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.

Characteristics

Wikipedia is described by its founder Jimmy Wales as "an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."{{ref|WalesGoal}} It is developed on the wikipedia.org website using a type of software called a "wiki", a term originally used for the WikiWikiWeb and derived from Hawaiian Wiki Wiki, the name of the shuttle bus line at Honolulu International Airport and itself derived from a reduplication of wiki ("quick"). Wales intends that Wikipedia should achieve a "Britannica or better" quality and be published in print.

Related Topics:
Jimmy Wales - Software - Wiki - WikiWikiWeb - Hawaiian - Honolulu International Airport - Reduplication - Britannica

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Several other encyclopedia projects exist or have existed on the Internet. Traditional editorial policies and article ownership are used in some, such as the expert-written Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the now-defunct Nupedia. More casual websites such as h2g2 or Everything2 serve as general guides whose articles are written and controlled by individuals. Projects such as Wikipedia, Susning.nu, and the Enciclopedia Libre are wikis in which articles are developed by numerous authors, and there is no formal process of review. Wikipedia has become the largest such encyclopedic wiki by article and word-count. Unlike many encyclopedias, it has licensed its content under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Related Topics:
Encyclopedia projects - Internet - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Nupedia - H2g2 - Everything2 - Susning.nu - Enciclopedia Libre - GNU Free Documentation License

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Wikipedia has a set of policies identifying types of information appropriate for inclusion. These policies are often cited in disputes over whether particular content should be added, revised, transferred to a sister project, or removed.

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Free-content

The GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), the license under which Wikipedia's articles are made available, is one of many "copyleft" copyright licenses that permit the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content provided its authors are attributed and this content remains available under the GFDL. When an author contributes original material to the project, the copyright over it is retained with them, but they agree to make the work available under the GFDL. Material on Wikipedia may thus be distributed to, or incorporated from, resources which also use this license. Wikipedia's content has been mirrored or forked by hundreds of resources from database dumps. Although all text is available under the GFDL, a significant percentage of Wikipedia's images and sounds are non-free. Items such as corporate logos, song samples, or copyrighted news photos are used with a claim of fair use. Material has also been given to Wikipedia under no-derivative or for-Wikipedia-only conditions.{{ref|NonFreeImg}} However, some editions only accept free media.

Related Topics:
Copyleft - Copyright - Derivative work - Corporate logo - Fair use

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Wikipedia has been used by the media, academics, and others as a reference or supplement. News organizations have referred to Wikipedia articles as sources or in sidebars containing related information on the Web, some regularly.{{ref|Lih}} According to lists maintained by Wikipedia's editors, its articles have been cited most frequently in the news media.{{ref|UsePress}} Less frequently, it has been used in academic studies, books, conferences, and court cases. For instance, the Parliament of Canada website refers to Wikipedia's article on same-sex marriage in the "further reading" list of Bill C-38.{{ref|C38}} Noncomprehensive lists are maintained by Wikipedians of Wikipedia as a source.{{ref|Wikipedia_as_a_source}}

Related Topics:
News media - Parliament of Canada - Same-sex marriage - Bill C-38

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Language editions

Wikipedia encompasses 110 "active" language editions as of March 2005.{{ref|LangCount}} Its five largest editions are, in descending order, English, German, French, Japanese, and Polish. In total, Wikipedia contains 205 language editions of varying states with a combined 1.9 million articles.{{ref|AllLangArticles}}

Related Topics:
March 2005 - English - German - French - Japanese - Polish

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Language editions operate independently of one another. Editions are not bound to the content of other language editions, and are only held to global policies such as "neutral point of view". Articles and images are nonetheless shared between Wikipedia editions, the former through pages to request translations organized on many of the larger language editions, and the latter through the Wikimedia Commons repository. Translated articles represent only a small portion of articles in any edition.{{ref|LangTrans}}

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The following is a list of the largest editions, sorted by number of articles as of 30 September 2005. (The article count, however, is a very limited metric for comparing the editions. For instance, in some Wikipedia versions nearly half of the articles are "stubs" which were created automatically by bots.) {{ref|ListOfLangEditions}}

Related Topics:
30 September - 2005

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• English (763,739)
• German (295,570)
• French (169,838)
• Japanese (144,040)
• Polish (122,059)
• Italian (112,342)
• Swedish (107,630)
• Dutch (97,044)
• Portuguese (77,751)
• Spanish (67,761)
• Chinese (41,664)
• Norwegian Bokmål (37,052)
• Finnish (33,627)
• Russian (33,480)
• Danish (33,185)