From Epic to Brief: Wikipedia’s Longest and Shortest Articles Defy All Predictions

It sounds like the typical concept advertised in American magazines in the 1950s: In the future, everyone will have access to all universal knowledge on one screen! And yet Wikipedia exists. It is a miracle, in a way, and there is much to thank the collectivist Internet of the beginning of the century, because now we would not be able to do something similar (maintain it, yes, but create it from scratch?). Since the Afghanistan page was created on January 16, 2001, the first article in history, more than 58 million articles have been created. And their records are staggering.

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You may have ever wondered what is the shortest article in all of Wikipedia (being considered a Good Article by the web): it is about Ydalir, a place that appears in some Norse poems and that nowadays, supposedly, is a town in Scotland. The shortest unrevised article, currently, is the one by Maria Amor Torres, which reads “She is a woman born in the Philippines”.

But what about its counterpart, which articles are longer than a day without bread? Well, you may be surprised because the subject is not what you would call fun, but… a list of glagolitic manuscripts, from the 10th to the 21st century. Out of lists we have to go to, of course, soccer. More specifically, the page dedicated to Dynamo Berlin. It may not be the most popular team in the world, but it is certainly the most dedicated. Try to read it: you won’t finish.

For its part, the longest biographical page, and without insults in between, is that of Boris Johnson (the way things are: there is a lot to cover in the time he was governing the United Kingdom). And the most visited article? Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia’s own, followed by Facebook and YouTube. In terms of people, Donald Trump and Elizabeth II, although the record is much sadder: on the day of his death, almost ten million people visited Chadwick Boseman’s profile.

A curiosity: the article with the longest name? It is a joke (but reality-based) scientific article entitled “Cneoridium dumosum (nuttall) collected by Hooker F. on March 26, 1960 at an elevation of about 1450 meters at Cerro Quemazon, 15 miles south of Bahia de Los Angeles, Baja California Mexico, Apparently for an extension to the southeast of about 140 miles.” Who said being a Wikipedia editor was easy?

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