The end of [[revision]] history comes from a deep fascination with how knowledge has been constructed and understood in the 21st century. Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has been invaluable not only because of its open access to writing histories, but also for the way it preserves the changes and conversations around its articles. Within Wikipedia, knowledge is always unfixed and contested.
Reports of Wikipedia’s demise have circulated for many years, due to an imbalance of labour, a lack of authorial expertise and inherent biases, as well as the rise of AI editors. Further issues emerge from inconsistencies across different language versions. Recently, a libertarian far right tech entrepreneur extracted Wikipedia’s user generated content and used his AI platform to create an alternative, attempting to counter what he perceived as a “liberal woke mindset.” The platform emphasises simplicity, but what becomes lost is the knowledge encoded in revisions, changes, subjective interpretations, and publicly contestable reference points—elements that fundamentally shape how we see the world.
This website acts as a cross between an artwork and a tool. Load an article (it can load any article but those will a lot of edits take a long time to open and saving those json files can still cause issues).