A daily dose of historical trivia, only on the Wikipedia Android app!
Every day brings a brand-new round of Which came first? a quick and fun trivia challenge based on real events that happened on this day in history.
You’ll be shown two historical events, and your job is to guess which one happened earlier. Get it right and you earn a point. Each game includes 5 questions, and at the end, you’ll see your total score along with handy links to explore each event further on Wikipedia.
Whether you’re a history buff or just enjoy a quick brain boost, this game is a great way to learn something new every day.
After 21st of May, 2025 the game will be available as a part of an A/B test in the scaling languages: English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish.
Each day, the Wikipedia Trivia Game pulls real historical events from the "On This Day" pages on Wikipedia in each language.
The questions are then randomly paired, and you get to guess which event came first. Since the game uses local Wikipedia content, the questions reflect each language’s unique historical and cultural perspective.
That means the experience may vary depending on the language you’re playing in, and that’s part of what makes it interesting!
In September 2024 the team participated in a Sprinthackular which was designed to create proof of concept for product ideas and get feedback from real users about the feasibility of the concept.
The Android team created a proof of concept for a Trivia game.
The usability testing insights were positive enough for us to build out the game and offer it in the app permanently.
Additionally, the Annual Plan has includes an objective to increase retention of logged out users, and we believe games could be an engaging way to retain readers and knowledge lovers.
This work is a part of the 2024-2025 Annual Plan Wiki Experiences 3.1 work.
A new generation of consumers arrives at Wikipedia to discover a preferred destination for discovering, engaging, and building encyclopedic content.
Release two curated, accessible, and community-driven browsing and learning experiences to representative wikis, with the goal of increasing the logged-out reader retention of experience users by 5%.
If we create a daily-use Wikipedia-based trivia game in the Android app, logged-out readers who engage with this feature will open the app on multiple days within a 20-day period at a rate at least 5% higher than those who do not engage with the feature.
To evaluate the impact of the Which came first? trivia game on user behavior, we ran a 20-day A/B test with logged-out users on the Wikipedia Android app. The goal was to assess whether the game could improve user retention and engagement.
Key Results Overview[edit]Retention (KR1): We did not observe an increase in app retention among logged-out users who saw and played the game. In fact, game group users returned at a 1.3% lower rate than the control group.
Game Start & Completion (KR2): 11.7% of users who saw the game prompt started a game, and 71.4% of those who started completed it within the same session, exceeding the original 40% completion goal.
In-Game Engagement (KR3): 10.0% of users who played the game either shared their score, read an article, or added an article to their reading list, surpassing the 5% target.
Game-Driven Installs (KR4): The game led to 169 app install events through shared game links, exceeding the minimum target of 10 installs.
Funnel & Engagement Insights[edit]Drop-off Analysis: Most user drop-off occurred on the first slide of the game (63.6%), suggesting that once users engage with the first question, they are highly likely to complete the session.
Repeat Play Behavior: Around 25% of users returned to play the game more than once.
Account Creation: The game prompted the creation of 1,526 new app accounts during the experiment window.
Logged-In vs Logged-Out: Logged-in users had lower retention (-1.2%) than the logged-in control group, but showed much higher engagement:
A survey conducted with game players showed:
Q: Where do the events come from?
A: All the events are real and sourced from each language Wikipedia’s "Days of the year" pages. They’re curated from history and matched by date—so if you're playing on May 14, all events happened on a past May 14.
Q: How is my score saved?
A: Your score and history are saved locally on your device. They are not tied to your Wikipedia account or shared with anyone.
Q: Can I play past or future games?
A: Once you’ve played today’s game you can access the game archive from the results page which will give you access to past games. Past games may be slightly different than they appeared on the day they were first published to account for updates to the Wikipedia page related to the day of the year.
Q: Can I share my score?
A: Yes! You’ll have the option to share your score at the end of each game.
Q: Do I need to sign in to play?
A: Nope! No login required—just open the app and start playing.
Q: Which languages is the game available in?
A: The game is currently available in English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish.
We’d love to hear what you think! Tap on the ‘Discussion’ tab at the top of this page to tell us what you liked or what could be better.
We're also exploring more Wikipedia-based games, so let us know what kinds of daily challenges you'd like to see next.
Curious about what else we’re experimenting with? Visit Wiki_WIP to explore in-progress ideas.
Weekly updates can be found on our main updates page.
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