www.wikipedia.org
About Wikipedia
Wikipedia history
The www.wikipedia.org website, Wikipedia's homepage for all languages
Wikipedia was founded as an offshoot of
Nupedia, a now-abandoned project to produce a free encyclopedia. Nupedia had an elaborate system of
peer review and required highly qualified contributors, but the writing of articles was slow. During 2000,
Jimmy Wales, founder of Nupedia, and
Larry Sanger,
whom Wales had employed to work on the project, discussed ways of
supplementing Nupedia with a more open, complementary project. Multiple
sources suggested that a
wiki might allow members of the public to contribute material, and Nupedia's first wiki went online on January 10, 2001.
There was considerable resistance on the part of Nupedia's editors
and reviewers to the idea of associating Nupedia with a website in the
wiki format, so the new project was given the name "Wikipedia" and
launched on its own domain, wikipedia.com, on January 15 (now called
"Wikipedia Day" by some users). The
bandwidth and
server (in San Diego) were donated by Wales. Other current and past
Bomis employees who have worked on the project include
Tim Shell,
one of the cofounders of Bomis and its current CEO, and programmer
Jason Richey. The domain was eventually changed to the present
wikipedia.org when the not-for-profit
Wikimedia Foundation was launched as its new parent organization, with the ".org"
top-level domain denoting its non-commercial nature.
In May 2001, a large number of non-English Wikipedias were launched — in
Catalan,
Chinese,
Dutch,
Esperanto,
French,
German,
Hebrew,
Italian,
Japanese,
Portuguese,
Russian,
Spanish, and
Swedish. These were soon joined by
Arabic and
Hungarian.
[2] In September,
[3] Polish was added, and further commitment to the multilingual provision of Wikipedia was made. At the end of the year,
Afrikaans,
Norwegian, and
Serbo-Croatian versions were announced.
Wikipedia contributors
Anyone with Web access can edit Wikipedia, and this openness
encourages inclusion of a tremendous amount of content. About
77,000 editors—from expert scholars to casual readers—regularly edit
Wikipedia, and these experienced editors often help to create a
consistent style throughout the encyclopedia, following our
Manual of Style.
Several mechanisms are in place to help Wikipedia members carry out
the important work of crafting a high-quality resource while maintaining
civility.
Editors are able to watch pages and techies can write editing programs
to keep track of or rectify bad edits. Where there are disagreements on
how to present facts, editors work together to arrive at an article that
fairly represents current expert opinion on the subject.
Although the Wikimedia Foundation owns the site, it is largely uninvolved in writing and daily operations.
Trademarks and copyrights
Wikipedia is a registered
trademark of the
not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which has created a family of free-content
projects that are built by user contributions.
Most of Wikipedia's text and many of its images are dual-licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the
GNU Free Documentation License
(GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or
back-cover texts). Some text has been imported only under CC-BY-SA and
CC-BY-SA-compatible license and cannot be reused under GFDL; such text
is identified either on the page footer, in the page history or on the
discussion page of the article that utilizes the text. Every image has a
description page which indicates the license under which it is released
or, if it is non-free, the rationale under which it is used.
Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the
CC-BY-SA and GFDL licenses ensure the content is freely distributable
and reproducible. (See the
copyright notice and the
content disclaimer for more information.)
Credits
Text on Wikipedia is a collaborative work, and the efforts of individual contributors to a page are recorded in that
page's history,
which is publicly viewable. Information on the authorship of images and
other media, such as sound files, can be found by clicking on the image
itself or the nearby information icon to display the
file page, which includes the author and source, where appropriate, along with other information.
Making the best use of Wikipedia
Exploring Wikipedia
Many visitors come to Wikipedia to acquire knowledge, while others
come to share knowledge. At this very instant, dozens of articles are
being improved, and
new articles are also being created. Changes can be viewed at the
Recent changes page and a random page at
random articles. Over 3,500 articles have been designated by the Wikipedia community as
featured articles, exemplifying the best articles in the encyclopedia. Another 15,000 articles are designated as
good articles. Some information on Wikipedia is organized into
lists; the best of these are designated as
featured lists. Wikipedia also has
portals, which organize content around topic areas; our best portals are selected as
featured portals. Articles can be found using the
search box on the top-right side of the screen.
