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There's a Wikipedia page just for toilet paper folding techniques at hotels.

There's also a Wiki list dedicated to sexually active popes. Another list focuses on future astronomical events.

Annie Rauwerda is well aware. The 22-year-old University of Michigan student spends about an hour each day scouring the web for anything delightful or weird. Then, she shares those findings to her viral page, Depths of Wikipedia.

Rauwerda, a Grand Rapids native, started Depths of Wikipedia in 2020 while she was bored during COVID lockdown. Now, it has more than one million followers across Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.

WKARs Sarah Lehr spoke with Rauwerda about her favorite corners of the internets largest crowdsourced encyclopedia.

Interview Highlights

On how casual browsers should approach Wikipedia

On the fan base and sensibility of Depths of Wikipedia

Interview Transcript

Kevin Lavery, host: Did you know Wikipedia has a page just for toilet paper folding techniques at hotels? Or that Wikipedia keeps a list of sexually active popes?

Annie Rauwerda knows. The 22-year-old University of Michigan student scours the web for anything delightful or weird and shares those findings to her viral page, Depths of Wikipedia.

Rauwerda, a Grand Rapids native, started Depths of Wikipedia in 2020 while she was bored during COVID lockdown. Now, it has more than one million followers across Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.

WKARs Sarah Lehr spoke with Rauwerda about her favorite corners of the internets largest crowdsourced encyclopedia.

Sarah Lehr: If you're just meeting someone and they're not extremely online, how would you describe what Depths of Wikipedia is?

Annie Rauwerda: I screenshot things on Wikipedia that I think are interesting or funny or make you slow your scroll just a little bit.

Lehr: Have there been posts from Depths of Wikipedia that really took off in a way that surprised you you didn't think they would necessarily be so popular?

Rauwerda: One that was popular that I didn't quite expect was, there is this photo of popcorn and they showed two different types of popcorn kernels and one is called a mushroom it's a circle, and the other has little things sticking out of it more wispy and they call it a butterfly. And I've eaten popcorn many times. I have thought a little bit about the different shapes of popcorn. I have never known that there were names. And it started a big debate and Twitter and Instagram (people) were arguing about the merits of the mushroom and the butterfly-shaped popcorn.

Lehr: Do you have any advice for other people for using Wikipedia and vetting what they're looking at? What should they be looking out for?

Rauwerda: I think Wikipedia is one of the most incredible things that exists the way that it self-moderates, the way that it allows for democratic discussion. I think Wikipedia has like this ethos of the early internet before we had these big giants that were capitalizing off of it and I think it's the best site ever.

Obviously, Wikipedia has inaccuracies on it. It's the encyclopedia that everyone can edit. So, definitely don't believe every single thing you read on Wikipedia. But the best way to engage with it is to read everything with a grain of salt. If you're not sure about something, check the citation that's on Wikipedia. And if you if you're not quite satisfied with the way something is discussed on Wikipedia, look into editing it and changing it.

Lehr: Are there aspects of Wikipedia that you think could be improved as someone who's very, very familiar with the platform?

Rauwerda: Oh my gosh, yes. Editing Wikipedia is never ending. And sometimes people wonder they're like, Okay, well, I mean, Wikipedia has, like, almost 7 million articles in English at least. What else do you need? But, in reality, like the world is always changing. Every article needs updating.

For example, you know, the population of Battle Creek. I was just looking on Wikipedia and the last citation was from 2019. And I was like Oh, I gotta quick update this. Another problem with Wikipedia, I would say, is that it can be very hard to start editing. The Wikipedia editor demographics do not represent the English speakers in the world. Right now, the percentage of Wikipedia editors that are male, it's somewhere in the 80s, in the 80 percents, which is a little bit better than it used to be, but it's certainly still not equal. And so there are projects like Wiki Women in Red that are working to get more female editors.

Lehr: How would you describe the sense of humor that your pages have and do you think there are any generational aspects and who your fans are?

Rauwerda: I do. I have statistics from Instagram of who my followers are and the demographics are pretty interesting. The gender distribution is pretty down the middle and the ages are mostly like 15 to 35. I have a friend and her mom told me, she's like, Annie, I don't get it, but my daughter loves it. And I do think that's true. It skews young.

I think the humor is kind of subtle, and there's no clear punch line. And it's less about like a ha-ha, knee- slapper joke and more about like a, oh, you kind of breathe heavily out of your nostrils because this thing is kind of interesting and a little bit funny. One example of is there's this molecule. It's an organic compound and its just the way that this molecule looks exactly like a teenage mutant ninja turtle. And so I posted it and I said, forbidden Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and people thought it was really funny. I would say that the humor is subtle, maybe is the best word.

