'Wikipedia' (
IPA: , or () is a
multilingual,
web-based,
free content encyclopedia project, operated by the
Wikimedia Foundation, a
non-profit organization. It is the largest, most extensive and fastest growing encyclopedia currently available on the
Internet.
As of
September,
2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.2 million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.41 billion words for all wikipedias. The
English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000 article mark on
September 9 2007 with a total of over 609 million words, roughly fifteen times as many as the largest edition of ''
Encyclopædia Britannica''.
[1] Wikipedia's articles have been written
collaboratively by
volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Steadily rising in popularity since its inception,
[2] it currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.
[3]
Wikipedia's name is a
portmanteau of the words ''
wiki'' (a type of collaborative website) and ''
encyclopedia''. Its main
servers are in
Tampa, Florida, with additional servers located in
Amsterdam and
Seoul.
Due to Wikipedia's open nature, critics have questioned its reliability and accuracy.
[4] The site has been criticized for its susceptibility to
vandalism and the addition of false or unverified information,
53 uneven quality,
systemic bias and inconsistencies,
43 and for favoring
consensus over
credentials in its editorial process.
[5] Wikipedia's content policies
[6] and sub-projects set up by contributors seek to address these concerns.
[7] Two scholarly studies have concluded that vandalism is generally short-lived
[8] and that Wikipedia is generally as accurate as other encyclopedias.
[9]
When "You" was declared ''
Time''
Person of the Year 2006, praising the accelerating success of on-line collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, Wikipedia was the first particular "
Web 2.0" service mentioned, followed by
YouTube and
MySpace.
[10]
Founding
Main articles: History of Wikipedia
Wikipedia's
English edition was launched on
January 15 2001, as a complement to
Nupedia, an expert-written and now defunct encyclopedia.
Jimmy Wales and
Larry Sanger were identified as co-founders of Wikipedia in 2001. Wikipedia's official personnel page from September 2001 states that Wales and Sanger were the two co-founders, and that there was no editor-in-chief.
Wales, creator of the
Wikimedia Foundation in 2003, today claims to be the sole
founder of Wikipedia and has told ''
The Boston Globe'' that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder.
[15] However, Sanger strongly contests that description. He was identified as a co-founder of Wikipedia at least as early as September 2001 and referred to himself that way as early as January 2002.
Authorship and management
The original Wikipedia logo
Maintenance tasks are performed by a group of volunteers; these include developers, on the
MediaWiki software, and other trusted users with various permission levels including "steward", "bureaucrat" and "administrator."
[18] Administrators are the largest group of specially privileged users, and have the ability to delete (remove) pages, lock articles from being changed, and deter users from editing.
[19]
Wikipedia is funded through the
Wikimedia Foundation. Its 4th Quarter 2005 costs were $321,000
USD, with hardware making up almost 60% of the budget.
[20] The Wikimedia Foundation currently relies primarily on private donations, and holds regular fundraisers;
[21] the January 2007 fundraiser raised just over $1 million.
[22]
Software and hardware
Wikipedia receives between 10,000 and 35,000 page requests per second, depending on time of day.
[23] More than 100 servers have been set up to handle the traffic.
The operation of Wikipedia depends on
MediaWiki, a custom-made,
free and
open source wiki software platform written in
PHP and built upon the
MySQL database. The software incorporates modern programming features, such as a
macro language,
variables, a
transclusion system for
templates, and
URL redirection. MediaWiki is licensed under the
GNU General Public License and used by all Wikimedia projects, as well as many other wiki projects. Originally, Wikipedia ran on
UseModWiki written in
Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required
CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a
PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by
Magnus Manske. The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the
exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker.
.]]
Wikipedia runs on dedicated
clusters of
Linux servers in
Florida and in two other locations.
