Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based free content encyclopedia project. The name Wikipedia is a blend of the words wiki and encyclopedia. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by almost anyone with access to the website. Wikipedia's main servers are in Tampa, Florida, with additional servers in Amsterdam and Seoul.Wikipedia was launched as an English language project on January 15, 2001 as a complement to the expert-written and now defunct Nupedia, and is now operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. It was created by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales; Sanger resigned from both Nupedia and Wikipedia on March 1, 2002. Wales has described Wikipedia as "an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."[1]
Currently Wikipedia has more than 5 million articles in many languages, including more than 1.4 million in the English-language version. There are 250 language editions of Wikipedia, and 17 of them have more than 50, 000 articles each. The German-language edition has been distributed on DVD-ROM, and there have been proposals for an English DVD or print edition. Since inception, Wikipedia has steadily risen in popularity, [2] and has spawned several sister projects. According to Alexa, Wikipedia ranks among the top 20 most visited sites, and many of its pages have been mirrored or forked by other sites, such as Answers.com.
There has been controversy over Wikipedia's reliability and accuracy, with the site receiving criticism for its susceptibility to vandalism, uneven quality and inconsistency, systemic bias, and preference for consensus or popularity over credentials. Information is sometimes unconfirmed and questionable, lacking proper sources that, in the eyes of most Wikipedians, is necessary for an article to be considered 'high quality'. However, a 2005 comparison performed by the science journal Nature of sections of Wikipedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica found that the two were close in terms of the accuracy of their articles on the natural sciences. This study was challenged by Encyclopædia Britannica, who described it as "fatally flawed."[3]
Contents
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* 1 Characteristics
o 1.1 Free content
o 1.2 Language editions
o 1.3 Editing
o 1.4 Wikipedia in other formats
* 2 History
* 3 Software and hardware
* 4 Funding
* 5 Authorship and management process
o 5.1 Future directions for authoring content
* 6 Criticism and controversy
o 6.1 The Wikipedia model
o 6.2 Reliability
+ 6.2.1 Accuracy and comprehensiveness
+ 6.2.2 Coverage
o 6.3 Community
o 6.4 Network reliability
o 6.5 Responses to criticisms
* 7 Awards
* 8 In popular culture
* 9 See also
* 10 References
* 11 Further reading
* 12 External links
[edit] Characteristics
Wikipedia uses a type of software called a "wiki", allowing visitors to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change its content. It is therefore possible for large numbers of people to create articles and update them quickly as new information becomes available; it also means vandalism and disagreement about content are common.
Many other internet encyclopedia projects use traditional multilingual editorial policies and article ownership such as the expert-written Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Nupedia, h2g2 and Everything2. Projects such as Susning.nu, Enciclopedia Libre and WikiZnanie are other wikis in which articles are developed by numerous authors, and there is no formal process of review. Unlike many encyclopedias, Wikipedia has licensed its content under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).
Wikipedia has a set of policies identifying types of information appropriate for inclusion. These policies are often cited in disputes over whether particular content should be added, revised, transferred to a sister project, or removed. One of Wikipedia's core policies is that articles must be written from a "neutral point of view", presenting all noteworthy perspectives on an issue along with the evidence supporting them. The project also forbids the use of original research. Wikipedia articles do not attempt to determine an objective truth on their subjects, but rather to describe them impartially from all significant viewpoints. Following the introduction of a more user friendly citation functionality (cite.php, early 2006), articles increasingly include an extensive reference section to support the information presented in the article and to allow verification of the article.
[edit] Free content
The GFDL, the license through which Wikipedia's articles are made available, is one of many "copyleft" licenses that permit the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content, provided that its authors are attributed and this content remains available under the GFDL. When an author contributes original material to the project, the copyright over it is retained by them, but they agree to make the work available under the GFDL. However, a significant proportion of images and sounds on Wikipedia are not free. Items such as corporate logos, song samples, or copyrighted news photos are used with a claim of fair use.
