonrise at a low elevation. Due to the haze on the horizon, the moon was not visible. However, as the moon rose out of the haze, it shone nice and bright. My partner was driving, so I took the opportunity to seek some interesting photographic composition with the full moon and a prominent building. And as we neared the Mellieha Church, I realised that this was possible. I asked my partner to stop the car in the middle of the road, ran out camera in hand and raced along the sidewalk (fortunately there is a promenade which permitted these antics) until I got the moon aligned with the dome.

Seventh place: This dragon-style Norwegian church in the Lofoten island chain stood out to the judges for its composition. The red of the church pops against the surrounding snow-covered land, but the size of the building does not overwhelm the rest of the image. Photographer Gilad Topaz’s winter trip to these Norwegian islands involved three flights and an additional four hours of driving, and it paid off: three photos Gilad took on this trip won international awards in Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 and appear on this list (#12 and #17).

Eighth place: Serbia’s Monument to the Unknown Hero commemorates all the unidentified soldiers that perished in Serbian service during the First World War. The contest judges loved User:Ivanbuki’s photo of the site, with one saying that they chose an ideal day: “the cover of the snow and the fog makes the scene more dramatic, making the analogy of the harsh climate with the roughness of life in wartime.”

Ninth place: This photo of a ribat in Seyyedabad, Chenaran, Iran, used a top-down perspective to create an unusual perspective of this centuries-old structure. One of the contest judges thought that it was “one of the most original in the contest.” Photographer Hadi Dehghanpour, a long-time participant in Wiki Loves Monuments, found this view while traveling with an archaeologist friend. “The area was deserted and the weather was sunny and warm,” they recalled.

Tenth place: Domenico Ianaro used the hilltop location of Italy’s Basilica of Superga to frame the building against the hulking Monte Rosa massif behind it. Although the basilica is the subject of many photographs, the contest judges loved the unusual soft glow brought on by the setting sun, which made for a contrast between the warm building and cold mountain range.

Eleventh place: Much like Filipe Salgado’s other contest-winning photo at #5, this photo of Livraria Lello — known as the bookshop from the Harry Potter film series — finds a famed and often crowded location devoid of people. The judges were impressed by Salgado’s capture of an often photographed monument in an unusual way with their framing of Livraria Lello’s famous staircase alongside the shop’s books.

Twelfth place: This photo of the fishing village of Henningsvær in the Lofoten archipelago was the second of three photos from Gilad Topaz’s winter trip to Norway to make this list (#7 and #17). The contest judges hailed this photo for its contrasts between humanity and the natural landscape. One thought that the perspective provided a reminder of “how communities living in tough and remote places establish and organize themselves”, while another remarked that it was “a unique picture that few people can take.”

Thirteenth place: This exquisite example of ruins photography comes from a former Kreenholm Manufacturing Company building in Estonia. According to Wikipedia, the company held what were at one point the largest cotton spinning and manufacturing mills in the world. As of 2021, however, only 31 people were working at the site. Photographer Vaido Otsar was on a tour of the building when he happily discovered what they called the “rhythm” of the pillars of this section.

Fourteenth place: Matteo Pappadopoli traveled over 900 km from home for the Carnival of Venice. The carnival is famed for its attendees’ intricate costumes and masks, and so Pappadopoli brought their camera to snapshot to snapshot the best of them. Pappadopoli’s plans changed when they realized that a change in the weather could present an opportunity (translated from the Italian):

I saw fog descending at the same time the sun was setting. Sensing the atmosphere that was being created, favorable for photography, I positioned myself for the photo, looking for the best composition and waiting for the most favorable moment.

One of the contest judges remarked that the photo found “an almost poetic perspective that transmits the beauty of the space and the melancholy at the same time.”

Fifteenth place: The definition of a photo that tells a story, User:Arseniog’s timelapse in this photo of Santia Castle in Zaragoza, Spain, vividly illustrates the passage of time. “This image not only represents the medieval castle of Santia,” one contest judge said, “but also the essential idea about the meaning of monuments as those creations of culture that stubbornly persist over time and survive the harshness of the elements.”

Sixteenth place: At a brief glance, you might think that this is an unusual example of a metaphysical painting from Giorgio de Chirico. In fact, it is a photo of Christ the King Parish in Quezon City, the Philippines. The building is “often admired for its architecture and the serene atmosphere it provides,” according to photographer Emman A. Foronda, and “the way it stands out while still being part of the local community speaks to its significance in the area.”