[24] Wikipedia employed a single server until 2004, when the server setup was expanded into a distributed
multitier architecture. In January 2005, the project ran on 39
dedicated servers located in Florida. This configuration included a single master
database server running
MySQL, multiple slave database servers, 21
web servers running the
Apache HTTP Server, and seven
Squid cache servers. By September 2005, its
server cluster had grown to around 100 servers in three locations around the world.
24
Page requests are first passed to a front-end layer of
Squid caching servers. Requests that cannot be served from the Squid cache are sent to load-balancing servers running the
Linux Virtual Server software, which in turn pass the request to one of the Apache web servers for page rendering from the database. The web servers deliver pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the language editions of Wikipedia. To increase speed further, rendered pages for anonymous users are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. Two larger clusters in the Netherlands and Korea now handle much of Wikipedia's traffic load.
Language editions
Wikipedia has been described 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".
[26] There are presently 253 language editions of Wikipedia; of these, the top 14 have over 100,000 articles and the top 139 have over 1,000 articles.
1
Since Wikipedia is web-based and therefore worldwide, contributors of a same language edition may use different dialects or may come from different countries (this is the case for the
English edition). These differences may lead to some conflicts about spelling
[27] or points of view.
[28] The English
subdomain (en.wikipedia.org) receives approximately 51% of Wikipedia's cumulative traffic, with the remaining 49% split among the other languages (Spanish: 15%, Japanese 5%, German: 5%, French: 4%, Polish: 3%, Portuguese: 2%, Arabic: 2%).
2
Though the various language editions are held to global policies such as "neutral point of view," they diverge on some points of policy and practice—most notably in their use of non-free images.
[29][30]
Though each language edition functions more or less independently, some efforts are made to supervise them all. They are coordinated in part by , the Wikimedia Foundation's wiki devoted to maintaining all of its projects (Wikipedia and others). For instance, Meta-Wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of Wikipedia and maintain a . The list concerns basic content by subject: biography, history, geography, society, culture, science, technology, foodstuffs, and mathematics. As for the rest, it is not rare for articles strongly related to a particular language not to have counterparts in another edition. For example, articles about small townships of the United States might only be available in English.
Multilingual editors of sufficient fluency are encouraged to translate articles manually; automated translation of articles is explicitly disallowed.
[31] Translated articles represent only a small portion of articles in most editions.
[32] Articles available in more than one language may offer "
InterWiki" links, usually in their left margin, which link to the counterpart articles in other editions. Images and other non-verbal media are shared among the various language editions through the
Wikimedia Commons repository. Beyond translations, some multilingual efforts are also realised thanks to the .
Content redistribution
Wikipedia's content has been mirrored and forked by many sites including
database dumps. There is a free downloadable DVD version
[33] developed by
Linterweb which contains "1964 + articles".
[34][35]
Reliability and bias
Main articles: Reliability of Wikipedia
Wikipedia appeals to the authority of peer-reviewed publications rather than the personal authority of experts. Wikipedia does not require that its contributors give their legal names or provide other information to establish their identity. Although some contributors are authorities in their field, Wikipedia requires that even their contributions be supported by published and verifiable sources.
Wikipedia tries to address the problem of
systemic bias, and to deal with zealous editors who seek to influence the presentation of an article in a biased way, by insisting on a neutral point of view. The English-language Wikipedia has introduced a scale against which the quality of articles is judged; other editions have also adopted this. Roughly 1500 articles have passed a rigorous set of criteria to reach the highest rank, "featured article" status; such articles are intended to provide thorough, well-written coverage of their topic, supported by many references to peer-reviewed publications.
In a study of Wikipedia as a community, economics
Ph.D. student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low
transaction costs of participating in
wiki software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation.
[36]
In February 2007, an article in
The Harvard Crimson newspaper reported that some of the professors at
Harvard University do include Wikipedia in their syllabus, but that there is a split in their perception of using Wikipedia.
[37]
In June 2007, former president of the
American Library Association Michael Gorman condemned Wikipedia, along with
Google, for contributing to the creation of a generation of “intellectual sluggards”.