Wikipedia is available in languages other than English. Wikipedia has
more than two hundred and eighty languages, including a
Simple English
version, and related projects include a dictionary, quotations, books,
manuals, and scientific reference sources, and a news service (see
sister projects).
All of these are maintained, updated, and managed by separate
communities, and often include information and articles that can be hard
to find through other common sources.
Basic navigation in Wikipedia
Wikipedia articles are all
linked, or cross-referenced. When highlighted text like
this
is seen, it means there is a link to some relevant article or Wikipedia
page with further in-depth information. Holding the mouse over the link
will often show to where the link will lead. The reader is always one
click away from more information on any point that has a link attached.
There are other links towards the ends of most articles, for other
articles of interest, relevant external websites and pages, reference
material, and
organized categories of knowledge which can be searched and traversed in a loose
hierarchy
for more information. Some articles may also have links to dictionary
definitions, audio-book readings, quotations, the same article in other
languages, and further information available on our
sister projects. Additional links can be easily made if a relevant link is missing–this is one simple way to contribute.
Using Wikipedia as a research tool
As
wiki
documents, articles are never considered complete and may be continually
edited and improved. Over time, this generally results in an upward
trend of quality and a growing consensus over a neutral representation
of information.
Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic
quality from the start: they may contain false or debatable information.
Indeed, many articles start their lives as displaying a single
viewpoint; and, after a long process of discussion, debate, and
argument, they gradually take on a
neutral point of view reached through
consensus.
Others may, for a while, become caught up in a heavily unbalanced
viewpoint which can take some time—months perhaps—to achieve better
balanced coverage of their subject. In part, this is because editors
often contribute content in which they have a particular interest and do
not attempt to make each article that they edit comprehensive. However,
eventually, additional editors expand and contribute to articles and
strive to achieve balance and comprehensive coverage. In addition,
Wikipedia operates a number of internal resolution processes that can
assist when editors disagree on content and approach. Usually, editors
eventually reach a consensus on ways to improve the article.
The
ideal Wikipedia article is well written, balanced,
neutral, and encyclopedic, containing comprehensive, notable,
verifiable knowledge. An increasing number of articles reach this standard over time, and many already have. Our best articles are called
Featured Articles (and display a small star in the upper right corner of the article), and our second best tier of articles are designated
Good Articles.
However, this is a process and can take months or years to be achieved,
as each user adds their contribution in turn. Some articles contain
statements which have not yet been fully
cited.
Others will later be augmented with new sections. Some information will
be considered by later contributors to be insufficiently founded and,
therefore, may be removed.
While the overall trend is toward improvement, it is important to use
Wikipedia carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source,
since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in quality and
maturity.
Guidelines and information pages
are available to help users and researchers do this effectively, as is
an article that summarizes third-party studies and assessments of the
reliability of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia vs paper encyclopedias
Wikipedia has advantages over traditional paper encyclopedias.
Wikipedia has a very low "publishing" cost for adding or expanding
entries and a low environmental impact
in some respects, since it never needs to be printed, although computers have their own
environmental cost. In addition, Wikipedia has
wikilinks
instead of in-line explanations and it incorporates overview summaries
(article introductions) with the extensive detail of full articles.
Additionally, the editorial cycle is short. A paper encyclopedia stays
the same until the next edition, whereas editors can update Wikipedia at
any instant, around the clock, to help ensure that articles stay
abreast of the most recent events and scholarship.
Strengths, weaknesses, and article quality in Wikipedia
Wikipedia's greatest strengths, weaknesses, and differences all arise
because it is open to anyone, it has a large contributor base, and its
articles are written by consensus, according to editorial guidelines and
policies.
- Wikipedia is open to a large contributor base, drawing a
large number of editors from diverse backgrounds. This allows Wikipedia
to significantly reduce regional and cultural bias found in many other
publications, and makes it very difficult for any group to censor and impose bias.