Seventeenth place: The final of three award-winning photos submitted by Gilad Topaz (#7, #12), this shot of a wharf and seaside buildings in Henningsvær, Norway, showcases the village’s traditional fishing architecture. “It is a very original perspective of these buildings,” one contest judge wrote. They added that it was not just the reflection in the water that contributed to their assessment, but the “deformed lines and color management that make it even look like a painting.”

Eighteenth place: This fortified structure located in the western Libyan city of Nalut is about a thousand years old. It was originally intended to store harvested grains in war-stricken times. Photographer Mohamed Ali Yahmed knew of the archaeologically significant ruins because they live nearby, and their work was commended by the contest judges for its human-leveled perspective and the composition’s inclusion of various building materials.

Nineteenth place: Agon Nimani’s airborne photo of the National Library of Kosovo was a spur of the moment decision; they were driving by the building and recognized that the weather would lend itself to a spectacular shot. The contest judges agreed. One noted that it could be a demonstration piece on the continuing importance of black and white photography, while another said:

The photographer […] understood profoundly the essence of the design of the library by reducing the image of the building to its fundamental features. The photograph here is transformed into a carbon sketch of the library, like the architects may have sketched it with a pencil on a white piece of paper when having a moment of inspiration before the library was even constructed.

Twentieth place: The oasis settlement of Ghadames has been around for thousands of years, and its old town was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. This aerial photo of the old town was praised by the judges as it “showed the beautifully imperfect squares of each house and how the whole group comes together to form this beautiful organic pattern,” in the words of one judge.

Twenty-first place: Aneza Paliou prefers to photograph her subjects around dawn, and the early morning light provided the perfect soft lighting for this shot of medieval buildings lining a street in Rhodes, Greece. Aneza was motivated to submit photos of Rhodes to expand knowledge about the island she lives on, which in her words is a rare example of a “medieval residential complex that has survived almost intact with its fortifications, urban planning, public buildings, temples and houses.”

Twenty-second place: Each element within this photo from User:Athichitra was an intentional choice. The Great Buddha of Thailand is framed here by rice fields and the sky, “just like a symbol of Thailand’s spiritual land,” they said. They added:

I had traveled several hours from home to reach Muang temple and arrived at just the right time when the light was soft. I set up my shot low in the rice field to frame the statue rising behind the traditional wooden hut to highlight the connection to the land. What made the moment magical was the flock of birds flying across the sky, adding movement and life. Together, these elements created a balanced, serene scene that felt both powerful and peaceful.

Twenty-third place: The Jameh Mosque in Varamin, Iran, was completed in 1322. User:Hamed.gisoo’s photograph of its central courtyard won praise from one judge for the variety of stories it told, the composition that created depth, the lighting that illuminated the brickwork, and the birds that added life.

Twenty-fourth place: “Capturing monuments is my passion,” says Basavaraj M, the photographer behind this shot of Vitthala Temple within the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hampi, India. Basavaraj was part of a group of photographers that visited the site during monsoon season, which provided the water visible throughout the image. They knew immediately that it was one of the best photos they had ever taken.

Twenty-fifth place: On a boiling afternoon in mid-July, photographer Oussama Hamama was moving around the Hassan Towner in Rabat, Morocco, looking for that perfect shot. They found it with a couple of tourists walking towards the incomplete mosque. “The presence of the couple served as a means to ‘humanise’ the picture and to put emphasis on the majestic aspect of the monument,” Oussama said. Even though they had to hurry to get the photo before the couple moved too far, the symmetry and balance in the photo led to its twenty-fifth place finish in this year’s Wiki Loves Monuments.

To see more images like this, have a look at all the national Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 winners. You can also check out 2024’s winners of Wiki Loves Earth, a contest focused on our planet’s natural areas.

By Ed Erhart, Communications Specialist at the Wikimedia Foundation

*Note: Please make sure to follow each image’s copyright tag. Most of the images above, for instance, are available under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license, meaning that you are free to share them for any reason so long as you give credit to the photographer and release any derivative images under the same copyright license.

“Redemption”: The winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2024 was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From the parting of a mist’s ethereal cloak to the narrowing borders of a drying lake, the two winners of this year’s Wiki Loves Earth photo contest remind us of Earth’s timeless beauty and its fragility.

For more than a decade, the volunteer-organized Wiki Loves Earth has been capturing the breathtaking essence of the planet’s natural heritage. Photos of all sorts of nature, from iconic national parks to hidden gems in local green spaces, are eligible. Wiki Loves Earth’s winners fell into two categories: a “macro/close-up” category (including animals, plants, fungi) and a “landscapes” category for wider shots.