[38] He also stated that academics who endorse the use of Wikipedia are “the intellectual equivalent of a dietitian who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything,” He also stated that “a generation of intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the internet” was being produced at universities. He complains that the web-based sources are discouraging students from learning from the more rare texts which are either found only on paper or are on subscription-only web sites. In the same article Jenny Fry (a research fellow at the
Oxford Internet Institute) commented on the academics who cite Wikipedia that:
“You cannot say children are intellectually lazy because they are using the internet when academics are using search engines in their research,” she said. “The difference is that they have more experience of being critical about what is retrieved and whether it is authoritative. Children need to be told how to use the internet in a critical and appropriate way.”
[39]
Criticism and controversy
Main articles: Criticism of Wikipedia
Wikipedia has been accused of exhibiting
systemic bias and inconsistency;
[40] critics argue that Wikipedia's open nature and a lack of proper sources for much of the information makes it unreliable.
[41] Some commentators suggest that Wikipedia is usually reliable, but that it is not always clear how much.
[42] The project's preference for
consensus over
credentials has been labeled "anti-elitism".
[43] Editors of traditional
reference works such as the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' have questioned the project's utility and status as an encyclopedia.
[44] Many
university lecturers discourage students from citing any encyclopedia in
academic work, preferring
primary sources;
[45] some specifically prohibit Wikipedia citations.
[46] Co-founder
Jimmy Wales stresses that encyclopedias of any type are not usually appropriate as primary sources, and should not be relied upon as authoritative.
[47] Technology writer
Bill Thompson commented that the debate was possibly "symptomatic of much learning about information which is happening in society today."
[48]
Concerns have also been raised regarding the lack of
accountability that results from users' anonymity,
[49] and that it is vulnerable to
vandalism and similar problems. In one particularly well-publicized incident,
false information was introduced into the biography of
John Seigenthaler, Sr. and remained undetected for four months.
[50] Some critics claim that Wikipedia's open structure makes it an easy target for internet
trolls, advertisers, and those with an agenda to push.
[51][52] The addition of political
spin to articles by organizations including the
U.S. House of Representatives and special interest groups
[53] has been noted,
[54] and organizations such as
Microsoft have offered financial incentives to work on certain articles.
[55] Some claim that Wikipedia's political articles have been taken over by left-wing partisans.
[56] These issues have been parodied, notably by
Stephen Colbert in ''
The Colbert Report''.
[57]
Wikipedia's community has been described as "
cult-like,"
[58] although not always with entirely negative connotations,
[59] and criticised for failing to accommodate inexperienced users.
[60]
Wikipedia's content policies
[61] and sub-projects set up by contributors seek to address these concerns.
[62] Several scholarly studies have concluded that vandalism is generally short-lived,
[8] and that Wikipedia is roughly as accurate as other online encyclopedias.
With nearly hundreds of thousands of contributors, nearly 2 million articles in English, hundreds of thousands of articles in other languages, the sheer scope of Wikipedia dwarfs traditional encyclopedias in size of content, human investigative resources, peer-review and editorial efforts and is unrivaled in human history as a collaborative effort in the written language.
In August of 2007, a new website developed by computer science graduate student Virgil Griffith named
WikiScanner made its public debut.
WikiScanner traces the source of millions of changes made to Wikipedia, and has revealed some interesting and controversial edits its first few days of use. Many of these edits came from corporations or U.S. government agencies about articles related to them, their personnel or their work, and were attempts to remove criticism.
[64] WikiScanner has been generally welcomed by both the Wikipedia and broader Internet community in that it will help foster more responsible online conduct.
Wikipedia founder
Jimmy Wales called WikiScanner “a very clever idea,” and said that he was considering some changes to Wikipedia to help visitors better understand what information is recorded about them. “When someone clicks on ‘edit,’ it would be interesting if we could say, ‘Hi, thank you for editing. We see you’re logged in from
The New York Times. Keep in mind that we know that, and it’s public information,’ ” he said. “That might make them stop and think.”