A large, diverse editor base also provides access and breadth on
subject matter that is otherwise inaccessible or little documented. A
large number of editors contributing at any moment also means that
Wikipedia can produce encyclopedic articles and resources covering
newsworthy events within hours or days of their occurrence. It also
means that like any publication, Wikipedia may reflect the cultural,
age, socio-economic, and other biases of its contributors. There is no
systematic process to make sure that "obviously important" topics are written about, so Wikipedia may contain unexpected oversights and omissions. While most
articles may be altered by anyone, in practice editing will be
performed by a certain demographic (younger rather than older, male
rather than female, rich enough to afford a computer rather than poor,
et cetera) and may, therefore, show some bias. Some topics may not be
covered well, while others may be covered in great depth.
- Allowing anyone to edit Wikipedia means that it is more easily vandalized or susceptible to unchecked information, which requires removal. See Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism.
While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly
corrected, Wikipedia is more subject to subtle viewpoint promotion than a
typical reference work. However, bias that would be unchallenged in a
traditional reference work is likely to be ultimately challenged or
considered on Wikipedia. While Wikipedia articles generally attain a
good standard after editing, it is important to note that fledgling
articles and those monitored less well may be susceptible to vandalism
and insertion of false information. Wikipedia's radical openness also
means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad
state, such as in the middle of a large edit, or a controversial
rewrite. Many contributors do not yet comply fully with key policies, or may add information without citable
sources. Wikipedia's open approach tremendously increases the chances
that any particular factual error or misleading statement will be
relatively promptly corrected. Numerous editors at any given time are
monitoring recent changes and edits to articles on their watchlist.
- Wikipedia is written by open and transparent consensus—an
approach that has its pros and cons. Censorship or imposing "official"
points of view is extremely difficult to achieve and usually fails after
a time. Eventually for most articles, all notable views become fairly
described and a neutral point of view
reached. In reality, the process of reaching consensus may be long and
drawn-out, with articles fluid or changeable for a long time while they
find their "neutral approach" that all sides can agree on. Reaching
neutrality is occasionally made harder by extreme-viewpoint contributors.
Wikipedia operates a full editorial dispute resolution process, one
that allows time for discussion and resolution in depth, but one that
also permits disagreements to last for months before poor-quality or
biased edits are removed. A common conclusion is that Wikipedia is a
valuable resource and provides a good reference point on its subjects.
- That said, articles and subject areas sometimes suffer from
significant omissions, and while misinformation and vandalism are
usually corrected quickly, this does not always happen. (See for example
this incident
in which a person inserted a fake biography linking a prominent
journalist to the Kennedy assassinations and Soviet Russia as a joke on a
co-worker which went undetected for four months, saying afterwards he
"didn’t know Wikipedia was used as a serious reference tool".)
- Wikipedia is written largely by amateurs. Those with expert
credentials are given no additional weight. Wikipedia is also not
subject to any peer review for scientific, medical or engineering
articles. One advantage to having amateurs write in Wikipedia is that
they have more free time on their hands so that they can make rapid
changes in response to current events. The wider the general public
interest in a topic, the more likely it is to attract contributions from
non-specialists.
The
MediaWiki
software that runs Wikipedia retains a history of all edits and
changes, thus information added to Wikipedia never "vanishes".
Discussion pages are an important resource on contentious topics.
Therefore, serious researchers can often find a wide range of vigorously
or thoughtfully advocated viewpoints not present in the consensus
article. As with any source, information should be checked. A 2005
editorial by a
BBC technology
writer comments that these debates are probably symptomatic of cultural
changes that are happening across all sources of information (including
search engines and the media), and may lead to "a better sense of how
to evaluate information sources".
[4]
Disclaimers
Wikipedia disclaimers apply to all pages on Wikipedia. However, the
consensus in Wikipedia is to put all disclaimers only as links and at
the end of each article. Proposals to have a warning box at the
beginning have been rejected. Some do not like the way it looks or that
it calls attention to possible errors in Wikipedia.
Wikipedia, in common with many websites, has a disclaimer that, at
times, has led to commentators citing these in order to support a view
that Wikipedia is unreliable. A selection of similar disclaimers from
places which are often regarded as reliable (including sources such as
Encyclopædia Britannica,
Associated Press, and the
Oxford English Dictionary) can be read and compared at
Wikipedia:Non-Wikipedia disclaimers.
Wikipedia content advisories can also be found here.
