In 2011, Raju Jangid from Jodhpur, then a student of Class VIII, searched the internet for information about Bollywood star Mithun Chakraborty, and landed on the actor’s page on Wikipedia, the largest free encyclopaedia in the world. Subsequently, he found that all his other searches pulled out a Wikipedia page.
“The site had information about any topic I searched. My interest increased, and I kept browsing the website to find whatever information was available on it,” he recalls.
Over the next few months, Raju looked up Wikipedia’s history, and learned more about page creators, contributors, editors, and the organisation at large. Owing to his poor financial condition, the village boy from Thadiya had no means to get a smartphone, and used a keypad handset for all his research.
“There are discussions among members on the website, and I started reaching out to community members to get answers to any queries I had. I learned that the platform is a non-profit, and the…