How Wikipedia is so Addicting

Wikipedia is a free and open encyclopedia that contains roughly the entirety of all human knowledge. Written by the people, for the people, it has carried humanity on its shoulders since the turn of the millenium.

It runs on nothing but goodwill, free time, and a touch of OCD.^[1] Yet, in all these years, I've never found an answer to the simple question: "How?"

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Some time ago, I was idling on an uninteresting Wikipedia page, and my mouse wandered to the "Create Account" button. I probably thought it would be nice to have an account so I could fix a typo, or something. Regardless, I made an account.

The Instigation

Fast forward a year, and a random niche interest of mine got involved. I was working on a machine learning analysis of Chess960 games^[2] (a.k.a. Fischer Random, a.k.a. Freestyle Chess), so I was checking the Wikipedia article on it, and I discovered its title was Fischer Random, not Chess960 like I would've guessed.

I paused for a bit as an unusual thought entered my mind: I actually cared about this name difference. I'll spare you the details, but in short, a small army of other chess variant enjoyers did too, and were actively discussing this problem in a special Fischer Random -> Chess960 name change talk thread.

So, I added my two cents to the discussion,^[3] and within the month the name was changed.

Addiction Brews

It was nice to be a part of a small corner of history like that, but I moved on. Unbeknownst to me, a seed of the realization that Wikipedia is an open-contribution platform had been planted in the depths of my mind, where it would quietly grow in the months that followed.

Eventually, niche interest two arrived: Rubik's cube world records. Only this time, I didn't need a big kick-start like the army of other editors for Chess960. This time, I had a sapling of understanding that I could simply add something new.

I had been browsing top 3x3x3 cube performances, and I was shocked when I found out 11-year-old Yiheng Wang held the 29 fastest-ever performances, ranging from 4.73 seconds down to 4.05 seconds. Naturally, I figured I'd add that to his article.

It was so easy. I just hit "Edit," wrote the statistic with a single citation, and published.^[4]

The Wikipedia Wormhole

The dopamine hit was crazy. It was basically cocaine.^{[citation needed]} I impulsively opened an incognito tab to check if the change was public; it was.

The open-contribution seed in my mind had officially matured into a deep-rooted oak, and it was in full bloom. I couldn't go more than a day without thinking, "What could I add next?" What about more cool statistics? Or a new article on Mr. Goose's role in Waterloo student life? Maybe I could even revive the long-forgotten mathNEWS draft article — now that would be something.

It wasn't just the public permanence of my efforts that hooked me. It was the little things, like receiving tips from senior editors, or finally being an "autoconfirmed user" so I could fix errors as they came up, like the atrocity on the Wikipedia page for Yogurt: "Canada has its own spelling, yogourt..."^[5]

My latest contribution has been to spend dozens of hours creating 8-year-old Xuanyi Geng's biographical article. He already had the fastest Rubik's cube solve in history at just 3.05 seconds, and now he's got a Wikipedia page.

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Wikipedia is a genius encyclopedia system, a living organism engineered to heal and grow on its own. It throws its seeds far and wide, where they might be planted within anyone who cares about something. All you need is a bit of passion, and sooner or later, you'll be sucked down the wormhole like me.

So, I've got a new addiction. Do I regret it, or worry about it growing? Nope. In fact, I'm proud of it. And I'm proud of Wikipedia, and honestly, the whole wide world.

Here's to another thousand years of human prosperity.^[6]

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[1] User: Tom.Reding - Wikipedia; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tom.Reding; accessed July 8, 2025

[2] Lichess.ai; www.lichess.ai; accessed July 9, 2025

[3] Talk:Chess960: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chess960; accessed July 8, 2025

[4] Yiheng Wang: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiheng_Wang; accessed July 8, 2025

[5] Yogurt: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia; en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1299402181; accessed July 8, 2025

[6] We're not giving AI a soapbox today. Or any time this millennium 🙂