Wikipedia gets big numbers on dark day

A big day for Wikipedia yesterday, considering that it had only two articles posted (normally it has over 20). The site posted an update on how the whole thing went and two big numbers jump out pretty quickly:

– More than 162 million saw the Wikipedia blackout page.

– More than eight million looked up their elected representatives’ contact information via the Wikipedia tool.

Also, a lot of people signed a petition at Google. The Los Angeles Times quotes Google as saying 4.5 million people signed on yesterday to oppose SOPA. Google also says that prior to yesterday, 3 million people had signed various petitions on various sites to oppose the measure, so Google alone topped that by half in one day. Do online petitions actually DO anything? I really, really doubt it, it always seems like an empty gesture to me, but it’s a pretty good metric for measuring engagement on an issue.