This year’s winner of the macro category captures a majestic deer emerging from a mist-shrouded forest a bit east of Rome. One of Wiki Loves Earth 2024’s judges called the deer “a scene straight out of a mystery film,” while another said that the connection between the deer and photographer Michele Illuzzi felt “supernatural.”

The equivalent winner of the landscapes category went up high to portray the scaly land that reveals Lake Burdur’s evaporating footprint in western Turkey. A contest judge commended photographer Fatih Yılmaz’s artistry and “unusual dynamic composition” that found a balance between color and texture.

This year, Wiki Loves Earth received more than 80,000 submissions from over 3,800 participants in 56 countries — the highest number of countries ever in the contest’s history. From those, 583 were selected by local jury teams and forwarded to the international competition. You can learn more about Wiki Loves Earth and its full rules on its website. Check out the nineteen other winners below.

Landscapes

Second place (landscapes): The Ustyurt Nature Reserve in the far southwestern portion of Kazakhstan supports a wide variety of fauna across its varied landscapes, which range widely in elevation. It’s a bit larger than the country of Mauritius. Photographer Maksat Bisengaziyev framed this view of a few of the reserve’s many rock formations so that there would be a diagonal line running from the bottom left to the top right. One judge noted that this technique “created depth without compromising too much of the objects’ sharpness.”

Third place (landscapes): The Wiki Loves Earth judges loved İsmail Daşgeldi’s composition and sense of scale in this photo. A viewer’s eye starts at the top of the enormous and looming mountains. Their true size is slowly revealed as the eye follows the winding road to Yaylalar, a small Turkish village of just 43 people, at the bottom.

Fourth place (landscapes): At least one blogger has called this range the ‘tiramisu mountains’, and anyone who has had the Italian dessert would think it’s easy to see why. This is another Maksat Bisengaziyev photo from Kazakhstan, with this one coming from the Kyzylsai Regional Nature Park. “There is something majestic about the composition,” one contest judge saw. “The low light brings out the structure in the surface really well without tinting the color on the stone too much.”

Fifth place (landscapes): İsmail Daşgeldi’s sense of scale was on display in this photo, which backdrops the Hürmetçi Marshes with Mount Erciyes on a mid-April morning. But what puts this image over the top is the lonely animal near the center, pausing for a moment to get a drink.

Sixth place (landscapes): Missoni Francesco’s photo of a glacial lake in extreme northeastern Italy brings chills, and not just for the temperature. Wiki Loves Earth’s judges loved the innovative use of the lake’s reflections and the mist swirling around the mountain peaks. “Such deep blues, and in so many shades,” they added.

Seventh place (landscapes): The first thing you are likely to notice in this shot of Kyrgyzstan’s Madygen Formation are the colors, resulting from lakes and rivers running their way to a nearby ocean millions of years ago. One contest judge thought that Marat Nadjibaev’s photo “truly makes one appreciate the Earth’s many unseen wonders,” while another opined that the cloudy day helped ensure that a blue sky did not detract from the rock’s colors.

Eighth place (landscapes): On this crisp November morning, Turan Reis got out of bed early to capture a moment in time at Karagöl-Sahara National Park in northeastern Turkey. They discovered morning mist drifting through vibrant autumn trees, with a late-year sun creating lengthy rays of light and deep shadows across a few rolling hills.

Ninth place (landscapes): Like something out of a Bond film, a fish trap provides the frame for Skander Zarrad’s photo of a fisherman returning at daybreak to sell their catch. This scene was found in Tunisia’s Kerkennah Islands.

Tenth place (landscapes): Wiki Loves Earth’s judges commended the “fantastic perspective” of this top-down shot of Turkey’s Yedigöller National Park, which includes a wide variety of trees in an array of autumnal colors. They also loved how the viewers would be drawn through the photo by the narrow road’s meandering path.

Macro/close-ups

Second place (macro): It’s a tender moment between parent and child: this Eurasian hoopoe prepares to feed its hungry offspring with a recently captured bug. Lukáš Kött took this visual poetry in South Moravia, located in the southern Czech Republic near its border with Austria. “Not only full of action, but educational too,” said one Wiki Loves Earth judge. Another photo from Lukáš Kött took tenth place in the macro category.

Third place (macro): Mehmet Karaca’s fascinating image of two conehead mantises in Turkey’s Kapıçam Nature Park lends itself to all manner of personification. One judge who reviewed the photo found themselves humming the theme from the classic American comedy The Pink Panther. What do you see?

Fourth place (macro): It may look like these yellow-winged darters are taking a break from work, but they’re not old enough to fly yet. These newly hatched animals are drying out on a twig in the Czech Republic’s Žďárské vrchy protected natural area. One judge called out Lubomír Dajč’s photo for its “wonderfully crisp contours” and added that it was “oozing complementary colors”.

