It doesn’t matter how many times our teachers and professors warn us against it, for most of us, Wikipedia is our go-to source for raw information on the internet. So when you’re looking up the history of The Kingdom of Aksum, figuring out who invented string, or just trying to find out who was that guy in that thing you saw that one time, finding out you can’t access the site is like opening your junk drawer and realizing your lucky screwdriver is missing.
The problem also raises a host of issues to worry about. Is this a problem with the Wiki-servers? Is it my ISP? Or, worst of all, is my computer/phone/tablet broken? Thankfully, there is a way to check on whether Wikipedia itself has fallen prey to an internet outage.
Occasionally you’ll luck out, and the site will straight-up tell you it isn’t working. If you go to Wikipedia and see, “Our servers are currently under maintenance or experiencing a technical problem.” then don’t panic. Just wait a while for the Wikipedia IT team to get in gear, and then you can get back to finding out exactly who did invent peanut butter.
However, if your device can’t even open the page up, you may have to play Internet detective. Thankfully, there are a number of sites you can use to check on Wikipedia’s status. Downdetector.com can be used for reports on a variety of popular sites such as Facebook, Discord, or Spotify. Just go to the site and click on the icon of the service you’re inquiring about or look it up directly with the search bar. You should be taken to a page that will show you how many users have reported a service problem and allow you to file your own report. A high amount of reports generally indicate that some sort of service interruption has occurred. UpdownRadar.com is another site for this purpose because what if Downdetector.com is down?
Unfortunately, if the service appears to be functioning, that may mean a problem close to your end of things. You should definitely check the status of your wi-fi as well as check to see if your provider is experiencing outages via cell service or another computer.
Sadly, if none of these methods tell you that you are experiencing server issues or service outages…it may just be time to invest in some new equipment.