Due to the large amount of links and content citations needed, Wikipedia is not very compliant with screen reading technology.
Awards
Wikipedia won two major awards in May 2004.
[65] The first was a Golden Nica for Digital Communities of the annual
Prix Ars Electronica contest; this came with a €10,000 (£6,588; $12,700) grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival in
Austria later that year. The second was a Judges'
Webby Award for the "community" category.
[66] Wikipedia was also nominated for a "Best Practices" Webby. In September 2004, the
Japanese Wikipedia was awarded a Web Creation Award from the Japan Advertisers Association. This award, normally given to individuals for great contributions to the Web in Japanese, was accepted by a long-standing contributor on behalf of the project.
In a 2006 ''Multiscope'' research study, the
Dutch Wikipedia was rated the third best
Dutch language site, after
Google and
Gmail, with a score of 8.1.
[67] On 26 January 2007, Wikipedia was also awarded the fifth highest brand ranking by the readers of brandchannel.com, receiving 15% of the votes in answer to the question "Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?"
[68] Jimmy Wales was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by ''
TIME Magazine'' in 2006.
[69] In 2006, the
Russian Wikipedia won the "Science and education" category of the "
Runet Prize" (Russian: '') award, supervised
[70] by the
Russian government agency
FAPMC.
In November 2006,
Turkish Wikipedia was nominated under the Science category for the ''Altın Örümcek Web Ödülleri'' (Golden Spider Web Awards), which are commonly known as the "Web Oscars" for Turkey. In January 2007, Turkish Wikipedia was given the award for "Best Content" in this competition. The award was given in a ceremony on
January 25 2007 at Istanbul Technical University.
Cultural significance
Wikipedia's content has also been used in academic studies, books, conferences, and court cases.
[71][72] The
Parliament of Canada website refers to Wikipedia's article on
same-sex marriage in the "related links" section of its "further reading" list for
Civil Marriage Act.
[73] The encyclopedia's assertions are increasingly used as a source by organizations such as the U.S. Federal Courts and the World
Intellectual Property Office
[74] — though mainly for ''supporting information'' rather than information decisive to a case.
[75] Wikipedia has also been used as a source in
journalism,
[76] sometimes without attribution; several reporters have been dismissed for plagiarizing from Wikipedia.
[77][78][79]
In July 2007, Wikipedia was the focus of a 30 minute documentary on
BBC Radio 4[80] which argued that, with increased usage and awareness, the number of references to Wikipedia in popular culture is such that the term is one of a select band of
21st Century nouns that are so familiar (
Google,
Facebook,
YouTube) that they no longer need explanation and are on a par with such
20th Century terms as
hoovering or
coke. Many parody Wikipedia's openness, with characters vandalizing or modifying the online encyclopedia project's articles. Notably, comedian
Stephen Colbert has parodied or referenced Wikipedia on numerous episodes of his show ''
The Colbert Report'' and coined the related term "
wikiality".
57 Websites such as
Uncyclopedia have also been set up parodying Wikipedia; its Main Page claims that it is the "content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,"
[81] parodying the English Wikipedia's welcome message on its Main Page.
The first documentary film about Wikipedia, entitled ''Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story'', is scheduled for 2008 release. Shot on several continents, the film will cover the history of Wikipedia and feature interviews with Wikipedia editors around the world.
[82][83]
Related projects
A number of interactive multimedia encyclopedias incorporating entries written by the public existed long before Wikipedia was founded. The first of these was the 1986
BBC Domesday Project, which included text (entered on
BBC Micro computers) and photographs from over 1 million contributors in the
UK, and covering the geography, art and culture of the
UK. This was the first interactive multimedia encyclopedia (and was also the first major multimedia document connected through internal links), with the majority of articles being accessible through an interactive map of the
UK. The user-interface and part of the content of the Domesday Project have now been emulated on a website
[84]. One of the most successful early online encyclopedias incorporating entries by the public was
h2g2, which was also created by the
BBC. The h2g2 encyclopedia was relatively light-hearted, focusing on articles which were both witty and informative. Both of these projects had similarities with Wikipedia, but neither gave full editorial freedom to public users.