Fifth place (macro): User:Anissheikh2647 helped this bonded couple of pheasant-tailed jacanas while the birds went through the difficult process of raising a chick. “ I love many aspects of this shot,” one judge said. “The color palette reinforces the composition, the sharpness of the details is just right and complements the bokeh effect, and the contrasting motion between the two birds is beautifully captured, adding levels to the image”.

Co-sixth place (macro): The first of two consecutive photos from Philippine photographer Mark Kineth Casindac, also known as User:Kramthenik27, sees these two Apodynerus flavospinosus or potter wasps hanging onto some sort of stalk in Northern Negros Natural Park. The Wiki Loves Earth judges loved the colors on display in this shot, as well as the sharpness Mark Kineth Casindac was able to obtain on the small creatures.

Co-sixth place (macro): Mark Kineth Casindac’s second shot found two leaf-cutting cuckoo bees sitting face to face in the same park. The photographer noted that these bees are endemic to the Philippines, and they can be commonly found in grassy areas. “The composition is simple and clean, but well-structured,” one contest judge noted.

Seventh place (macro): Another photo from Mehmet Karaca, the third-place macro winner, shows that enjoying the morning sun is absolutely not limited to the human race. This baby chameleon, which is evidently no bigger than a flower, is getting a few rays in Turkey’s Kapıçam Nature Park.

Eighth place (macro): We do not know why this Nepalese spotted deer is in full sprint. But no matter why it got moving, photographer Dasrath Shrestha Beejukchhen ultimately benefited from the deer’s leap to get onto the path running along the right side. One judge noticed that the dots on the side of the deer were stretched — an indicator of the speed at which it was moving.

Ninth place (macro): This is not your standard nature photo. In this shot, Asker Ibne Firoz sharply captures a stationary lineated barbet chick in its nest right alongside its fast-moving mother. Wiki Loves Earth’s judges applauded the technical skill on display in this photo, with one adding that Firoz managed to take “an artistic approach” that nevertheless “retained its educational potential.” Firoz found this scene at the National Botanical Garden in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Tenth place (macro): This river kingfisher has gotten lucky today: it just caught its next meal in the Poodří Protected Landscape Area of the Czech Republic. This is Lukáš Kött’s second photo to place in Wiki Loves Earth 2024’s winners; the judges were a fan of the varied colors, including the contrasting background, and the action implied in the shot.

Volunteer-led and organized, Wiki Loves Earth asks people to venture out into nearby natural areas. The contest’s definition of a natural area is intentionally broad, which helps ensure that anyone, anywhere, is able to participate. The photographers’ submitted work is uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, a media library that holds many of the photos used on Wikipedia. All of the content within that library is freely licensed; it can be used by anyone, for any purpose, with only a few restrictions.*

If you would like to submit your own photos for Wiki Loves Earth 2025 next year, keep an eye on wikilovesearth.org for organizing information and dates. You can also see the winning images from Wiki Loves Earth’s special nominations category of human rights and environment.

Post by Ed Erhart, Communications Specialist, Wikimedia Foundation.

*Please be sure to follow each image’s copyright tag. All of the images above, for instance, are available under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA license — you are free to share them for any reason so long as you give credit to the photographer and release any derivative images under the same copyright license.

Birds, bugs, and beauty: The winners of Wiki Loves Earth 2023

“Straight out of a mystery”: The winners of Wiki Loves Earth 2024 was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When people want to learn about our world — the good, bad, weird, and wild alike — they turn to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is the largest knowledge resource ever assembled in the history of the world. Its content is a reflection of all the people who live on our planet — its story is your story, your interests, your questions, and your curiosity.

That’s why people spent an estimated 2.9 billion hours — over 331,000 years! — reading English Wikipedia in 2024, according to data from the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates the website and its sister projects. During those long hours, English Wikipedia’s volunteer editors continued updating the site: about 4 billion bytes of information were added this year via over 37 million edits.

But some topics on Wikipedia fascinated you all more than most. These are English Wikipedia’s 25 most popular articles of 2024. You can also check out our dedicated 2024 Year in Review webpage.

• #1: Deaths in 2024
• #2: 2024 United States presidential election
• #3: Kamala Harris
• #4: Donald Trump
• #5: Lyle and Erik Menendez

The most popular article of 2024 belongs to a topic that has been at the top of Wikipedia’s most-read articles five times since we began sharing these lists in 2015: “Deaths in 2024”. In fact, in that time period, it has never been lower than third place.

