Five facts Wikipedia got right

Tsunami

The site was commended for its real-time live coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, utilising eyewitnesses on the ground to report breaking news where there were no professional journalists

Helping out a rival

Wikipedia has a page dedicated to corrections for its chief online competitor the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The page states: “These examples can serve as useful reminders of the fact that no encyclopedia can ever expect to be perfectly error-free (which is sometimes forgotten especially when Wikipedia is compared to traditional encyclopedias)

Obama’s night of triumph

When major news breaks, Wikipedia resembles a news site, used by many to keep abreast of the latest events. For example, Wikipedia beat many major news networks in announcing Barack Obama, as the winner of last November’s US presidential election. The site was updated on 11.03 of election night. In the hour after the election was called Mr Obama’s page was visited 300,000 times, and on the next day alone there were 2.5 million page views of the article

Just keeping quiet

After David Rohde, a New York Times journalist, was kidnapped in Afghanistan last year, Wikipedia’s administrators kept the news secret for months following fears that he might be killed by his captors if the story was publicised. Every time an editor added the news of the kidnapping, it was quickly erased. Mr Rohde survived, after escaping in June this year

Golden numbers

McDonald's signs once had only one golden arch