FAQ
Quick answers to the questions we hear most. Each links to a fuller page if you want the whole story.
Is Wilkipedia affiliated with Wikipedia?
No. Wilkipedia is an independent, tongue-in-cheek project with no connection to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation. See about Wilkipedia.
What is the Mandela effect?
The phenomenon of large groups sharing the same vivid false memory — named for the many people who 'remember' Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, when he was actually released in 1990 and died in 2013. See the Mandela effect.
What is an AI hallucination?
When an AI system states something false or invented with total confidence — from fabricated citations to made-up statistics. See AI hallucinations.
How do you decide what counts as a genuine misconception?
We only publish a correction backed by well-established, widely corroborated evidence — peer-reviewed research, documented records, or scientific consensus. If we're not confident, we leave it out. See our standards.
Why does misremembering happen to whole groups of people at once?
Because memory is reconstructive rather than recorded, and people fill gaps the same predictable ways — with what 'should' be true. See how false memories form.
How can I tell if something I'm reading is true?
Read laterally: check what independent sources say before trusting a single page, verify the date, and be extra suspicious of specific numbers and quotes. See spotting fakes and media literacy.
Are any myths on this site about animals, food or space?
Yes — we split those into dedicated pages: animal myths, food & nutrition myths, and space myths.
Why is the site called 'Wilkipedia' instead of something unrelated to Wikipedia?
It's a deliberate, self-aware wink: the name itself is easy to misremember or misspell, which is exactly the kind of everyday mix-up the site is about. See about.
Can a chatbot's confident answer just be trusted?
No — fluency and accuracy are different things for AI the same way they are for human memory. Always verify anything that matters. See AI hallucinations.
Do you cover health and medical misconceptions?
Yes, carefully — including the vaccine-autism myth and antibiotics vs. viruses, always sourced to established medical consensus. See body & health myths. This isn't medical advice; consult a professional for anything that matters.