Wikipedia’s volunteer editors update this article when they find published obituaries that come out after the deaths of notable individuals — specifically, “notable” according to Wikipedia’s definition of the word. With eight billion people in the world, there are a large number of notable deaths to update the page with each day.

Scroll down to learn more about the other top articles, and you can find the full list featured at the bottom.

• #2: 2024 United States presidential election
• #3: Kamala Harris
• #4: Donald Trump
• #7: JD Vance
• #9: Project 2025
• #11: Elon Musk
• #12: 2024 Indian general election
• #14: 2020 United States presidential election
• #18: Joe Biden
• #24: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Comprising 10 of the top 25 articles, the primary theme of this year’s most-popular Wikipedia articles is politics in the US and India. Views from these two countries made up nearly half of English Wikipedia’s total pageviews this year.

In the US, the federal election was held early last month. The candidates included the Republican Party’s Donald Trump and JD Vance for president and vice president, respectively, and the Democratic Party’s Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Three of the four appear on this list.

Data from the Wikimedia Foundation showed a surge of views going to articles about US politics around Election Day (5 November): about 4.2 million viewed the 2024 presidential election article on that specific day, and the 2020 presidential election article more than doubled its views in November.

Meanwhile, India’s general election was held from April to June. Narendra Modi was reelected as prime minister for a third term. Wikipedia’s article about the election is the work of nearly 900 individual volunteers making over 6,700 edits. It saw a peak of 1.2 million views on 4 June, the day the results were announced, as people rushed to look up who had won.

• #5: Lyle and Erik Menendez
• #8: Deadpool & Wolverine,
• #13: Taylor Swift
• #19: Kalki 2898 AD
• #22: Pushpa 2: The Rule
• #23: Griselda Blanco
• #25: Dune: Part Two

People love to use Wikipedia to search for background information of the film and television that has either just been released or that they are consuming at the time. This behavior even has a name: the second screen.

This effect is most obvious when it involves real-life topics depicted on TV, and 2024 is no different. Over 27 million views came to Wikipedia’s article on Lyle and Erik Menendez, two brothers who were convicted of the 1989 murders of their parents. Their story was the subject of a nine-episode crime drama series and an associated documentary film released on Netflix. Griselda Blanco, a Colombian drug lord with a prominent role in Miami’s 1980s drug war, also found a place on the list. Her life was spotlighted in a well-reviewed Netflix miniseries this year, and views to her article peaked to over one million shortly after its release.

Over in Hollywood, this year’s star is Deadpool & Wolverine, the comedy-action flick starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. The film appears to have connected strongly with audiences, particularly for its heavy use of nostalgia inspired by past superhero films and comic books. It would not surprise us if part of this Wikipedia article’s popularity came from people looking up actor and character names for Deadpool & Wolverine’s flood of resurrected characters and cameo appearances.

In pop culture, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is #13 on the list; her Eras Tour had its 149th and final show on 8 December. The tour is the highest-grossing of all time and has had cultural, economic and sociopolitical impacts on many of the countries it has journeyed to.

Also appearing on the list is Kalki 2898 AD, the first installment of a new Bollywood cinematic universe that is also the most expensive Indian film ever made; and Dune: Part Two, the conclusion of Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptation of an acclaimed science-fiction novel.

Editor’s note: Pushpa 2: The Rule, another Bollywood film, vaulted into the list when we updated it after the end of the year. It was released on 5 December.

• #6: Indian Premier League
• #16: 2024 Summer Olympics
• #17: UEFA Euro 2024
• #20: Cristiano Ronaldo

Cricket and football — or “soccer” for the US-based folks reading this — fill out most of the sporting articles in this year’s top 25.

In cricket, we are looking at the Indian Premier League. The article received the majority of its views during the 2024 season, which concluded with the Kolkata Knight Riders winning their third title in front of a crowd of 38,000 people. Cricket articles about the Premier League appeared on the list of most-popular Wikipedia articles for the first time last year.

On the football (soccer) side of things, megastar Cristiano Ronaldo makes his fifth appearance in the top 25. Competitor Lionel Messi would have appeared only if we extended this list to 48 entries.

The famed 2024 UEFA European Football Championship, better known as UEFA Euro 2024, also appears after a final that saw Spain fend off England. The victory gave Spain its fourth-ever European Championship, making it the most successful team of all time in that tournament. This article is #15 across the globe this year, but in the UK alone it features in the top five.

Finally, the quadrennial Summer Olympics were held in Paris this year. The sporting tournament featured nearly 10,000 athletes from 204 nations, and their competitions were broadcast around the world. Gymnast Simone Biles was the most-read-about individual Olympic athlete on Wikipedia with an article that garnered over 10 million views.

