Happy 20th birthday, Wikipedia, and I apologize for being rough on you when you were a child. The online site, which presents information on a seemingly infinite amount of subjects in more than 300 languages, launched in January 2001. It was billed initially as an encyclopedia âanyone can edit.â At the time, I thought that was one of the dumbest ideas I had ever heard. âAnyoneâ in theory means âeveryoneâ and while I donât know everyone, I know quite a few people who should not be editing an encyclopedia. To prove my point, I wrote a snarky column in which I chronicled creating my own biography on Wikipedia, one in which I was born in a log cabin I built myself, achieved war hero status, earned several Olympic medals and rose to the top of the political world.