“Wikipedia is resilient because it is boring” is a high-touch interactive feature about the current obstacles facing the future of the greatest sum of human knowledge ever collected. As authoritarianism creeps further into every facet of pre-existing democratic norms, bad faith actors accusing Wikipedia of liberal bias seek to undermine the inherently democratic (and bureaucratic) online encyclopedia. 


Josh Dzieza writes at length about the simple yet effective principles guiding Wikipedia, and their relentless reliance on pre-existing, objective sources for all information contained on Wikipedia, as well as the processes it has for resolving disputes between editors. At a time when many long-lived institutions and media organizations are being attacked from every angle, Wikipedia stays the course of being a reliable source of information on almost everything.

I designed this story intending to express both the ever helpful authority Wikipedia has come to represent as a source of reliable information, as well as the great universal subconscious of an ever expanding online project being fastidiously managed by tens of thousands of people across the world.

The opening motion graphics illustrate the conflict at the heart of this story: Bad faith accusations of “bias” and “wokeness” are hurled at Wikipedia in an attempt to weaken its credibility, but editors work diligently to correct this misinformation. The juxtaposition of the Neo-Classical design language combined with the frenetic layering of public domain images pulled from various Wiki articles nods to the both idiosyncratic and trustworthy nature of this faithfully enduring website, while providing necessary context in a pop-up with the style of Wikipedia itself. Bracketed drop-caps remind the reader that the sources have been cited, and the information is accurate, and pull-quotes boldly enunciate the main points. A wide variety of visual references to figures like Socrates, Hannah Arendt, and Leonardo DiCaprio (as well as Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi, the beetle named after him) creates a scattershot stream of online consciousness that echoes Wikipedia’s truth telling mission.  


Wikipedia is the Library of Alexandria of our time, and in an era where misinformation spreads like wildfire and strongmen seek to upend democratic civilization as we know it, we hope that drawing attention to the plight of Wikipedia will help keep the flames at bay.