Wikipedia – He knows everything!

A free writing medium that allows any user to contribute and valuate useful information to the site; a site that allows free editing and correction of mistakes – such a creative idea flashed through the mind of Richard Stallman that give birth to the most popular site of the world web – Wikipedia! Such an idea was formed in the year 1999 and it took less than 2 years to start this dream project. It was done by two Americans – Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales in the year 2001 January 15. Such a site that runs on s/w was first started by Ward Cunningham and he used the s/w wikiwiki web.

The word ‘wiki’ was derived from Hawaiian language meaning ‘fast’

Wiki & Wikipedia are most commonly used by people who regularly surf net, and the word means – Fast. It became a big success in a short time and till now, more than 4 million articles are available in English only. But it doesn’t mean that this free online encyclopedia is for English language only. Till now it is available in 298 Wikipedias of which 287 are active. Yet a few of them are not commonly used for communication. So Wikipedia also aims to promote such languages that are used less. It’s estimated that more than 400 million people all over the world use it, of which 35% solely depend on it to gather information.

Free data and can be used by anyone

This site doesn’t belong to any private organization. Its content is not edited by an appointed people too. The whole data is supplied, edited and made error-free by people all over the world who see it just as a service and they are named, ‘Wikipedians’.

Any user with a Wikipedia account can add or edit data, insert tables and images as well. Each data provided should have citations too. That’s the rule strictly followed till now. When you read a particular page and if you find that information given is wrong, you can edit it, provide proofs as well. It will be viewed by people all over the world and the same article may witness a few more alterations as well. Thus continued analysis and addition of data from different sources make it a perfect one. That’s the reason why Wikipedia pages appear first when search engines search information for you.

Wikimedia Foundation serves people in many other ways too. Many free sites sharing the same principles of Wikipedia are under this organization. Online dictionary, online library, online quotes, wiki university and wiki study materials are among those projects. Also images used in the Wikipedia pages, marked as Wikimedia images are free of copyrights, and any user can use or reproduce it freely.

Image source: Pixabay.