Wikipedia

Guide Note

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia consisting of articles exclusively written by its users. Anyone can create an account and edit the entries, and thousands of people participate in the creation and maintenance of its content.

Wikipedia has reached cultural saturation. It has become a starting point for many a research project, and its vast breadth makes even obscure details readily available for a searcher. Just as many people learned to "Google" something to get results, the public at large has learned to look something up on Wikipedia to get quick and relatively reliable information on a wide variety of subjects, from American presidents to Pokemon characters.

According the Wikipedia entry for Wikipedia, Wikipedia began as an offshoot of a project called Nupedia, which was a free English language online encyclopedia written by experts. The founders of Wikipedia are Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, who together established the publicly editable encyclopedia using a wiki format.

The main issues that Wikipedia has had to face are charges of bias and unreliability. The openly editable format leads some to believe the content on Wikipedia is unreliable, as anyone can edit the text to read anything they want. Wikipedia solves this problem by locking down hot button pages, such as George W. Bush, from editing, and by having a team of trusted editors check edits. They also rely on users to catch and report errors.

Fast Facts

1. Launched on January 15, 2001
2. Has strictly neutral point of view
3. The English language version has over 2 million articles
4. Largest encyclopedia in the world
5. Founders: Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger
6. Built on MediaWiki Software
7. Maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation
8. Also has foreign language versions

• Wiktionary
• Wikiquote
• Wikibooks

• h2g2
• Veropedia
• Citizendium
• Everything2