Lavery: That was WKAR's Sarah Lehr talking with Depths of Wikipedia creator Annie Rauwerda.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Original post:
Depths of Wikipedia: Meet the Michigander who scours the web for anything weird and wonderful - WKAR

What does this mean for the worlds accumulated knowledge?

For more than 20 years now, people can look up online answers to all manner of questions. With some 50 million articles in almost 300 languages, Wikipedia would appear to be a treasure trove of knowledge. Anyone can contribute. But little is known about the individual creators of this enormous pool of information. What motivates them to devote unpaid time in the service of human knowledge?

And what happens if the collective is infiltrated by contributors with a hidden agenda in the pay of nations or industry giants? Why is 85% of the content provided by whats become known as stereotypical "angry white men contributing content that they consider relevant for the planet? And will artificial intelligence soon take over? This film provides a critical appraisal of the pros and cons of the online encyclopedia.

Broadcasting Hours:

DW English

TUE 31.05.2022 01:15 UTCTUE 31.05.2022 04:15 UTCTUE 31.05.2022 18:15 UTCWED 01.06.2022 09:15 UTCSAT 04.06.2022 08:15 UTCSUN 05.06.2022 12:15 UTC

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world.wide.wikipedia - Whos Feeding the Hive Mind? - DW (English)

Steven Pruitt, the Virginia resident who has made over 3 million edits on Wikipedia.

For every article that you read on Wikipedia, there is a writer and an editor. A towering figure among them is Steven Pruitt, the Virginia resident who has made over three million edits on the "free encyclopedia".

Mr Pruitt made the news back in 2017 when TimeMagazine named him one of the 25 most influential people on the internet, alongside former US President Donald Trump, JK Rowling and Kim Kardashian. Since 2006, he has made over three million Wikipedia edits, more than any other English-language editor. He has personally also written hundreds of new articles on influential women in order to correct Wikipedia's gender imbalance and also strengthen the backbone of the platform itself.

Wikipedia is such an incredible tool because it makes so much information accessible to so many people at once, he told Time.

Mr Pruitt was named one of the most influential people on the internet in part because one-third of all English language articles in the online encyclopedia have been edited by him. He goes by the name Ser Amantio di Nicolao on Wikipedia, the name of his favourite Opera character. In an interview with CBS News, Mr Pruitt revealed that he is deeply obsessed with historyand his first article was about Peter Francisco, who was his great great great great great great grandfather.

Mr Pruitt's primary profession is at the US Customs Office, where he organises documents. However, in the evening, after completing his duties, he spends more than three hours a day researching, editing and writing for the online portal. He doesn't receive any compensation for his work, but he has remained true to his interests.

"The idea of making it all free fascinates me. My mother grew up in the Soviet Union... So I'm very conscious of that -what it can mean to make knowledge free, to make information free," he said.

Further, speaking to CBS News, Mr Pruitt revealed that the longest he has gone without editing Wikipedia is two or three weeks. In fact, WikiMedia's vice president of communications, Kui Kinyanjui, had also stated that the site would not exist without the dedication of its volunteers, especially Steven Pruitt.

We're very excited about projects like Women in Red, which seeks to identify and place more content on women on our platform... Steven has been a large contributor to that project," Kui Kinyanjui said.

Several of the other top 10 Wikipedia editors also agree that Mr Pruitt's contributions have been remarkable.He is notable not just for the sheer number of articles and edits he has contributed, but for what he chooses to highlight as well. For example, he learned that women were the subjects of just 15 per cent of biographical articles on the site, and worked to fix that imbalance by writing hundreds of articles about influential women.

To put into perspective what it took for Mr Pruitt to become the top editor, he has been dedicating his free time to the site for more than 13 years now.

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See more here:
Steven Pruitt, The Man Who Has Freely Edited Over 3 Million Articles On Wikipedia - NDTV

Squaring up to the prospect of a new Red Hot Chili Peppers album, Im reminded of a vintage quote by Nick Cave: Im forever near a stereo saying, What is this garbage? And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I can empathise. I dont habitually harbour animus against artists I dislike, but something about the sheer scale of the Red Hot Chili Peppers awfulness has always felt weirdly personal.

Despite the kind of success that looks mightily impressive in a Wikipedia stat dump 100 million record sales, multiple Grammy wins, numerous number ones the Californian rock band have always been tricky to tolerate, let alone love. The reasons for this are manifold. Their grimly juvenile take on sexual relations envelops their music in a cloud of toxic testosterone. One song is called Hump de Bump, another Party on Your Pussy. They have an album titled The Uplift Mofo Party Plan. They became notorious for wearing sports socks over their genitals and depicting Californian frat-boy shenanigans with all the reverence of Homer contemplating the Elysian Plains. When they on occasion turn their attention to matters of spirituality, the lyrical wisdom has the depth and nuance of an Insta meme.

