Overview
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is written and maintained collaboratively by a community of volunteer contributors through a model of open editing. Rather than being produced by a paid editorial staff, its articles are created and revised by members of the public, who can add new entries, correct existing ones, and expand coverage of subjects over time.
The encyclopedia is available in many languages, with separate editions maintained by their own communities of contributors. It is one of the most visited websites in the world and is widely used as a general reference for background information on a broad range of topics. Wikipedia is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization, and access to its content is free of charge.
History
Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The project applied the then-novel idea of open, wiki-style editing to the traditional encyclopedia format, allowing any interested reader to become a contributor. From an initial English-language edition, the project expanded into additional language versions as volunteer communities formed around them.
Responsibility for operating the site subsequently rested with the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization that hosts the encyclopedia and supports its infrastructure. The Foundation provides the technical and organizational framework for the project, while decisions about article content remain with the volunteer editing community.
How It Works
Wikipedia's content can be edited by anyone, and the project depends on volunteers rather than commissioned authors. To keep an openly editable reference work usable, the community has developed a body of policies and guidelines that govern what may be written and how disputes are settled. Two of the most significant are:
- Neutral point of view — Articles are expected to describe subjects impartially, representing differing positions without endorsing any of them.
- Verifiability — Statements in articles are expected to be supported by cited sources, so that readers can trace information back to where it was published.
Because editing is open, individual articles may be revised repeatedly, and the quality and depth of coverage can vary between topics and between language editions. The same openness allows errors to be identified and corrected by other contributors, and every article carries a record of its past revisions.
Languages and Access
Wikipedia operates as a multilingual project, with editions in many languages maintained independently of one another. Each edition reflects the interests and priorities of its own contributor community, so an article present in one language may be absent, shorter, or differently organized in another. Readers can reach the project and select a language edition through its main portal at wikipedia.org.