Wikipedia's content has been reflected and forked by hundreds of resources from database dumps. Wikipedia content has also been used in academic studies, books and conferences, albeit more rarely, and very recently, in movies. Wikipedia was once used in a United States court case, [4] and the Parliament of Canada website refers to Wikipedia's article on same-sex marriage in the "further reading" list of Civil Marriage Act.[5] Some Wikipedia users, or Wikipedians, maintain (noncomprehensive) lists of such uses.[6]
[edit] Language editions
An example of Wikipedia's range in language editions: Wikipedia in Hebrew.
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An example of Wikipedia's range in language editions: Wikipedia in Hebrew.[7]
Currently Wikipedia encompasses 171 "active" language editions (ones with 100+ articles).[8] In total, Wikipedia contains 250 language editions of varying states, with a combined 5 million articles.[9]
Language editions operate independently from one another. Editions are not bound to the content of other language editions, nor are articles on the same subject required to be translations of each other. Automated translation of articles is explicitly disallowed, though multilingual editors of sufficient fluency are encouraged to manually translate articles. The various language editions are held to global policies such as "neutral point of view", though they may diverge on subtler points of policy and practice. Articles and images are shared between Wikipedia editions, the former through "InterWiki" links and pages to request translations, and the latter through the Wikimedia Commons repository. Translated articles represent only a small portion of articles in most editions.[10]
Wikipedia's article count has shown rapid growth in some of the major language editions.
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Wikipedia's article count has shown rapid growth in some of the major language editions.
According to Alexa Internet's audience measurement service, the English sub-domain (en.wikipedia.org) receives approximately 60% of Wikipedia's cumulative traffic, with the remaining 40% being splintered between the numerous other languages in which Wikipedia is offered.
The following is a list of the largest editions — those containing over 100, 000 articles — sorted by number of articles as of October 9, 2006.[11][9]
1. English (1, 461, 297)
2. German (488, 792)
3. French (385, 703)
4. Polish (310, 527)
5. Japanese (279, 572)
6. Dutch (236 766)
7. Italian (210, 184)
8. Portuguese (192, 345)
9. Swedish (190, 698)
10. Spanish (165, 930)
11. Russian (110, 066)
[edit] Editing
Editors keep track of changes to articles by checking the difference between two revisions of a page, displayed here in red.
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Editors keep track of changes to articles by checking the difference between two revisions of a page, displayed here in red.
Almost all visitors may edit Wikipedia's content: registered users can also create new articles. Changes made to pages are instantly displayed. Wikipedia is built on the expectation that collaboration among users will improve articles over time, in much the same way that open-source software develops. Some of Wikipedia's editors have explained its editing process as a "socially Darwinian evolutionary process".[12]
Some take advantage of Wikipedia's openness to add nonsense to the encyclopedia. This real-time, collaborative model allows editors to rapidly update existing topics as they develop and to introduce new ones as they arise. However, this collaboration also sometimes leads to "edit wars" and prolonged disputes when editors do not agree.[13]
The "recent changes" page shows the newest edits to the English Wikipedia. This page is often watched by users who revert vandalism. There is also a live recent changes IRC channel, #en.wikipedia @ irc.wikimedia.org.
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The "recent changes" page shows the newest edits to the English Wikipedia. This page is often watched by users who revert vandalism. There is also a live recent changes IRC channel, #en.wikipedia @ irc.wikimedia.org.
Articles are always subject to editing, unless the article is protected for a short time due to the aforementioned vandalism or revert wars. Wikipedia does not declare any of its articles to be "complete" or "finished". The authors of articles need not have any expertise or qualifications in the subjects that they edit, and users are warned that their contributions may be "edited mercilessly and redistributed at will" by anyone who wishes to do so. Its articles are not controlled or copyrighted by any particular user or editorial group; decisions on the content and editorial policies of Wikipedia are instead made largely through consensus decision-making and, occasionally, by vote. Jimmy Wales retains final judgement on Wikipedia policies and user guidelines.[14]
Regular users often maintain a "watchlist" of articles of interest to them, so that they can easily keep tabs on all recent changes to those articles, including new updates, discussions, and vandalism. Most past edits to Wikipedia articles also remain viewable after the fact, and are stored on "edit history" pages sorted chronologically, making it possible to see former versions of any page at any time. The only exceptions are the entire histories of articles that have been deleted, and many individual edits that contain libelous statements, copyright violations, and other content that could incur legal liability or be otherwise detrimental to Wikipedia. These edits may only be viewed by Wikipedia administrators.