The full top 25

For a more in-depth look across a planet’s worth of Wikipedia reading over 2024, please see our dedicated webpage.

1. Deaths in 2024, 49,937,590 pageviews
2. 2024 United States presidential election, 31,017,620
3. Kamala Harris, 29,477,367
4. Donald Trump, 27,503,458
5. Lyle and Erik Menendez, 27,015,032
6. Indian Premier League, 24,801,366
7. JD Vance, 23,985,531
8. Deadpool & Wolverine, 23,388,922
9. Project 2025, 20,215,406
10. ChatGPT, 18,869,283
11. Elon Musk, 18,719,390
12. 2024 Indian general election, 18,499,431
13. Taylor Swift, 18,338,133
14. 2020 United States presidential election, 17,413,241
15. United States, 16,497,850
16. 2024 Summer Olympics, 16,258,961
17. UEFA Euro 2024, 15,817,710
18. Joe Biden, 15,467,504
19. Kalki 2898 AD, 15,082,514
20. Cristiano Ronaldo, 15,073,701
21. Sean Combs, 14,146,031
22. Pushpa 2: The Rule, 13,742,110
23. Griselda Blanco, 13,675,099
24. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 13,390,576
25. Dune: Part Two, 13,311,020

Wikipedia allows anyone who wants to learn about the world to consult a free online encyclopedia built from reliable sources — news, research, books — and presented from a neutral point of view. Every Wikipedia article is created, curated, and maintained by a global community of nearly 260,000 volunteers — people just like you. It is their work and time that has made Wikipedia into the reliable, trusted resource we all rely on.

Moreover, Wikipedia is the only top global website run by a nonprofit, the Wikimedia Foundation. It is primarily funded by millions of readers, which supports its independent model. Wikipedia content embraces standards of verifiability, neutrality and transparency. Its mission is to sustain free knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, ensuring these resources remain accessible and valuable for billions of people around the world.

If you’re curious to learn more about how Wikipedia works, check out the video below.

Written by Ed Erhart, Communications Specialist at the Wikimedia Foundation

Appendix

This list was originally published using English Wikipedia data pulled by the Wikimedia Foundation on 22 November 2024. We updated the list on 15 January 2025 to add data from the remaining days of the year. One new article entered the list (Pushpa 2: The Rule), and one article was removed (Liam Payne, now at #26). All of the pageviews include direct and indirect navigations to the pages in question.

This list has been screened for false positives with methods including:

• Cross-referencing the pageviews against the percentage of views they received from desktop devices, as extreme values of less than 2% or more than 80% correlates strongly with spam, botnets, or other concerns. This affected articles like Cleopatra, a long-time false positive that @depthsofwiki reported is a default voice search on Google devices; XXXTentacion; and .xxx.
• Looking at the number of pageviews that did not have a referrer and removing articles with extremely high values. This impacted a number of articles about large websites, such as Facebook. We suspect that a significant number of the pageviews without referrers are mistakes that occur when viewers are trying to access those websites.

Previous lists of most-popular English Wikipedia articles are available for 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.

Announcing Wikipedia’s most popular articles of 2023

Image attributions

Main image, clockwise from top left:

• Candles by Igor Ovsyannykov/igorovsyannykov, CC0
• Kamala Harris by Lawrence Jackson/US Government, public domain
• Absentee ballot by Paulo O, public domain
• Menendez brothers from Los Angeles Times/Getty, fair use
• Donald Trump by Shaleah Craighead/US Government, public domain
• Cricket match by Amarnath.de, public domain
• JD Vance by United States Congress, public domain
• Deadpool and Wolverine, fair use
• American flag by Noah Wulf, CC BY-SA 4.0
• UEFA Euro 2024 match ball by Bildersindtoll, CC0
• Eiffel Tower by Kimberly Blair/US Army, public domain
• US voting booth by Phil Roeder, CC BY 2.0
• Sam Altman by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch, CC BY 2.0
• Taylor Swift by iHeartRadioCA, CC BY 3.0
• Rajiv Kumar by the Election Commission of India, GODL-India
• Donald Trump and others by Shealah Craighead/US Government, public domain

The top five:

• Candles by Igor Ovsyannykov/igorovsyannykov, CC0
• Kamala Harris by Lawrence Jackson/US Government, public domain
• Absentee ballot by Paulo O, public domain
• Menendez brothers from Los Angeles Times/Getty, fair use
• Donald Trump by Shaleah Craighead/US Government, public domain

Politics:

• Kamala Harris by Lawrence Jackson/US Government, public domain
• Absentee ballot by Paulo O, public domain
• Donald Trump by Shaleah Craighead/US Government, public domain
• JD Vance by United States Congress, public domain
• Donald Trump and others by Shealah Craighead/US Government, public domain

Pop culture and media:

• Menendez brothers from Los Angeles Times/Getty, fair use
• Deadpool and Wolverine, fair use
• Taylor Swift by iHeartRadioCA, CC BY 3.0
• Kalki 2898 AD poster, fair use
• Pushpa 2 imagery, fair use

Sports:

• Cricket match by Amarnath.de, public domain
• Eiffel Tower by Kimberly Blair/US Army, public domain
• UEFA Euro 2024 match ball by Bildersindtoll, CC0
• Cristiano Ronaldo by Mehrdad Esfahani/SNN, CC BY 4.0

Announcing Wikipedia’s most popular articles of 2024 was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Prepare yourself for a parade of imagination: the winners of the 2023 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest have arrived.

Wiki Loves Monuments is best known for being the world’s largest photo contest. It highlights humanity’s cultural heritage through the buildings, structures, and other assets that have gained importance due to their artistic, historic, political, technical, or architectural significance.

Since the contest’s first edition, held in the Netherlands in 2010, Wiki Loves Monuments has inspired the uploading of over 3 million images to Wikimedia Commons, the freely licensed media repository that supports Wikipedia and other websites. You (yes, you!) can use those images for just about any purpose with only a couple stipulations.*

In 2023, about 200,000 images were uploaded from over 4,700 photographers in 46 countries who participated in the contest. The 15 international winners were found in 12 of those countries, and you can see them all below.

It takes a bold and courageous artist to engage with something known and celebrated around the world — but that’s just what Mona Hassan Abo-Abda did. That vision brought them first place in the 2023 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest.

Abo-Abda took their photo (pictured above) in 2021 after traveling to see the art exhibition “Forever is Now”, then in its first year. They chose to frame the Giza pyramids, the last remaining wonder of the ancient world, through the touching hands of Lorenzo Quinn’s sculpture Together.

“Humans are obsessed with time, and yet there are places on Earth where time stands still,” Abo-Abda said. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, “we missed an essential part of what makes us human. Together wishes to represent that timeless human emotional journey in the place on Earth where time has become relative as a testimonial to living the moment.”

The photo competition’s jury praised Abo-Adba’s choice of “angle and distance”, which they believed “were very well chosen to create a balanced and proportional scene.”

Second place

The second-place winner was captured in a very different place from the Egyptian desert: a cold German winter. The Marksburg is a castle and a key part of the Rhine Gorge UNESCO World Heritage Site. “For me, this one photo connects almost a thousand years of history of the Middle Rhine Valley”, photographer Rolf Kranz said. “Marksburg castle was built as early as the 12th century and is the only hilltop castle on the Middle Rhine that has never [been] destroyed. Behind it you can see three significant smoking chimneys of the Braubach lead and silver smelter, [which] were erected [around] 1900.”

Third place

Photographer Maurizio Moro5153 drove for an hour and half to find a location that allowed them to create a single interwoven shot of the idyllic northern Italian village of Premana underneath a wedge of hulking mountains looming over it. The effort won them third place. The jury called out the “warmth and power” displayed in the photo’s contrast between the near-dark sky and lit-up village.

Fourth place

Photographer Maksym Popelnyukh wanted to find a different way to portray Kyiv’s St. Andrew’s Church, a commonly photographed Elizabethan baroque landmark in Ukraine. They did so by getting to the location at 5 a.m., before most of the city was awake. Getting the right shot was so complicated that it took three times to get right, and their perseverance was rewarded with an award for fourth place. “This is my way of inviting the world to look at Ukraine anew, through the lens of my camera, and to show the inexhaustible diversity and beauty it holds,” Popelnyukh said.

Fifth place

Coming in fifth place in this year’s contest is Azim Khan Ronnie’s aerial photo of Buddha Dhatu Jadi, a Buddhist temple located in southeastern Bangladesh. This particular temple is well-known for its golden spire, but Jadi chose to capture it from an unusual angle: directly above. Their work in composing the shot, finding a balance between form and color, and choosing a time of day that would accentuate the shadows led to their award.

Sixth place

The 700-year-old Haghartsin Monastery, nestled in the mountains of north-central Armenia, is seen here in a photo from Vladimir Pankratov. Pankratov had been to the monastery before, and it made for an excellent place to start a hike up a nearby mountain with their son. While there, they took a few photos — including this sixth-place winner, which was taken from a vantage point in a nearby chapel. The international jury called the photo “an example of human ingenuity emerging from the earth, like trees in the middle of the forest”.