The music? The music is an ugly Frankensteins monster constructed from all the least likeable, least groovy bits of rock, funk, psychedelia and hip hop, with an added patina of plain stupidity. Singer Anthony Kiedis radiates the kind of braggadocious bro vibes that, aurally speaking, make me want to cross the road for my own safety. Kiedis writes terrible lyrics, flatlining melodies and has a horrible shouty voice. It goes without saying that he possesses the kind of swaggering confidence inversely proportional to all these impediments. Do the sums and you could reasonably claim that Red Hot Chili Peppers have waged a 40-year campaign of brute bone-headed idiocy upon the world and yet somehow emerged triumphant.

I have been a little luckier than Cave of late. Since the 1990s, when the three albums on which the bands success rests Blood Sugar Sex Magik; One Hot Minute; Californication were ubiquitous, Ive managed to more or less avoid their music. A reckoning is long overdue. Its time to stress test my prejudices, and what better way than by listening to their new record, Unlimited Love. Produced by long-term enabler Rick Rubin, this is the bands first album since 2016, and their first with original guitarist John Frusciante for almost 20 years.

Per the title, Red Hot Chili Peppers are blessing us with 17 new songs almost 75 minutes of music. This is, by some degree, too much love. The worst and sadly most prevalent kind of Red Hot Chili Peppers song is a doggedly unmelodic, squelchy faux-funk thing garnished with a half-rapped torrent of vaguely unseemly doggerel. There are several examples of this form on Unlimited Love Shes a Lover; Whatchu Thinkin; One Way Traffic; Let Em Cry but we shall let Poster Child speak for all of them. Imagine Billy Joels We Didnt Start the Fire if Joel had been more interested in the Thompson Twins and Caddyshack than Belgians in the Congo. Its very bad indeed.

Other diversions are simply bizarre. On the plodding, phased folk-rock pastiche Black Summer, Kiediss absurd vocal appears to be a misguided tribute to a West Country pirate. Its a song with an acute identity crisis: it thinks it is Stairway to Heaven, which is bad enough, when it is actually Spinal Tap fronted by Edward Teach.

Mercifully, Red Hot Chili Peppers have a secret weapon. Bass player Flea is a world-class musician who over the years has negotiated a series of day-release deals in order to play with grown-ups such as Thom Yorke. His contributions dominate the best songs here. The slippery groove of Its Only Natural is genuinely terrific. The pretty The Great Apes reminds me of early REM, off-time and slightly odd. Aquatic Mouth Dance is a rhythmically interesting blend of lounge funk and blaring soul, marred only by Kiediss contribution, which can be likened to a toddler scrawling on the walls.

One other positive. Though it is far too long, sonically this isnt a fussy or overcooked record. The production is clean and punchy for the most part, and Frusciante is a powerfully succinct player, only really letting his indulgences fly on The Heavy Wing. What else? Theres a ballad that sounds like a 1980s Elton John cast-off, and an acoustic waltz called Tangelo. More than enough to conclude that Caves putdown isnt entirely fair, but its not exactly wrong, either.

Originally posted here:
The awfulness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers has always felt weirdly personal - The Spectator

A tragicomic air clings to bands who light up the sky like a firework and fade away. The Norwegian subjects of a-ha: The Movie are best known for their 1985 hit Take on Me, but, despite successful shows, seem mired in creative purgatory. Thomas Robsahm and Aslaug Holms documentary trawls the bands career with musings from its three members Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, Magne Furuholmen and the Ken Dollesque lead singer Morten Harket and key associates.

Bouncing around synth-pop-happy London in the early 1980s, the driven trio of accomplished musicians landed a contract with Warner Brothers. Take on Me, with its infectious arpeggios and liberating high notes, made them stars, boosted by a delightful part-animated music video from Steven Barron (who also made videos for Billie Jean and Money for Nothing).

Then what? The documentary reviews the bands chronology like a slavish yet intermittently lucid Wikipedia entry. We dont learn how a-ha continued to get the privilege of releasing albums (including denim and shiny-shirt phases at either end of the 1990s) or what kept thousands of fans coming back for more. But we do witness a hundred muted shades of glum and listless: Furuholmen still seems sad about abandoning guitar for keyboards, decades ago, while Harket talks about needing his space. Waaktaar-Savoys attitude can be summed up by a sticker behind him in one shot: No Stupid People.

Theres a slight wonky interest in seeing the grind of recording sessions and fan service. But the film feels promotional enough that it wont lean into the potential humor of their situation.

a-ha: The MovieNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.

Read more:
a-ha: The Movie Review: The Creative Purgatory of the Take on Me Trio - The New York Times