[edit] Wikipedia in other formats
For some articles there is a spoken version available in ogg format. The encyclopedia is also available on a CD from SOS Children, and an editorial team is working on creating Wikipedia 1.0, a collection of Wikipedia articles that have been verified, ready for printing or burning to CD.
Published copies of selected Wikipedia articles are also available from PediaPress, a Print on Demand service.
[edit] History
Main article: History of Wikipedia
Wikipedia originally developed out of another encyclopedia project, Nupedia.
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Wikipedia originally developed out of another encyclopedia project, Nupedia.
Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia co-founder and current head of the Wikimedia Foundation
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Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia co-founder and current head of the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikipedia concept was not novel — Everything2 (in 1998-1999) had used similar ideas before Wikipedia was founded — and Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts through a formal process. Nupedia was founded on March 9, 2000 under the ownership of Bomis, Inc, a Web portal company. Its principal figures were Jimmy Wales, Bomis CEO, and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. Nupedia was described by Sanger as differing from existing encyclopedias in being open content, in not having size limitations, due to being on the Internet, and in being free of bias, due to its public nature and potentially broad base of contributors.[15] Nupedia had a seven-step review process by appointed subject-area experts, but later came to be viewed as too slow for producing a limited number of articles. Funded by Bomis, there were initial plans to recoup its investment by the use of advertisements.[15] It was initially licensed under its own Nupedia Open Content License, switching to the GFDL before Wikipedia's founding at the urging of Richard Stallman.
On January 10, 2001, Larry Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki alongside Nupedia. Under the subject "Let's make a wiki", he wrote:[16]
Wikipedia
No, this is not an indecent proposal. It's an idea to add a little feature to Nupedia. Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not. (…) As to Nupedia's use of a wiki, this is the ULTIMATE "open" and simple format for developing content. We have occasionally bandied about ideas for simpler, more open projects to either replace or supplement Nupedia. It seems to me wikis can be implemented practically instantly, need very little maintenance, and in general are very low-risk. They're also a potentially great source for content. So there's little downside, as far as I can determine.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia was formally launched on January 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition at http://www.wikipedia.com/, and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list.[17] It had been, from January 10, a feature of Nupedia.com in which the public could write articles that could be incorporated into Nupedia after review. It was relaunched off-site after Nupedia's Advisory Board of subject experts disapproved of its production model.[18] Wikipedia thereafter operated as a standalone project without control from Nupedia. Its policy of "neutral point-of-view" was codified in its initial months, though it is similar to Nupedia's earlier "nonbias" policy. There were otherwise few rules initially. Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and search engine indexing. It grew to approximately 20, 000 articles, and 18 language editions, by the end of its first year. It had 26 language editions by the end of 2002, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the end of 2004.[19] Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former's servers went down, permanently, in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia.
Wikipedia's English edition on March 30, 2001, two and a half months after its founding.
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Wikipedia's English edition on March 30, 2001, two and a half months after its founding.
Wales and Sanger attribute the concept of using a wiki to Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb or Portland Pattern Repository. Wales mentioned that he heard the concept first from Jeremy Rosenfeld, an employee of Bomis who showed him the same wiki, in December 2000, [20] but it was after Sanger heard of its existence in January 2001 from Ben Kovitz, a regular at the wiki, [18] that he proposed the creation of a wiki for Nupedia to Wales and Wikipedia's history started. Under a similar concept of free content, though not wiki-based production, the GNUpedia project existed alongside Nupedia early in its history. It subsequently became inactive, and its creator, free-software figure Richard Stallman, lent his support to Wikipedia.[21]
Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control in a perceived English-centric Wikipedia, users of the Spanish Wikipedia forked from Wikipedia to create the Enciclopedia Libre in February 2002. Later that year, Wales announced that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and its website was moved to wikipedia.org. Various other projects have since forked from Wikipedia for editorial reasons, such as Wikinfo, which abandoned "neutral point-of-view" in favor of multiple complementary articles written from a "sympathetic point-of-view".[22]
