Wikipedia looks back on 2014 in its first ever annual video

By Trevor Mogg Published December 18, 2014

Wikipedia on Wednesday followed in the footsteps of other major online services and rolled out its first video looking back over the events of the preceding 12 months.

Titled ‘What did we edit in 2014?’, the three-minute video races through a selection of Wikipedia pages created or updated over the last year. News junkies will have little trouble recognizing the majority of the events appearing in the piece, though no doubt most will find one or two surprises along the way.

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Created by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and edited by long-time Wikipedia contributor Victor Grigas, the video invites viewers to “revisit what you read and edited, from the FIFA World Cup to the Indian general elections, and the Ice Bucket Challenge to Ebola in West Africa.”

The foundation said the video was put together “on a shoestring budget,” adding that ultimately it’s a celebration of all the effort that goes into building and maintaining the online encyclopedia.

Longtime Wikipedia contributor Victor Grigas edited the piece over a couple of months using freely licensed photos and videos uploaded by the global Wikipedia community.

Katherine Maher, chief communications officer for the Wikimedia Foundation, described Wikipedia as “the largest collaborative knowledge project in human history…made possible by even the tiniest of contributions from people around the world,” and invited everyone to enjoy the video, rediscovering 2014 in the process.

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