The Joy of Learning Random Things on Wikipedia: Annie Rauwerda (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Annie Rauwerda’s talk titled “The Joy of Learning Random Things on Wikipedia” at TED conference.

In her talk “The Joy of Learning Random Things on Wikipedia,” Annie Rauwerda shares her passion for trivia and the joy of learning, which she often satisfies through Wikipedia. She highlights the fun and educational aspects of trivia, emphasizing how it can lead to deeper interest in various subjects without any pressure.

Rauwerda discusses the unique community behind Wikipedia, where anyone can contribute and add a bit of personality to the vast online encyclopedia. She reflects on the importance of Wikipedia as an accessible source of information, despite its imperfections, and its role in educating people during significant events. Finally, she conveys the message that even seemingly trivial knowledge can be powerful and invites curiosity about the world.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRPT:

Early Fascination with Trivia

When I was younger, I used to be really into Trivial Pursuit, and sometimes I would memorize the backs of the cards so I could win. And that’s how I learned some of my favorite trivia. Like, there’s a name for those three asterisks in a book when the vibe changes. It’s called a dinkus.

And I also learned that Oklahoma has a state vegetable, and it’s a watermelon. I’ve always really liked trivia, precisely because it’s information that carries no responsibility at all. If you forget the information that’s going to be on your test or your mom’s birthday, you might have consequences. But you never have a test on state vegetables; it’s learning that’s just for fun.

I’ve always been pretty curious. I graduated in 2022, and my favorite parts of my neuroscience classes were not necessarily the nitty-gritty physiology. I really liked the funnier stuff, like the protein in limb development named after Sonic the hedgehog. Or this bridged bicyclic molecule that looks like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

The Love for Wikipedia

Not all of my coursework was so charming, but I tried to convince myself that everything was at least a little bit interesting. One of the best ways to make things more interesting is to learn more than you have to. My favorite place for a long time, to quench my curiosity, is Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I’ve been a longtime fan.

I journaled about my Wikipedia reading habits when I was in fifth grade. And when classes went online in 2020, I found myself scrolling through all these Wikipedia articles and contributing. Anyone can edit the site. Some of the things I read had to do with my coursework. Like, I learned that the p in pH doesn’t stand for anything.

Discoveries and Contributions on Wikipedia

I also learned about things that had no relation to my classes — Fictional worms, non-water floods. Before I could think too long about what it would have been like to live in London when beer was flowing through the streets, I was reading about Goblu and Beatosu, fake towns. They don’t exist, but they were put on the official Michigan map in the Ohio section at the bottom by mischievous mapmakers in the ’70s.

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I started screenshotting my favorite pieces of trivia on Wikipedia and I put them on Instagram. And that was in the early pandemic, and I’m still doing it. I posted things like the Michigan State professor who took this model kidney to Disney World to see if roller coasters help pass kidney stones. They do. Good to know.

The Unique World of Wikipedia Editors

Wikipedia is created by real people. Unlike traditional publishers or other encyclopedias, it doesn’t require that you’re an expert in your field. This is a user whose name is Diannaa, who has written probably everything you know about World War II. And also P Diddy. There are thousands of people like this. You don’t have to be an expert.

You just have to be able to synthesize sources and follow style guidelines. Those guidelines are strict, but not so strict that a little personality doesn’t shine through sometimes. This article about the Popemobile I think has quite a bit of personality. It says “John Paul II requested that the media stop referring to the car as the popemobile, saying that the term was ‘undignified.’”

Wikipedia sometimes feels infinite. And I’m sure you’ve heard warnings that it’s not perfect. Maybe your seventh-grade teacher said, “Don’t use Wikipedia, anyone can edit it.” And it’s true that there is some misinformation and disinformation on the site. Often, it’s only up for a few seconds or minutes, but sometimes hoaxes last longer.

The Impact of Wikipedia

For example, there was an article for 10 years about an Aboriginal god called Jar’Edo Wens. It didn’t cite any sources. It should have been deleted, but it wasn’t. And eventually, this information was printed in books and told in university lectures. Until after 10 years, somebody realized that the article was just created by probably an Australian teenager named Jared Owens.

So Wikipedia is not perfect, but studies have shown that it contains fewer factual inaccuracies than Encyclopedia Britannica. And I think that’s really impressive. When I was in the summer of 2020, I kept posting my favorite trivia. Physically, I was quarantined, but I was exploring the world. Things like breast-shape hills or this unusual chess opening.

