Read this: An oral history of Wikipedia's rise to public knowledge dominance

Much like the internet itself, it’s somewhat hard to envision a modern world without Wikipedia. Originally seen as an extremely unreliable free-for-all of information both cited and spurious, today it exists as one of the go-to digital spaces for encyclopedic knowledge (and procrastination). While far from perfect, it remains invaluable to millions of armchair scholars, curious minds, and kids trying to weasel their way out of looming essay deadlines. Today, OneZero published a massive oral history of Wikipedia in honor of its 20th anniversary this week, and it’s nearly as far-reaching and complex as the site itself.

The piece is filled with all kinds of (rigorously fact-checked) info, from the origins of Wikipedia’s name—“wiki” is the Hawaiian word for “quick”—to the surprisingly nuanced, class-based battle that took place between the open source repository we all know so well and something called “Nupedia,” which, while far more reliable, operated at a snail’s pace compared to Wikipedia’s, well, wiki-ness.