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    * Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process.(More...)

* Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process.(More...)

 

 

Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. [2] Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, once argued that only "a community. a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" makes a bulk of contributions to Wikipedia and that the project is therefore "much like any traditional organization". This was later disputed by Aaron Swartz, who noted that several articles he sampled had large portion of their content contributed by a user with low edit count. [2] Much of the coordination of the editing of Wikipedia takes place on the "Talk" pages associated with each individual article. As Wikipedia grows with an unconventional model of encyclopedia building, "Who writes Wikipedia?" has become one of the questions frequently asked on the project, often with a reference to other Web 2.0 projects such as Digg. [2] The "History" page attached to each article contains every single past revision of the article, though a revision with libelous content, criminal threats or copyright infringements may be removed afterwards. All text in Wikipedia is covered by GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), a copyleft license permitting the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work. [2] Wikipedia has also created an impact upon forms of media. Some media sources satirize Wikipedia's susceptibility to inserted inaccuracies, such as a front-page article in The Onion in July 2006 with the title "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence", while others may draw upon Wikipedia's statement that anyone can edit, such as " The Negotiation ", an episode of The Office, where character Michael Scott said that "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. [2] Novel results are over-reported in journal articles, and relevant information is omitted from news reports. He also cautions that errors are frequently found in Internet sites, and that academics and experts must be vigilant in correcting them. In February 2007, an article in The Harvard Crimson newspaper reported that some of the professors at Harvard University include Wikipedia in their syllabus, but that there is a split in their perception of using Wikipedia. [2] One of the most successful early online encyclopedias incorporating entries by the public was h2g2, which was also created by the BBC. The h2g2 encyclopedia was relatively light-hearted, focusing on articles which were both witty and informative. Both of these projects had similarities with Wikipedia, but neither gave full editorial freedom to public users. [2] Almost every article in Wikipedia may be edited anonymously or with a user account, while only registered users may create a new article. [2] As of December 2007, English Wikipedia had over 2million articles, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, eclipsing even the Yongle Encyclopedia (1407), which had held the record for exactly 600years. [2] As of December 2007, the five largest language editions are (in order of article count) English, German, French, Polish and Japanese Wikipedias. [2] For instance, Meta-Wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of Wikipedia and maintain a list of articles every Wikipedia should have. [2] 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 2001. [2] An xkcd strip entitled "Wikipedian Protester." In addition to logistic growth in the number of its articles, Wikipedia has steadily gained status as a general reference website since its inception in 2001. [2] "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. [2] Economist Tyler Cowen writes, "If I had to guess whether Wikipedia or the median refereed journal article on economics was more likely to be true, after a not so long think I would opt for Wikipedia." He comments that many traditional sources of non-fiction suffer from systemic biases. [2] As of April 2008, Wikipedia attracts 684 million visitors annually reading over 10million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.74billion words for all Wikipedias. [2] Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with characters vandalizing or modifying the online encyclopedia project's articles. Notably, comedian Stephen Colbert has parodied or referenced Wikipedia on numerous episodes of his show The Colbert Report and coined the related term " wikiality ". [2] Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. [2] Graph of the article count for the English Wikipedia, from January 10, 2001, to September 9, 2007 (the date of the two-millionth article). [2] Wikipedia has been working on the switch to Creative Commons licenses because the GFDL, initially designed for software manuals, is not suitable for online reference works and because the two licenses are currently incompatible. Some language editions, such as the English Wikipedia, include non-free image files under fair use doctrine, while free media files are shared across language editions via Wikimedia Commons, a project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. [2] Wikipedia ( pronunciation ) is a free, multilingual, open content encyclopedia project operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a blend of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia. [2]

Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. [2] Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, once argued that only "a community. a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" makes a bulk of contributions to Wikipedia and that the project is therefore "much like any traditional organization". This was later disputed by Aaron Swartz, who noted that several articles he sampled had large portion of their content contributed by a user with low edit count. [2] Much of the coordination of the editing of Wikipedia takes place on the "Talk" pages associated with each individual article. As Wikipedia grows with an unconventional model of encyclopedia building, "Who writes Wikipedia?" has become one of the questions frequently asked on the project, often with a reference to other Web 2.0 projects such as Digg. [2] The "History" page attached to each article contains every single past revision of the article, though a revision with libelous content, criminal threats or copyright infringements may be removed afterwards. All text in Wikipedia is covered by GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), a copyleft license permitting the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work. [2] Wikipedia has also created an impact upon forms of media. Some media sources satirize Wikipedia's susceptibility to inserted inaccuracies, such as a front-page article in The Onion in July 2006 with the title "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence", while others may draw upon Wikipedia's statement that anyone can edit, such as " The Negotiation ", an episode of The Office, where character Michael Scott said that "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. [2] Novel results are over-reported in journal articles, and relevant information is omitted from news reports. He also cautions that errors are frequently found in Internet sites, and that academics and experts must be vigilant in correcting them. In February 2007, an article in The Harvard Crimson newspaper reported that some of the professors at Harvard University include Wikipedia in their syllabus, but that there is a split in their perception of using Wikipedia. [2] One of the most successful early online encyclopedias incorporating entries by the public was h2g2, which was also created by the BBC. The h2g2 encyclopedia was relatively light-hearted, focusing on articles which were both witty and informative. Both of these projects had similarities with Wikipedia, but neither gave full editorial freedom to public users. [2] Almost every article in Wikipedia may be edited anonymously or with a user account, while only registered users may create a new article. [2] As of December 2007, English Wikipedia had over 2million articles, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, eclipsing even the Yongle Encyclopedia (1407), which had held the record for exactly 600years. [2] As of December 2007, the five largest language editions are (in order of article count) English, German, French, Polish and Japanese Wikipedias. [2] For instance, Meta-Wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of Wikipedia and maintain a list of articles every Wikipedia should have. [2] 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 2001. [2] An xkcd strip entitled "Wikipedian Protester." In addition to logistic growth in the number of its articles, Wikipedia has steadily gained status as a general reference website since its inception in 2001. [2] "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. [2] Economist Tyler Cowen writes, "If I had to guess whether Wikipedia or the median refereed journal article on economics was more likely to be true, after a not so long think I would opt for Wikipedia." He comments that many traditional sources of non-fiction suffer from systemic biases. [2] As of April 2008, Wikipedia attracts 684 million visitors annually reading over 10million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.74billion words for all Wikipedias. [2] Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with characters vandalizing or modifying the online encyclopedia project's articles. Notably, comedian Stephen Colbert has parodied or referenced Wikipedia on numerous episodes of his show The Colbert Report and coined the related term " wikiality ". [2] Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. [2] Graph of the article count for the English Wikipedia, from January 10, 2001, to September 9, 2007 (the date of the two-millionth article). [2] Wikipedia has been working on the switch to Creative Commons licenses because the GFDL, initially designed for software manuals, is not suitable for online reference works and because the two licenses are currently incompatible. Some language editions, such as the English Wikipedia, include non-free image files under fair use doctrine, while free media files are shared across language editions via Wikimedia Commons, a project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. [2] Wikipedia ( pronunciation ) is a free, multilingual, open content encyclopedia project operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a blend of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia. [2]