Volunteers and new recruits come together for ‘wikithon’ to put more detail about industry into public domain

“Anyone can edit Wikipedia,” the adage goes. But, it turns out, a relatively small number actually do.

What is worthy of a digital page in the world’s largest and most-read encyclopedia is decided by roughly 270,000 active volunteers, enthusiasts who populate the online resource with information on anything from 19th-century medicine to TikTok trends. Inevitably, some subjects are sidelined – the global south, notable women – but a new batch of Wikipedian recruits are waging war on one neglected topic: the arms industry.

Last week, in a classroom in central London, two dozen volunteers huddled around laptops and free servings of vegan Ethiopian food for what is known as a “wikithon”, an event of collective and in-person Wikipedia editing. Some were veteran editors in their 70s, others young students who had never registered an account before. But their targets include subjects such as Palantir, Project Maven and Nitro-Chem.

Adriana Retyte took her own life after viewing ‘high-risk’ material on the video-sharing platform TikTok

A 14-year-old schoolgirl’s death after TikTok served her suicide content has prompted renewed calls for UK watchdogs to crack down on “toxic” social media feeds.

Adriana Retyte, a pupil at Langley school in Norfolk, took her own life after she viewed videos and images related to suicide on the video-sharing platform, according to a coroner who last week found her access to the material on TikTok “may have played a significant part in her decision to take her life”.