Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers and operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation based in St. Petersburg, Florida. It has editions in about 200 languages (about 100 of which are active). Ten editions have more than 50,000 articles each: English, German, French, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish. According to Hitwise, an online measurement company, Wikipedia is currently the most popular reference site on the Internet.

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Wikipedia began as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia on January 15, 2001. It has steadily risen in popularity, and has since spawned several sister projects, such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. It is edited by volunteers with wiki software, meaning articles are subject to change by nearly anyone. Wikipedia's volunteers attempt to uphold a policy of "neutral point of view" under which views presented by notable persons or literature are summarized without an attempt to determine an objective truth. Due to its open nature, vandalism and inaccuracy are constant problems in Wikipedia.

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The status of Wikipedia as reference work has been controversial. It has been praised for its free distribution, editing, and diverse range of coverage; it has been criticized for systemic bias, preference of consensus to credentials, and a perceived lack of accountability and authority when compared with traditional encyclopedias. Wikipedia articles have been regularly cited by the mass media and academia and are available under the GNU Free Documentation License. Its German-language edition has been distributed on compact discs, and many of its other editions are mirrored or have been forked by websites.

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Web: WEB is a computer programming system created by...

Free-content: Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content upon which no legal restriction has been placed that significantly interferes with people's freedom to use, redistribute, improve, and share the content. Importantly, when free content is modified, ...

Encyclopedia: An (alternatively encyclopaedia/encyclop?dia) is a written compendium of knowledge. The term comes from the Greek (engkuklios paideia), literally "a rounded education". Many encyclopedias are titled Cyclopaedia and the terms are interchangeable....