Nothing. There is no advertising, no paid tier and no reselling of addresses.

Where do the articles come from?

Wikipedia only, and there only from articles promoted to Featured or Exzellent. Article text is CC BY-SA; every email links the original.

Will I get the same article twice?

No. Every delivery is recorded, and an article cannot be assigned to the same person again.

Who writes the short copy?

A language model, working from the Wikipedia extract. The copy is checked before sending and discarded if it looks wrong. The article itself is always the work of Wikipedia editors.

How do I unsubscribe?

Through the link in every email, in one click. You can also have your data erased entirely from there.

No. We store your address, your settings and which articles you have received. Postmark handles delivery. There is no open or click tracking in the emails.

Can I switch language?

Yes, any time in your settings. Articles then come from the other Wikipedia — a fresh supply.

What happens when my topics run out?

You get a note suggesting you widen your selection. Until then we draw from outside your topics, and the email says so.

How it works

A newsletter is easy to build. The question it actually lives or dies on is a different one: which article arrives tomorrow? So here is how the choice is made.

Hand-vetted, not random

Wikipedia has a random button and it is useless for this. A large share of its seven million articles are village stubs, beetle species and lower-league footballer biographies — you would hit something worth reading about one day in five.

But Wikipedia also keeps lists of articles its own editors have reviewed and promoted: "Featured" in English, "Exzellent" in German. Morgenwunder draws only from those. That is roughly 10,000 articles across both languages — over eight years of daily mail, at a far higher bar.

The topic first, then the article

Featured coverage reflects which Wikipedia projects are most active, not the shape of human knowledge. In English, military history, tropical cyclones, video games and albums are heavily overrepresented: "Music, film and writing" accounts for 24 per cent of the pool, "War and conflict" for 17.

Drawing uniformly across articles would bury everything else under battleships and album reviews. So one of your topics is drawn first, and only then an article inside it. A topic holding 800 articles competes on equal footing with one holding twelve. Recently seen topics are damped as well, so runs of one subject break up.

Never the same one twice

What you have received, you will not receive again. That is not a rule in the code but a constraint in the database — there is no path that can bypass it by accident. If your chosen topics do eventually run dry, we tell you, and until you widen them we reach outside.

Difficult subjects stay out

A vetted pool is not a gentle pool. Featured articles cover genocides, famines, serial killings and graphic medical subjects — superb writing, and entirely wrong as the thing that arrives at seven in the morning. Every article is therefore also judged on whether its centre of gravity is atrocity and suffering. Those are excluded by default; you can opt into them in your settings.

And the copy with it

Each article comes with three things: one line that carries the point, three or four sentences on why it deserves your five minutes, and one unexpected fact. Deliberately not a summary — the article is one click away, and retelling it would waste the space. This copy is written by a language model from the Wikipedia extract, generated a day ahead of sending. So if the model is ever unreachable, your mail still goes out.

What you set

Topics, the hour on the half hour, your time zone and the language. The language decides which Wikipedia the articles come from. All of it is changeable through the link in every email — no password, no account.

Common questions

What does it cost?: Nothing. There is no advertising, no paid tier and no reselling of addresses.
Where do the articles come from?: Wikipedia only, and there only from articles promoted to Featured or Exzellent. Article text is CC BY-SA; every email links the original.
Will I get the same article twice?: No. Every delivery is recorded, and an article cannot be assigned to the same person again.
Who writes the short copy?: A language model, working from the Wikipedia extract. The copy is checked before sending and discarded if it looks wrong. The article itself is always the work of Wikipedia editors.
How do I unsubscribe?: Through the link in every email, in one click. You can also have your data erased entirely from there.
Is my data shared?: No. We store your address, your settings and which articles you have received. Postmark handles delivery. There is no open or click tracking in the emails.
Can I switch language?: Yes, any time in your settings. Articles then come from the other Wikipedia — a fresh supply.
What happens when my topics run out?: You get a note suggesting you widen your selection. Until then we draw from outside your topics, and the email says so.