Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a huge book online.

Many people help write it. These people are volunteers. They work together to share facts.

It started a long time ago. Two men started it in 2001. Now, it is in many ways to talk.

It is a very big site. It has many articles. People visit it every single day.

You can learn about almost anything there.

Wikipedia is a massive online encyclopedia. It is written by volunteers. These people are called Wikipedians. They work together to share facts. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger started it in 2001.

Wikipedia is the largest reference work in history. It exists in over 340 languages. The English version is the largest. It has over one million articles.

Many people visit the site. More than 1.5 billion people visit it each month.

How does it work? People use special software called MediaWiki to edit pages.

This allows many people to add or change facts. The site is run by a nonprofit group. This group is the Wikimedia Foundation. They get money from donations.

Wikipedia has reached many milestones. An asteroid was named Wikipedia in 2013. In 2019, a copy of the English site went to the Moon. It was engraved on thin metal plates. This was part of a lunar lander mission. Scientists even turned the text into DNA. This shows how much information is there.

Wikipedia is a massive online encyclopedia that anyone can help build. It is a huge collection of facts shared with the whole world. The goal is to make all human knowledge available to every person. It is the largest reference work in history. Many people visit the site every single day. It is one of the most visited websites on the planet.

This makes it a very important tool for learning.

How does such a giant project work? It uses special software called MediaWiki to let people collaborate.

A community of volunteers called Wikipedians writes and maintains the articles. They work together through open collaboration to add new information. They follow a rule called a neutral point of view. This means they try to write facts without taking sides. This way, the information stays fair for everyone who reads it.

The story of Wikipedia began with a different project.

Before Wikipedia, there was an encyclopedia called Nupedia. Nupedia used experts to write and review every single article. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia on January 15, 2001. Sanger suggested using a wiki to help feed information into Nupedia. The name comes from blending the words "wiki" and "encyclopedia." It started as a single English language edition.

Wikipedia has grown into something truly enormous over the years.

The English version alone has over one million articles. There are editions in more than 340 different languages. Every month, the site gets more than 1.5 billion unique device visits. About 13 million edits happen every single month. This means about five edits occur every second on average. Over 25% of all traffic comes from the United States.

Many amazing things have happened because of this project.

In 2013, an asteroid was even named Wikipedia. In 2019, a copy of the English Wikipedia went to the Moon. It was engraved on thin nickel plates on a lunar lander. Scientists also turned the text into synthetic DNA. Wikipedia is also part of a family of sister projects. These include Wiktionary for words and Wikibooks for textbooks. These projects all help share knowledge for free.

Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia built through open collaboration. It is maintained by a massive community of volunteers known as Wikipedians. These volunteers use a specific type of software called MediaWiki to edit content. The primary mission of the project is to make the sum of all human knowledge available to every person in the world. This goal makes Wikipedia the largest and most-read reference work in human history. It is one of the most visited websites on the planet, serving as a global repository for information.

The mechanism of Wikipedia relies on a collaborative process. Instead of a single author, many people contribute to a single page.

This process is driven by the use of wiki software, which allows users to edit text easily. A central rule that guides this work is the "neutral point of view." This policy requires editors to present information fairly without taking sides on controversial topics. This structure allows the encyclopedia to grow through constant, small improvements made by many different people over time.

Wikipedia is not just one single website, but a collection of many different language editions.

While it began as a single English-language project, it now exists in over 340 languages. The English Wikipedia is the largest edition, containing more than one million articles. Other major language editions include German and Japanese. The scale of this work is immense. Every month, the site receives more than 1.5 billion unique device visits. During that same time, about 13 million edits are made. This averages out to roughly five edits occurring every second.

The history of Wikipedia began with a project called Nupedia.

Nupedia was an online encyclopedia founded in March 2000 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. It used a formal process where experts wrote and reviewed every article. However, this process was slow. On January 10, 2001, Larry Sanger proposed creating a "wiki" to act as a feeder for Nupedia. Wikipedia officially launched on January 15, 2001. The name was a blend of the words "wiki" and "encyclopedia." By 2003, Nupedia's servers were shut down, and its text was moved into Wikipedia.

As Wikipedia grew, it reached several major milestones. In 2007, the English Wikipedia passed 2 million articles. This made it larger than the Yongle Encyclopedia, which had held the record since 1408. By 2009, the English version reached 3 million articles. The site's popularity also grew rapidly. In 2007, it became one of the ten most popular websites in the United States. By 2014, it was receiving 8 billion page views every month. These numbers show how the project transformed from a small experiment into a global necessity.

Despite its success, Wikipedia has faced various challenges and criticisms. Some national governments have censored the site or specific pages. Others have criticized the encyclopedia for systemic biases. These include a gender bias against women and a geographical bias against the Global South. There have also been debates about the number of active editors. Some researchers noted a decline in editors or page views during certain years. Some experts suggested that search engine features, like Google's Knowledge Graphs, might have reduced the need for users to click through to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is also part of a larger ecosystem of "sister projects" managed by the Wikimedia Foundation.

These include Wiktionary, which is a dictionary project, and Wikibooks, which provides free textbooks. Other projects include Wikiquote for famous sayings and Wikimedia Commons for multimedia. There are even specialized projects like Wikispecies, a catalog of all species. These projects all work toward the same goal of sharing free knowledge. From being engraved on nickel plates for a Moon lander to being encoded into synthetic DNA, Wikipedia continues to represent the vast reach of human information.