State of Wikipedia report for October 2023
By Josh Greene, The Mather Group
October’s Wikipedia Chaos Index sits at 59, one point higher than September’s Index – typical of early fall, before the usual decreases of the holiday season.
After a few quiet months, SPI’s increased drastically in October; this was the result of patrolling administrators and their investigations into numerous sockpuppet accounts and undisclosed paid edits.
Though fewer pages overall were nominated for deletion in October, there was a distinct rise in draft pages being declined; this appears to be a one-month anomaly, but is a trend we are watching closely, in case there are impending changes to Wikipedia’s new page approval policies.
Recently, TikTok users may have noticed something – specifically, Wikipedia snippets appearing in their search results. In September, it was confirmed by a TikTok spokesperson that Wikipedia snippets and links appearing within search results for peoples, places and events (including Taylor Swift and Thanksgiving, among many others) was a new feature being integrated into the platform.
The feature, which is seen between videos in its in-app search results, is the result of a new partnership with Wikipedia – and though it is not consistently live across all search terms (New York returns a link, while Cincinnati currently does not, for example), represents another step for TikTok as it tries to establish itself as a search alternative to Google. Alongside sponsored content and a similar integration with IMDb, TikTok’s Wikipedia integration is an intriguing trend to keep an eye on as Wikipedia itself repositions to be friendlier, more flexible, and even more influential as the Internet’s trusted source of verifiable information.
The Mather Group, a Capitol Communicator sponsor, is a boutique digital marketing and online reputation agency that focuses on SEO, Wikipedia and effective marketing for businesses.
