Wikipedia
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Wikipedia[c] is a free content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as
Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference
work in history,[3][4] and is consistently ranked among the ten most visited websites; as of August 2024, it was ranked fourth by
Semrush,[5] and seventh by Similarweb.[6] Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has been
hosted since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization funded mainly by donations from readers.
[7]
Initially only available in English, Wikipedia now exists in more than 300 languages. The English Wikipedia, with its over
6.9 million articles, remains the largest of the editions, which together comprise more than 64 million articles and attract more
than 1.5 billion unique device visits and 13 million edits per month (about 5 edits per second on average) as of April 2024.[W 1] As
of November 2024, over 25% of Wikipedia's traffic was from the United States, followed by Japan at 6.2%, the United Kingdom
at 5.6%, Russia at 5.0%, Germany at 4.8%, and the remaining 53.3% split among other countries.[8]
Wikipedia has been praised for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, and
culture. It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and geographical bias against
the Global South (Eurocentrism).[9][10] While the reliability of Wikipedia was frequently criticized in the 2000s, it has improved
over time, receiving greater praise from the late 2010s onward[3][11][12] while becoming an important fact-checking site.[13][14]
Wikipedia has been censored by some national governments, ranging from specific pages to the entire site.[15][16] Articles on
breaking news are often accessed as sources for frequently updated information about those events.[17][18]
History
Nupedia
Various collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before the start of Wikipedia, but with limited success.[19] Wikipedia
began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written
by experts and reviewed under a formal process.[20] It was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis, a web
portal company. Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later
Wikipedia.[1][21] Nupedia was initially licensed under its own Nupedia Open Content License, but before Wikipedia was founded,
Nupedia switched to the GNU Free Documentation License at the urging of Richard Stallman.[W 2] Wales is credited with
defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia,[22][W 3] while Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a wiki to
reach that goal.[W 4] On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for
Nupedia.[W 5]
Launch and growth
Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001[20] as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com,[W 6] and was
announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list.[22] The name originated from a blend of the words wiki and encyclopedia.[23]
[24] Its integral policy of "neutral point-of-view"[W 7] was codified in its first few months. Otherwise, there were initially relatively
few rules, and it operated independently of Nupedia.[22] Bomis originally intended for it to be a for-profit business.[25]
Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search engine indexing. Language editions were
created beginning in March 2001, with a total of 161 in use by the end of 2004.[W 8][W 9] Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until
the former's servers were taken down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia
passed the mark of 2 million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, surpassing the
Yongle Encyclopedia made in China during the Ming dynasty in 1408, which had held the record for almost 600 years.[26]
Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control, users of the Spanish Wikipedia forked from Wikipedia to create
Enciclopedia Libre in February 2002.[W 10] Wales then announced that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and
