For the first time, Wikipedia is releasing its own video that highlights some of this year's most memorable events. It now joins the tradition with Google, Twitter and Facebook when it comes to making a recap of what has happened for the past 12 months.
The video, which lasted almost three minutes, showed how users have depended on the site for getting valid and up-to-date information. It showed how a user would normally go to the site to make a search on a topic and how clicking the links in an article would lead the user to a different page. In other words, the video had displayed how the site is being manipulated by users who could simply click the site's various buttons in order for them start doing an action on the page.
"Wikipedia reflects the world around us. With each new event, it changes and grows, accommodating our human triumphs and losses," said chief communications officer Katherine Maher of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization which is in charge of Wikipedia.
One such loss that was shown on the video is the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. As the news of the outbreak progresses, contributors had been busy keeping the page as updated as possible. So far, the page had incurred more than 2,000 edits as the events unfolded. Ninety percent of the edits made occurred between July and November, the time when the events were escalating.
Wikimedia Foundation said that the video was created using only a small budget.
"This video was made with everyday tools: a computer, an Internet connection, lots of deep, patient thinking, research and collaboration, and the free content that ordinary people uploaded to Wikipedia," said Victor Grigas, Wikimedia Foundation's storyteller and video producer.
The video began by flashing two questions: "What did we read in 2014" and "What did we edit in 2014." Then, the music started to play as words and photos randomly flash on the screen.
Here are some of the words, phrases, and photos that Wikipedia had included in the video.
1. Ukraine
2. Malaysia
3. 2014 Winter Olympics
4. Sochi 2014
5. England national football team
6. 1872 Scotland vs. England football match
7. Scottish independence referendum, 2014
8. United States Senate Elections, 2014
9. Umbrella Revolution
10. 2014 Burkinabe uprising
11. Photo of people rallying while holding the sign "Hands up, don't shoot"
12. 2014 Ferguson unrest
13. Isis
14. Climate change
15. Photo of the ice bucket challenge
Wikipedia also displayed how the site is available in other languages. Based on the displayed characters, some of these languages are Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi and Spanish. Currently, the English version of the site has more than 4.6 million articles and over 34 million pages. Globally speaking, the site had over 459 million users in October 2014. This coming January, Wikipedia will turn 14 years old. It will mark 14 years that the site has been providing free and easily reachable online content in an encyclopedia format.