Seventh place

This aerial view of Serbia’s Petrovaradin Fortress clearly shows the fortress’ deliberate positioning over the town and river, along with the elaborate lines of zig-zagging walls constructed to hold out against an enemy even in the age of cannons. The international jury commended photographer Valekd for the decision to capture the fortress in winter, which they said gave the resulting photo a “monochrome” look that highlighted the fortress’ various levels.

Eighth place

Out on a summer holiday to the Aegean Greek island of Syros, photographer Αλεξανδρής Αλέξης was walking through narrow alleyways when they happened on this viewpoint of the Agios Nikolaos Church. They captured the church’s famed blue dome, along with its two towers, and framed them above what looks to be an aging stone wall. The jury loved the photo’s composition.

Ninth place

We are headed back to Giza’s pyramids for photographer Abdelrahmannr’s stunning combination of the ancient monuments juxtaposed against a solitary horse and rider. The photo clearly shows the massive scale of the pyramids, which are often viewed through photos taken at long distances, and the Wiki Loves Monuments team said that “it is a breathtaking scene that captures the awe and wonder of these timeless monuments.”

Tenth place

For Azim Khan Ronnie’s tenth-place winning photograph, they crafted a top-down aerial view that could have come straight out of a movie. But what’s most valuable about this perspective is that it gives us the ability to see the detailed work that many artisans have put in over the years that Bangladesh’s 201 Dome Mosque has been under construction, especially the roof of the 81 foot (25 m) central dome. As you might have guessed by the name, they have also constructed two hundred 17 foot (5.2 m) domes alongside it. (Another one of Ronnie’s photos placed fifth, and you can find that above.)

Eleventh place

Right at the entrance to Malta’s Grand Harbour stands Fort Ricasoli and this accompanying breakwater, seen here fulfilling its purpose of protecting the harbor from the worst of what the sea has to throw at it. This was one of many photos Bonavia92 took that day while seeking the perfect moment, and they ended up with a photo that they called “one of a kind”. It was the first photo they have ever submitted into any competition.

Twelfth place

Lighthouses are a favorite subject of photographers, and Split Rock Lighthouse in the northern United States is known for being one of the country’s most beautiful examples of the type. MichaelDPhotos got up early on a cold January morning to capture the sight at dawn. The timing allowed the building to be “bathed in the soft pastel hues of dawn”, as they put it.

Thirteenth place

The eclectic design of Belgium’s Antwerpen-Centraal railway station has meant that architects have struggled to identify the structure with any one style. Yet, that does not detract from it being “widely regarded as the finest example of railway architecture in Belgium”, as described on Wikipedia. A truly fascinating part of photographer T meltzer’s shot of the station’s central hall is the near-total lack of people in the photo.

Fourteenth place

This image exhibits a memory of the Alaskan Gold Rush in the history of the United States: the Independence Mine complex. Today, it’s a state park. Alaska is known for its harsh winters, and longtime Wikipedia editor Will Koeppen’s image shows the snow blown and piled next to one of the site’s remaining buildings. Koeppen lives in the area and is so familiar with this historical site that they didn’t find the photo all that remarkable. The jury disagreed, and to Koeppen’s delight they awarded it with fourteenth place. Koeppen reflected that its success “reminds me that we, as photographers, can’t always predict what specific photo is going to land with a broader audience. We all have our own preferences, biases, memories or emotions that a photograph can evoke.”

Fifteenth place

Careful positioning was required to capture this low-slung full moon over Wat Saket in Bangkok, Thailand. The site has existed in some form for hundreds of years, but the modern temple was finished in the 20th century. The effort and care put into the photograph brought photographer Sitthipolp fifteenth place in the 2023 Wiki Loves Monuments photo contest.

To see more images like this, have a look at all of the national Wiki Loves Monuments 2023 winners, or check out this year’s winners of Wiki Loves Earth, a contest focused on our planet’s natural areas.

By Ed Erhart, Communications Specialist at the Wikimedia Foundation

*Note: Please make sure to follow each image’s copyright tag. All of the images above, for instance, are available under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license, meaning that you are free to share them for any reason so long as you give credit to the photographer and release any derivative images under the same copyright license.

• Birds, bugs, and beauty: The winners of Wiki Loves Earth 2023
• Get inspired by the winners of Wiki Loves Monuments, the world’s largest photo contest
• Announcing Wikipedia’s most popular articles of 2023
• Wikipedia is here to stay

“Where time stands still”: The winners of Wiki Loves Monuments 2023 was originally published in Down the Rabbit Hole on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.