Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia with the motive to allow anyone modify articles. Wikipedia is the most popular and largest general reference work on the internet. It is ranked among the ten most popular sites on the internet. Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization owns the website.
Wikipedia | www.wikipedia.org
On the 15th January, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales launched Wikipedia. The website got it name from a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia. Initially, only the English language version was available. But later, a quick development of similar versions in other languages was made available. Though the similar versions of other languages were different in editing practices and content.
With 5,464,643 articles, the English Wikipedia is the largest of more than 290 Wikipedia encyclopedias. Totally, the website consists of over 40 million articles written in over 250 languages. The website had nearly 500 million unique visitors each month and 18 billion page views as of February 2014.
The website has about 40,000 high-quality articles known as Good Articles and Featured Articles that cover important topics as of March 2017. Nature published a peer review comparing 42 science based articles from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica and saw that the website’s level of accuracy met that of Encyclopedia Britannica. This was in 2005.
Laws and policies of Wikipedia
The contents in the platform are subject to the laws (in particular, copyright laws) of the U.S. state of Virginia and the United States of America. This is where the majority of the website’s servers are located. Beyond legal issues, the editorial principles of the website are represented in the “five pillars” and in many guidelines and policies intended to suitably shape contents.
These rules are stored in wiki form, and the site’s editors write and revise the site’s guidelines and policies. Editors can implement these rules by modifying or deleting inappropriate materials.
Content guidelines and policies of Wikipedia
Based on the rules of the website, every article must be about a topic that is not a dictionary entry but encyclopedic. An article should also meet the site’s standards of “notability”. This means that the article must be covered in major academic journal sources or mainstream media that are free of the article’s subject.
Furthermore, the site tends to impart only knowledge that is already recognized and established. It does not present initial research. Although, a claim that is likely to be questioned requires a reference to a reliable source.
Among the editors, this is often referred to as “verifiability”, not “truth” to convey the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are totally responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles. The readers are also responsible for their own interpretations. This sometimes leads to the removal of valid information.
Lastly, the website must be neutral. All viewpoints and opinions, if attributed to external sources, must have a suitable share of coverage within an article. This is referred to as the Neutral Point of View (NPOV).
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia is written by many anonymous volunteers who write without pay. Users can write anonymously, fictitiously, or with their real identity. This is solely their choice. Anyone with access to the internet can make changes to Wikipedia articles or write articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to avoid vandalism or disruption.
Writers’ Credits
Articles on the website is a cooperative work, and the efforts of individual writers or contributors to a page are written in that page’s history, which is open for public view. Information on the authorship of images and other media, like sound files, can be seen by clicking on the nearby information icon or on the image itself to display the file page which includes the author and source, where suitable, alongside other information.
English Wikipedia Español and other Language
The English Wikipedia is the English-language version of the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. It is the first edition of the website and it was founded on the 15th of January 2001. The English edition has the most articles of any of the editions as of June 2017. 12% of the articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English language edition. This was discovered in August 2017.
The combined text of the English Wikipedia’s articles totaled 11.5 gigabytes when compressed in October 2015. On the 1st of November 2015, the English Wikipedia announced that it had reached 5,000,000 articles. It ran a special logo to represent the achievement.
Non-English readers can change their Wikipedia language to Español or any other language of their choice.
Wikipedia’s Profile
- Name: Wikipedia
- Owner: Wikimedia Foundation
- Created by: Larry Sanger, Jimmy Wales
- Launched: 15th January 2001
- Slogan(s): The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit
- Type of site: Online encyclopedia
- Available in: 295 languages
- Commercial: No
- Registration: Optional
- Users: 269,511 active users and 69,895,750 registered users
- Current status: Active
- Alexa ranking: 5 (Global, July 2017)
- Written in: LAMP platform
- Website: wikipedia.org
For more information, go to wikipedia.org
