1 Wikipedia

Wikipedia (/ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdiə/ (), /ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ () WIK-ih-PEE-dee-ə) is a multilingual online encyclopedia with exclusively free content and no ads (though donations are accepted), based on open collaboration through a model of content editing using web-based applications such as web browsers, called wiki. It is the largest and most popular general reference work on the World Wide Web,[3][4][5] and is one of the most popular websites by Alexa rank as of April 2019.[6] It is owned and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that operates on money it receives from donors to remain ad-free.[7][8][9][10]

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.[11] Sanger coined its name,[12][13] as a portmanteau of wiki (the Hawai'ian word for "quick"[14]) and "encyclopedia". Initially an English-language encyclopedia, versions in other languages were quickly developed. With 5,860,903 articles,[notes 3] the English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 290 Wikipedia encyclopedias. Overall, Wikipedia comprises more than 40 million articles in 301 different languages[15] and by February 2014 it had reached 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors per month.[16]

In 2005, Nature published a peer review comparing 42 hard science articles from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia and found that Wikipedia's level of accuracy approached that of Britannica,[17] although critics suggested that it might not have fared so well in a similar study of a random sampling of all articles or one focused on social science or contentious social issues.[18][19] The following year, Time magazine stated that the open-door policy of allowing anyone to edit had made Wikipedia the biggest and possibly the best encyclopedia in the world, and was a testament to the vision of Jimmy Wales.[20]

Wikipedia has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, for presenting a mixture of "truths, half truths, and some falsehoods",[21] and for being subject to manipulation and spin in controversial topics.[22] But by 2017, Facebook announced that it would help readers detect fake news by suggesting links to related Wikipedia articles. YouTube announced a similar plan in 2018.[23]

Milestones

In January 2007, Wikipedia entered for the first time the top-ten list of the most popular websites in the US, according to comScore Networks. With 42.9 million unique visitors, Wikipedia was ranked number 9, surpassing The New York Times (#10) and Apple (#11). This marked a significant increase over January 2006, when the rank was number 33, with Wikipedia receiving around 18.3 million unique visitors.[56] As of May 2019, Wikipedia has rank 5[6][57] among websites in terms of popularity according to Alexa Internet. In 2014, it received 8 billion pageviews every month.[58] On February 9, 2014, The New York Times reported that Wikipedia has 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month, "according to the ratings firm comScore."[16]

On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia participated in a series of coordinated protests against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)—by blacking out its pages for 24 hours.[59] More than 162 million people viewed the blackout explanation page that temporarily replaced Wikipedia content.[60][61]

Loveland and Reagle argue that, in process, Wikipedia follows a long tradition of historical encyclopedias that accumulated improvements piecemeal through "stigmergic accumulation".[62][63]

On January 20, 2014, Subodh Varma reporting for The Economic Times indicated that not only had Wikipedia's growth flattened, but that it "had lost nearly 10 per cent of its page views last year. There was a decline of about 2 billion between December 2012 and December 2013. Its most popular versions are leading the slide: page-views of the English Wikipedia declined by 12 per cent, those of German version slid by 17 per cent and the Japanese version lost 9 per cent."[64] Varma added that, "While Wikipedia's managers think that this could be due to errors in counting, other experts feel that Google's Knowledge Graphs project launched last year may be gobbling up Wikipedia users."[64] When contacted on this matter, Clay Shirky, associate professor at New York University and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Security indicated that he suspected much of the page view decline was due to Knowledge Graphs, stating, "If you can get your question answered from the search page, you don't need to click [any further]."[64]

By the end of December 2016, Wikipedia was ranked fifth in the most popular websites globally.[65]