Discoveries and Reflections Through Wikipedia

I definitely was aware that there were islands in lakes. Like, I knew that was a thing. But it had never occurred to me that there could be an island in a lake on an island. I also had never thought about the possibility of an island in a lake on an island in a lake. And I had definitely never considered the idea of an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island.

Wikipedia is just huge. It has 6.6 million articles in English alone. But it’s not done. Wikipedia needs editors like you to contribute to free knowledge, whether that’s small things like fixing commas or adding sources or big things like heavy content editing or making sure people aren’t using it for advertisements.

There are some fun ways to contribute.

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This is a website called wikishootme.toolforge.org and it shows you what landmarks nearby need photos. That’s a fun way to contribute. Wikipedia should be representative of everything in the world, and you would hope that its contributors also reflected the world’s population. By best estimates, the contributors are about 80 percent male, so there are a lot of efforts with edit-a-thons and marketing campaigns to get more people editing.

The Human Aspect of Wikipedia

I’ll remind you, it’s created by very normal, real people. This couple in 2008 noticed that there were no photos on the Wikipedia article for high five, so they took matters in their own hands, acting out the sequence: up high, down low, victim misses, and too slow with finger guns. And then they added a hyperlink so you can go visit the finger gun article if you want to.

I thought this was very charming when I first saw it. And so I reached out to them, I tracked them down. It turns out after this, after they did this, they started dating, they got married, they had kids, and they agreed to recreate the photos with their kids. People take the task of writing an encyclopedia very seriously.

I said that I get really into trivia. Some of these people will spend a long time doing very trivial things. There was a long debate on whether the caption “Guy Standing sitting” was too funny for an encyclopedia. They eventually removed the caption. There was a 40,000-word discussion on whether to capitalize the I in “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

Wikipedia in the Context of Modern Information

There was an even longer discussion on whether this thing should be called corn or maize. Maize is winning, as Ann Arbor will be happy to know. So ultimately, I kind of laugh at this sort of meticulous detail, but I’m glad that people are thinking this deeply about things, especially in an era of social media filter bubbles and 24-hour news cycles, when truth looks different depending on where you look.

People on Wikipedia are coming together to write history in real time. I think the inner workings of an online encyclopedia are fascinating. Turns out, other people do too. When I was a student here last year, I started moonlighting as a journalist, explaining how a site this big gets made by volunteers. I wrote about how, when after Russia invaded Ukraine, downloads of Wikipedia skyrocketed in Russia as the state was limiting free press.

The Importance of Wikipedia as a Resource

Wikipedia is not perfect, but clearly it’s an information source that people desire. Or when the Queen died, I wrote about the Wikipedia editor that was so quick to change her article into past tense. I kept posting online and I was getting a following, and I started leading edit-a-thons to get more people to contribute. Then I started doing comedy shows, and I was surprised to learn that one, I thought it was fun, but also people were excited to pay money to go to a show about an encyclopedia.

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I’m still really drawn to useless knowledge. Like Diego, the tortoise who had so much sex that he saved his species. Some applause for him, great. I’ll let him know. Or I like “Boops boops in a bucket,” I just like that. But I really wouldn’t call it useless knowledge. I don’t think I would call anything useless knowledge, because the thing about trivia is that it’s an invitation to learn more about a subject.

Trivia as an Educational Tool

You might learn a trivia fact and suddenly you’re far more interested, and you’re learning about things you never thought were interesting before. Ken Jennings once said trivia was the bait on the fishhook of education. I previously had little interest in the romantic period of piano music, and then I learned that Franz Liszt, he had such good looks and dramatic performances that these girls in the 1800s in Europe were getting diagnosed with something called Liszt fever because they were such fan girls.

Suddenly, I’m interested in piano music history. Similarly, I didn’t have a lot of interest in life in the 13th century. And then I learned about this boy named Onfim and he was a six-year-old and his random birch bark drawings were preserved. And he wrote things that you would see a six-year-old draw today, like these proclamations like, “I am a wild beast.” And his stick figure drawings with too many fingers, they look like something that a six-year-old would draw today.

It reminded me that for all of history, people have always been people. Sometimes with trivia, you start somewhere random and then you start thinking about empathy and geopolitics and who knows, science, what have you. Facts are really powerful, even fun facts. And luckily, we live at a time where information has never been easier to access.

Whether you’re looking for fictional worms or non-water floods or more serious things like atmospheric carbon data. If nothing else, trivia reminds you that the world is huge and it’s amazing and it’s really interesting. And I don’t think that’s trivial at all.