Five questions. Two hosts. One deceptively simple quiz. Can Wikipedia articles really be edited by anyone? Does the site rely on your $5 donations, or is there more to the story?
Host Heather Ford goes head-to-head with guest Simon Knight in a true-or-false showdown about Wikipedia. Almost nothing is as straightforward as it sounds.
This is All That We Touch: Wikipedia, a documentary podcast series exploring what shapes the world's most-read encyclopaedia, and how to use it better.
Every question in this episode comes the Wikimedia Foundation's 2025 Global Readers Survey, testing how well people understand the site they use every day.
Play along and test your knowledge!
Voices
Heather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at UTS. She is a former Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation and the author of “Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age” published by MIT Press.
Simon Knight is a member of the University of Technology Sydney Centre for Research on Education in a Digital Society (UTS: CREDS), and its founding Director. Dr Knight researches how people learn to navigate uncertainty, disagreement, and evidence, and the mediating role of technology in that.
Quiz questions and more reading
Quiz question #1 True or false? Wikipedia articles can be changed by anyone.
You can and cannot change Wikipedia (Wikipedia) A community essay on editing, reverting edits, blocks and bans, page protection, oversight and deletion.
Who writes Wikipedia? (Wikipedia) A community essay on the types of editors and the demographic skew of the volunteer base.
Study reveals bot-on-bot editing wars raging on Wikipedia's pages (The Guardian, 2017) Over time, the encyclopedia’s software robots can become locked in combat, undoing each other’s edits and changing links, say researchers.
Quiz question #2 True or false? Wikipedia articles must have pictures
Wikimedia Commons A media file repository making available public domain and freely licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.
Commons Courtesy: Reusing Creative Commons-licensed media is easier than you think by Joshua Leach (The Ink Tank blog, 2025)
Quiz question #3 True or false? Wikipedia articles change over time
Wikipedia at 25: What the data tells us (Pew Research Centre, 2026) Answers to some common questions about the site, based on data from Wikipedia and Wikimedia Statistics, including Which pages have been edited the most? And Which pages have had the most views or edits in a single day?
An Encyclopedia with Breaking News by Brian Keegan (MIT Press, 2019) Wikipedia's unexpected ability to generate high-quality articles about current events is a critical part of its success story; Keegan offers lessons taken from this for addressing the sludge polluting other online platforms.
The language geography of Wikipedia by Martin Dittus and Mark Graham (Oxford Internet Institute, 2022)
Deaths in 2026 Wikipedia page
Quiz question #4 True or false? The people who write Wikipedia articles are unpaid volunteers.
Wikipedia How-To Guides for editors with a conflict of interest (The Ink Tank blog) How to properly request updates, whether adding a new logo, correcting errors, or handling disputes, without violating Wikipedia’s policies.
Paid editors on Wikipedia: Should you be worried? (Kim Osman, The Conversation, 2014)
Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Paid contribution disclosure policy
Quiz question #5 True or false? Wikipedia relies on donations to support its operations.
How is Wikipedia funded? (Wikimedia Foundation, 2025)
Fundraising statistics (Wikipedia, 2025)
Credits
The executive producer of this series is Heather Ford.
The series is hosted by Heather Ford, Francesca Sidoti and Richard Cooke.
Produced by Jane Curtis. Associate producer is Francesa Sidoti.
Sound by John Jacobs.
Bell music composition by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary.
Executive Producer of UTS Impact Studios is Sarah Gilbert.
It’s produced on Gadigal Country in Sydney Australia.
wikihistories is supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP220100662, ‘Wikipedia and the Nation’s Story: Towards Equity in Knowledge Production’.
Find out more at wikihistories.net
