Wikipedia

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Wikipedia
An incomplete sphere made of large, white, jigsaw puzzle pieces. Each puzzle piece contains one glyph from a different writing system, with each glyph written in black.
The Wikipedia wordmark which displays the name Wikipedia, written in all caps. The W and the A are the same height and both are taller than the other letters, which are also all the same height.
The logo of Wikipedia, a globe featuring glyphs from various writing systems
Screenshot
Main page of the English Wikipedia
Main Page of the English Wikipedia on July 23, 2018
Type of site
Online encyclopedia
Available in307 languages
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
Created byJimmy Wales
Larry Sanger
Websiteofficial website
Alexa rankNegative increase 9 (Global, November 2019)
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional[note 1]
Users>315,147 active users[note 2] and >85,634,144 registered users
1,145 administrators (English)
LaunchedJanuary 15, 2001; 24 years ago (2001-01-15)
Current statusActive
Content license
CC Attribution / Share-Alike 3.0
Most text is also dual-licensed under GFDL; media licensing varies
Written inLAMP platform[1]
OCLC number52075003

Wikipedia was a 21st century multilingual online encyclopedia created and maintained as an open collaboration project[2] by a community of volunteer editors using a wiki-based editing system.[3] It is the largest and most popular general reference work on the World Wide Web,[4] and is one of the most popular websites ranked by Alexa as of October 2019. It features exclusively free content and no commercial ads, and is owned and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization funded primarily through donations.[5][6][7][8]

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.[9] Sanger coined its name, as a portmanteau of "wiki" (the Hawaiian word for "quick"[10]) and "encyclopedia". Initially an English-language encyclopedia, versions of Wikipedia in other languages were quickly developed. With at least 503 articles,[note 3] the English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 290 Wikipedia encyclopedias. Overall, Wikipedia comprises more than 40 million articles in 301 different languages[11] and by February 2014 it had reached 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors per month.

Notes[edit | edit source]

  1. ^ Registration is required for certain tasks such as editing protected pages, creating pages in the English Wikipedia, and uploading files.
  2. ^ To be considered active, a user must make at least one edit or other action in a given month.
  3. ^ As of 22:09, Saturday, February 15, 2025 (UTC).

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ^ "Top 40 Website Programming Languages". wikipedia.org.  External link in |website= (help)
  2. ^ Mark McNeil (October 4, 2011). "Wikipedia Makes A House Call To Mac". The Hamilton Spectator. 
  3. ^ Poe, Marshall (September 2006). "The Hive". The Atlantic Monthly. 
  4. ^ "comScore MMX Ranks Top 50 US Web Properties for August 2012". comScore. September 12, 2012. Retrieved February 6, 2013. 
  5. ^ Dewey, Caitlin (December 2, 2015). "Wikipedia has a ton of money. So why is it begging you to donate yours?". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 10, 2019. 
  6. ^ "Wikimedia pornography row deepens as Wales cedes rights – BBC News". BBC. May 10, 2010. Retrieved June 28, 2016. 
  7. ^ Vogel, Peter S. (October 10, 2012). "The Mysterious Workings of Wikis: Who Owns What?". Ecommerce Times. Retrieved June 28, 2016. 
  8. ^ Mullin, Joe (January 10, 2014). "Wikimedia Foundation employee ousted over paid editing". Ars Technica. Retrieved June 28, 2016. 
  9. ^ Shin, Annys (January 5, 2017). "Wikipedia was born in 2001. And the world got a bit truthier". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 22, 2019. 
  10. ^ "Wiki". Hawaiian Dictionary (Revised and enlarged ed.). University of Hawaii Press. 1986. 
  11. ^ "Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales on 60 Minutes". CBS News. Retrieved April 6, 2015. 

External links[edit | edit source]