Wikipedia has also spawned several sister projects. The first, "''In Memoriam: September 11 Wiki''",
[85] created in October 2002,
[86] detailed the
September 11, 2001 attacks; this project was closed in October 2006.
[87] Wiktionary, a dictionary project, was launched in December 2002;
[88] Wikiquote, a collection of quotations, a week after Wikimedia launched, and
Wikibooks, a collection of collaboratively written free books, the next month. Wikimedia has since started a number of other projects.
[89]
A similar non-wiki project, the
GNUpedia project, co-existed with Nupedia early in its history; however, it has been retired and its creator,
free software figure
Richard Stallman, has lent his support to Wikipedia.
[90]
Other websites centered on collaborative
knowledge base development have drawn inspiration from or inspired Wikipedia. Some, such as
Susning.nu, ''
Enciclopedia Libre'', and
WikiZnanie likewise employ no formal review process, whereas others use more traditional
peer review, such as the expert-written ''
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'',
h2g2 and
Everything2.
Jimmy Wales, the ''de facto'' leader of Wikipedia,
[91] said in an interview in regard to the online encyclopedia
Citizendium which is overviewed by experts in their respective fields:
Wikipedia founder forks Wikipedia, More experts, less fiddling? Andrew Orlowski — Andrew Orlowski. "We welcome a diversity of efforts. If Larry's project is able to produce good work, we will benefit from it by copying it back into Wikipedia."
[92]
See also
★
Congressional staffer edits to Wikipedia
★
List of encyclopedias
★
List of Wikipedias
★
List of wikis
★
Open content
★
User-generated content
★
Wikipedia community
★
References
1. List of Wikipedias
2. Five-year traffic statistics for wikipedia.org
3. Three-month traffic statistics for wikipedia.org
4. Who knows? Simon Waldman
5. Academia and Wikipedia Danah Boyd
6. List of policies and guidelines
7. Wikipedia:WikiProject
8.
9. Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past, , Roy, Rosenzweig, The Journal of American History, 2006
10. Time's Person of the Year: You
11. Web archive
12.
13.
14.
15.
16. Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You
17. What Wikipedia is and why it matters Sanger, Larry
18. Wikipedia:User access levels," Wikipedia (January 12 2007)
19. "Wikipedia:Administrators", Wikipedia (January 23 2007)
20. Budget/2005
21. Fundraising, Wikimedia Foundation
22. "Fundraising report", Wikimedia Foundation (January 21 2007)
23. "Monthly request statistics", Wikimedia. Retrieved on 2007-02-03.
24. Wikimedia servers at wikimedia.org
25. Main Page, Hebrew Wikipedia
26. Jimmy Wales, "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia", March 8 2005,
27. spelling
28. Countering systemic bias
29. Fair use
30. Images on Wikipedia
31. Wikipedia: Translation. English Wikipedia, accessed on 2007-02-03
32. For example, "Translation into English", Wikipedia. (March 9, 2005)
33. "List of Mirrors Hosting the CD Iso." ''Wikipedia on DVD''. Linterweb. Accessed 1 June 2007
34. "Wikipedia on DVD". Linterweb. Accessed 1 June 2007. "Linterweb is authorized to make a commercial use of the Wikipedia trademark restricted to the selling of the Encyclopedia CDs and DVDs."
35. "Wikipedia 0.5 Available on a CD-ROM". ''Wikipedia on DVD''. Linterweb. Accessed 1 June 2007. "The DVD or CD-ROM version 0.5 was commercially available for purchase."
36.
Andrea Ciffolilli, "Phantom authority, self-selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities: The case of Wikipedia", ''First Monday'' December 2003.
