The edit wire · Wikipedia, read live
Every edit.
As it lands.
Somebody, somewhere, is editing Wikipedia right now — this page shows you. It holds Wikimedia’s own event stream open and draws an oscilloscope across sixteen language editions: one band per wiki, one spark per edit, each spark sized by the bytes it moved. Edits made by people are drawn in ink; edits made by bots — and there are a great many — are drawn dimmer, so the machine hum and the human signal read as two different things on the same trace.
Below the trace sits the desk: the same firehose with the names left on — which article, which account or passing stranger, how many bytes, on which of the hundreds of Wikimedia projects — with the session’s busiest pages surfacing quietly as they are fought over. And under that, the record: the most-read articles for any day you pick, back to the last day of 2015. No key, no account, no server in the middle.
16 editions on the trace · every project on the desk · humans in ink, bots dimmer · the reading record back to 2015-12-31
The scope
Sixteen wikis on one trace.
The last sixty seconds of Wikipedia, drawn as they happen. Each band is a language edition; each vertical spark is one edit, taller the more bytes it changed. The dim sparks are bots — the stream marks them itself. Press a chip to drop a band or bring it back; the choice is remembered in this browser.
The wire
waiting for the stream
Not connected yet.
The desk
The firehose, named.
The same stream with the names left on — every Wikimedia project this time, not just the sixteen on the trace. Who edited what, how many bytes it moved, which pages are being fought over right now. Titles link to the pages themselves.
Named wire
waiting for the stream
Counters start when you open the page — this is a live wire, not an archive. *an edit whose own summary says revert/undo — a heuristic, said as one.
Fought over — Wikipedias, last 15 minutes
Pages edited three or more times inside a quarter hour surface here.
Largest edits this session
The biggest byte-movers land here as they happen.
Where it’s happening
Most read
What the world was reading.
The most-read articles on English Wikipedia for the day you choose, with the view counts the Wikimedia Feed API itself reports. The archive answers back to 31 December 2015 and not a day earlier — the picker stops where the data does. A day’s count is final only after the day ends, so the freshest list is yesterday’s.
The record
not read yet
Pick a day and the list fills in.
A link to this page carries the chosen day with it, and unfurls as that day.
About
A wire, not a summary.
Everything live on this page reads Wikimedia’s
EventStreams service — the public server-sent-events
firehose at stream.wikimedia.org that broadcasts every
change to every Wikimedia wiki as it is saved. One stream feeds both
instruments: the scope keeps the sixteen chosen Wikipedias and draws
them; the desk keeps everything and names it. A spark’s height
is the difference between the page’s old and new length in
bytes, on a log scale; an edit the stream carries no length for is
drawn at the minimum height rather than invented.
Bots are drawn dimmer and counted separately because the stream flags
them itself (bot: true) — the wiki’s own register.
A “stranger” is an edit signed by a bare IP address rather
than an account. The revert figure counts edits whose own summaries
say revert or undo — a heuristic, labelled as one on the desk. When
this tab is hidden the stream is closed, not buffered, and reopened
when you return: session counters carry on from where they stood, and
the stamp under the wire says when counting began.
The reading list is the Wikimedia Feed API’s own most-read table, not a scrape: title, views and extract arrive exactly as the API states them. Its archive begins at the last day of 2015 — requests for earlier days return nothing, so the picker refuses them rather than pretending. What either source does not say, this page does not invent. Your chosen wikis are remembered in this browser and nowhere else; nothing about you is sent anywhere.