Wikipedia

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Wikipedia

The logo of Wikipedia, a globe featuring glyphs from several writing systems
Expand
Screenshot
URL
wikipedia.org
Slogan
The Free Encyclopedia
Commercial?
No
Type of site
Internet encyclopedia
Registration
Optional, but needed to upload files, edit protected pages, or create pages in the
English Wikipedia.
Available language(s)
284 active editions (295 in total)
Users
65,000,000+ (total registered in all editions)[1]
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution/
Share-Alike 3.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL)
Media licensing varies
Owner
Wikimedia Foundation (non-profit)
Created by
Jimmy Wales (founder)
Larry Sanger (co-founder)
Launched
January 15, 2001; 18 years ago
Alexa rank
6 (August 2016)[2]
Current status
Active

Play media

A simple video explanation how Wikipedia contributes to free knowledge

Wikipedia (pronunciation (help�info)) is an Internet encyclopedia project in many
languages. Users do not pay to use it. It also one of the biggest wiki
organizations on the Internet. People can choose to donate to the Wikimedia
Foundation to fund Wikipedia and its sister projects. It is "open content". This
means anyone can copy it, and make changes to it if they follow the rules for
copying or editing.
Wikipedia is owned by an American organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, which is
in San Francisco, California.
Wikipedia's name is a portmanteau of two words, wiki and encyclopedia.[3]
Wikipedia was started on January 10, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger as part
of an earlier Internet encyclopedia named Nupedia. On January 15, 2001, Wikipedia
became a separate website of its own. It is a wiki that runs using the software
MediaWiki (like all other Wikimedia projects).
Anyone who wishes to, can change the pages in Wikipedia, or even make new ones.
Wikipedia has a standard page layout for all pages in the encyclopedia.
As of September 2011, Wikipedia had about 18 million pages in about 300 languages,
and more than 3.50 billion words across all Wikipedias. The regular English
Wikipedia is the largest.

Contents
1
History
2
10th anniversary
3
Using Wikipedia
4
Related pages
5
References
6
Other websites
History[change | change source]

Wikipedia originally developed from another encyclopedia project, Nupedia.

Wikipedia began as a related project for Nupedia. Nupedia was a free online
English-language encyclopedia project. Nupedia's articles were written and owned by
Bomis, Inc which is a web portal company. The main people of the company were Jimmy
Wales, the guy in charge of Bomis, and Larry Sanger, the editor-in-chief for
Nupedia. Nupedia was first licensed under the Nupedia Open Content License which
was changed to the GNU Free Documentation License before Wikipedia was founded when
Richard Stallman requested them.[4]

The Wikipedia Monument, October 2014

Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales are the ones who started Wikipedia.[5][6] Wales is
credited with defining the goals of the project.[7][8] Sanger created the strategy
of using a wiki to reach Wales' goal.[9] On January 10, 2001, Larry Sanger proposed
on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia.[10]
Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001. It was launched as an English-language
edition at www.wikipedia.com,[11] and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing
list.[7] Wikipedia's policy of "neutral point-of-view"[12] was codified in its
initial months, and was similar to Nupedia's earlier "nonbiased" policy. Otherwise,
there were not very many rules initially, and Wikipedia operated independently of
Nupedia.[7]
Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot, and also from search
engines. It grew to about 20,000 articles, and 18 languages by the end of 2001. By
late 2002 it had 26 languages, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the end of 2004.
[13] Nupedia and Wikipedia both existed until Nupedia's servers were stopped in
2003. After this, its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia
passed the 2 million-article mark on September 9, 2007, making it the largest
encyclopedia ever assembled, even larger than the Yongle Encyclopedia (1407), which
had held the record for exactly 600 years.[14]
The English Wikipedia reached 3 million articles in August 2009. The numbers of
articles and of contributors appeared to be growing less quickly around spring
2007.[15]
In October 2014, the Wikipedia Monument was unveiled to the public in Poland to
honor all the contributors of the Wikipedia.
10th anniversary[change | change source]

The logo used on the English Wikipedia on January 15, 2011

On January 15, 2011, Wikipedia celebrated its 10th anniversary. It used a special
logo (pictured) to celebrate its 10 years since it opened on January 15, 2001. The
logo was used for the whole day on the sidebar of English Wikipedia.
Using Wikipedia[change | change source]
Wikipedia is a free site just like the online encyclopedia that anybody can start
or edit a page. It is a global site that is available in many languages. While
people can use any searching engine, the Wikipedia page will come out in the first
results of many searches. To use Wikipedia better, people should understand the
basic function on the page. The page is organized while they are looking up the
page. As Wikipedia users, they should have good understanding of Wikipedia.
Did you know: Trivia from new articles.
In the news: News of the world.
On this day: Anniversaries.[16]
Current events: Not available at present.
Related pages[change | change source]
Simple English Wikipedia
Epistemic community
References[change | change source]
? Grand Total. Wikimedia.org. August 12, 2016. Retrieved August 12, 2016.
? "Wikipedia.org Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
? Andreas Kaplan, Haenlein Michael (2014) Collaborative projects (social media
application): About Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Business Horizons, Volume 57
Issue 5, pp.617-626
? Richard M. Stallman (2007-06-20). "The Free Encyclopedia Project". Free Software
Foundation. Retrieved 2008-01-04.
? Jonathan Sidener (2004-12-06). "Everyone's Encyclopedia". The San Diego Union-
Tribune. Retrieved 2006-10-15.
? Meyers, Peter (2001-09-20). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". New
York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2007-11-22. 'I can start an
article that will consist of one paragraph, and then a real expert will come along
and add three paragraphs and clean up my one paragraph,' said Larry Sanger of Las
Vegas, who founded Wikipedia with Mr. Wales.
?
Jump up to:
7.0 7.1 7.2 Sanger, Larry (April 18, 2005). "The Early History of Nupedia and
Wikipedia: A Memoir". Slashdot. Retrieved 2008-12-26.
? Sanger, Larry (January 17, 2001). "Wikipedia Is Up!". Internet Archive. Retrieved
2008-12-26.
? "Wikipedia-l: LinkBacks?". Retrieved 2007-02-20.
? Sanger, Larry (2001-01-10). "Let's Make a Wiki". Internet Archive. Archived from
the original on 2003-04-14. Retrieved 2008-12-26.
? "Wikipedia: HomePage". Archived from the original on 2001-03-31. Retrieved 2001-
03-31.
? "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia (January 21, 2007)
? ""Multilingual statistics". Wikipedia. March 30, 2005. Retrieved 2008-12-25.
? "Encyclopedias and Dictionaries". Encyclop�dia Britannica, 15th ed. 18.
Encyclop�dia Britannica. 2007. pp. 257�286.
? Bobbie Johnson. "Wikipedia approaches its limits".
? O' Neil, Mark (16 December 2014). "Everything You Need To Know About Wikipedia
And More". MakeUseOf. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
Other websites[change | change source]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia - multilingual portal (contains links to all language editions of the
project)
Wikipedia at the Open Directory Project
CBC News: I, editor
Wikipedia -Citizendium
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