37. Child, Maxwell L.,"Professors Split on Wiki Debate", The Harvard Crimson, Monday, February 26, 2007.
38. Chloe Stothart, Web threatens learning ethos
, ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'', 2007, '1799'(22 June), page 2. [1]
39. Chloe Stothart, Web threatens learning ethos
, ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'', 2007, 22 June issue
40. Simon Waldman, http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1335892,00.html Who knows?, The Guardian, October 26 2004
41.
42. Danah Boyd, "Academia and Wikipedia", Many-to-Many, January 4 2005.
43. Larry Sanger, "Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism", Kuro5hin, December 31 2004.
44. Robert McHenry, "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia", Tech Central Station, November 15 2004.
45.
46. A Stand Against Wikipedia Scott Jaschik
47. Wikipedia: "A Work in Progress" Burt Helm
48. What is it with Wikipedia? Bill Thompson
49. Public Information Research - Wikipedia Watch. Retrieved on 2007-01-28.
50. A False Wikipedia 'biography' John Seigenthaler
51. Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge (longer version)
52. World of Knowledge Torsten Kleinz
53. Death by Wikipedia: The Kenneth Lay Chronicles
54. Politicians notice Wikipedia Kane, Margaret
55. Microsoft offers cash for Wikipedia edit Bergstein, Brian
56. Left in Control of Wikipedia Jim Davis
57. Colbert speaks, America follows: All Hail Wikiality!
58. Log on and join in, but beware the web cults Charles Arthur
59. Wikipedia: The know-it-all Web site Kristie Lu Stout
60. " Critical views of Wikipedia Wikinfo
61. "List of policies and guidelines", English Wikipedia. Retrieved on 2007-01-31.
62. "Wikipedia:WikiProject", English Wikipedia. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
63.
64. Seeing Corporate Fingerprints From the Editing of Wikipedia Katie Hafner
65. "Trophy Box", Meta-Wiki (March 28 2005).
66. Webby Awards 2004
67. Nederlandse Wikipedia groeit als kool (Website in Dutch Language), Recovered December 27 2006
68. Similar Search Results: Google Wins Anthony Zumpano
69. Jimmy Wales Chris Anderson
70. Major award of Russian Internet became a state one — Lenta.ru, August 29 2005
71. "Wikipedia:Wikipedia in the media", Wikipedia
72. Bourgeois ''et al'' v. Peters ''et al.''
73. C-38, LEGISINFO (March 28 2005)
74. Wikipedia: The Free Online Encyclopedia and its Use as Court Source, , Martha L., Arias, Internet Business Law Services,
75. Courts Turn to Wikipedia, but Selectively Noam Cohen
76. Basayev: Russia's most wanted man
77. Shizuoka newspaper plagiarized Wikipedia article, ''Japan News Review'', July 5 2007
78. "Express-News staffer resigns after plagiarism in column is discovered", ''San Antonio Express-News'', January 9 2007.
79. "Inquiry prompts reporter's dismissal", ''Honolulu Star-Bulletin'', January 13 2007.
80. Radio 4 Documentary
81. Main Page
82. http://wikidocumentary.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
83. [2]
84. Web-based emulator of the Domesday Project User Interface and data from the Community Disc (contributions from the general public) -- most articles can be accessed using the interactive map
85. sep11memories.org/
86. First edit to the wiki In Memoriam: September 11 wiki (October 28 2002)
87. "In Memoriam",In Memoriam: September 11 Wiki (October 31 2006)
88. "Announcement of Wiktionary's creation", December 12 2002. Retrieved on 2007-02-02.
89. "Our projects", Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-01-24
90. The Free Encyclopedia Project
91. Wikipedia founder launches rival online encyclopedia Holden Frith — Holden Frith.
92.
Wikipedia Co-Founder Planning New Expert-Authored Site Jay Lyman
External links
★
Wikipedia - multilingual portal (contains links to all language editions of the project)
★
Wikipedia at the
Open Directory Project
★
CBC News: I, editor
★
Help Edit Wikipedia A
wikiHow article.
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