Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that has an open editing system that allows anyone to edit its content. It was founded in 2001by financier Jimmy Wales.
The Origins of Wikipedia
Jimmy Wales was born and raised in the engineering city of Huntsville, Alabama. In a city where one out of every 13 residents is an engineer, Wales was well poised to push the limits programming and digital information.
After obtaining a degree in finance from Auburn University and a graduate degree in finance from the University of Alabama, he began several Web ventures. He achieved some success with adult content websites before venturing into the free encyclopedia realm.
Wales began his first free encyclopedia in 2000, called Nupedia. With the intent to rival print encyclopedias and to become a trusted world encyclopedia online, this free encyclopedia was peer reviewed to keep quality high. Wales hired Larry Sanger in 2000 to act as the site's editor in chief.
Wiki
The term wiki means "fast" in the native Hawaiian language. Wiki software allows quick editing that is open access to quickly change the content of a site. In 2001 when Sanger proposed that Nupedia become a wiki site, Wales agreed and the name of the site was changed to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Popularity
Wikipedia is one of the top 10 websites in the world, and its popularity grew rapidly from the beginning. In its first month, the site saw 1,000 articles added. At the eight-month mark, Wikipedia has 10,000 articles.
After four years, Wikipedia had more than 1 million encyclopedia pages. In 2005, Hitwise data showed it to be the world's most popular website for reference information. Currently, there are almost 3 million articles available on Wikipedia. Each day, people around the world look at about 300 million Wikipedia pages.
Wikipedia pages range from familiar topics that could be found in traditional encyclopedias to pop-culture topics that may never have graced a print encyclopedia. Some have also found Wikipedia to be a useful marketing tool. Encyclopedia pages are routinely created by businesses in order to add their business profile to the sprawling site.
Wikipedia Reliability
Though it is often criticized for having insufficient or incorrect information, Wikipedia was found in an extensive study to be approximately as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica. While Wikipedia functions as a wiki and allows anyone to edit its content, there is a system of editors and citation requirements that keep the number of errors relatively low. Volunteer editors police the site and take out biased information and entries that are merely sales ploys.
While Wikipedia is one of the largest, most popular sites on the Internet, it does not sell ads and survives completely on donations. Wikipedia executives have resisted selling ad space to avoid offending the volunteers who donate their time editing the site.
Lizz Shepherd - I am a freelance writer specializing, for now, in Web writing. The Web is an enormous place and I have been carving out my own little ...
