See Wikipedia Edits As They Happen Around The World On Real-Time Map

For a lot of us, Wikipedia is a guilty pleasure we don’t admit to indulging in very often. If you are like me, you go to that site often to learn little tidbits, but since it’s not a reliable source, you don’t talk about it or use it as a source in your posts. Even though Wikipedia has almost shut down many times because of funding issues, it’s like the little engine that could, and it keeps moving forward. Now you can see Wikipedia edits around the world on a real-time map.

You can be sure that at every moment of the day and night, somebody in the world is editing a Wikipedia page. What you may not know is that on any Wikipedia page, you can click on the tabs at the top to get more information about the page itself. For example, by clicking on the “Talk” tab or the “View history” tab, you can see the recent edits on the page.

Now there is a real-time map where you can see these edits happening around the world. It’s a bit freaky when you see the different areas of the world light up since you know that means someone is editing a page right at that moment. Beneath the map, you see the links to the pages those people are editing.

The real-time map only shows a small percentage (about 15%) of the actual Wikipedia pages being edited at any given time. The reason for this is because the system generates a geographic location based on IP address. The only IP addresses the system has access to are those of unregistered users. If someone who is a registered user of Wikipedia makes an edit, they won’t show up on this real-time map since that person is not identified by IP address. You can click over to Wikipedia Recent Changes Map to view it in all its glory. Have fun!