Contributing to Wikipedia
Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia by clicking on the
Edit tab in an article. Before beginning to contribute, however, read some handy helping tools such as the
tutorial and the
policies and guidelines, as well as
our welcome page.
Creating an account offers
many benefits. It is important to realize that in contributing to Wikipedia, users are expected to be
civil and
neutral, respecting all points of view, and only add
verifiable and factual information rather than
personal views and opinions. "
The five pillars of Wikipedia" cover this approach and are recommended reading before editing. (Vandals are reported via the
Administrator Notice Board and may be temporarily
blocked from editing Wikipedia.)
Most articles start as
stubs, but after many contributions, they can become
featured articles. Once the contributor has decided a topic of interest, they may want to
request that the article be written (or they could research the issue and write it themselves). Wikipedia has on-going
projects, focused on specific topic areas or tasks, which help coordinate editing.
The ease of editing Wikipedia results in many people editing. That
makes the updating of the encyclopedia very quick, almost as fast as
news websites.
Editing Wikipedia pages
Wikipedia uses a simple yet powerful page
layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design. Page aspects facilitated include:
Page editing is accessed through tabs that are found along the top edge of the page. These are:
- Article. Shows the main Wikipedia article.
- Talk. Shows a user discussion about the article's topic and possible revisions, controversies, etc.
- Edit. This tab allows users to edit the article. Depending on
the page’s susceptibility to vandalism, according to its visibility or
the degree of controversy surrounding the topic, this tab may not be
shown for all users. (For example, any user who is not an administrator will not be able to edit the Main Page.)
- View history. This tab allows readers to view the editors of the article and the changes that have been made.
- Star. ("Watch") If you are logged in to your account,
clicking on the star icon will cause any changes made to the article to
be displayed on the watchlist. (Note: when this icon is clicked, it
changes to a filled-in star.)
Wikipedia has robust
version and reversion controls.
This means that poor-quality edits or vandalism can quickly and easily
be reversed or brought up to an appropriate standard by any other
editor, so inexperienced editors cannot accidentally do permanent harm
if they make a mistake in their editing. As there are many more editors
intent on improving articles than not, error-ridden articles are usually
corrected promptly.
Wikipedia content criteria
Wikipedia content is intended to be factual, notable, verifiable with cited external sources, and neutrally presented.
The appropriate policies and guidelines for these are found at:
- Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, which summarizes what belongs in Wikipedia and what does not;
- Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, which describes Wikipedia's mandatory core approach to neutral, unbiased article-writing;
- Wikipedia:No original research,
which prohibits the use of Wikipedia to publish personal views and
original research of editors and defines Wikipedia's role as an
encyclopedia of existing recognized knowledge;
- Wikipedia:Verifiability,
which explains that it must be possible for readers to verify all
content against credible external sources (following the guidance in the
Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer that is linked-to at the end of every article);
- Wikipedia:Reliable sources, which explains what factors determine whether a source is acceptable;
- Wikipedia:Citing sources, which describes the manner of citing sources so that readers can verify content for themselves;
- And Wikipedia:Manual of Style,
which offers a style guide—in general editors tend to acquire knowledge
of appropriate writing styles and detailed formatting over time.
These are often abbreviated to
WP:NOT,
WP:NPOV,
WP:NOR,
WP:V,
WP:RS,
WP:CITE, and
WP:MOS respectively.
Editorial administration, oversight, and management
The Wikipedia community is largely self-organising, so that anyone
may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any
role s/he may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will
choose to become involved in specialised tasks, such as reviewing
articles at others' request, watching current edits for vandalism,
watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar
roles. Editors who believe they can serve the community better by
taking on additional administrative responsibility may ask their peers
for agreement to undertake such responsibilities. This structure
enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct.
At present a minimum approval of 75–80% from the community is required
to take on these additional tools and responsibilities. This standard
tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust, and familiarity
across a broad front of aspects within Wikipedia.
A variety of
software-assisted systems and
automated programs
help editors and administrators to watch for problematic edits and
editors. Theoretically all editors and users are treated equally with no
"power structure". There is, however,
a hierarchy of permissions and positions, some of which are listed hereafter:
- Anyone can edit most of the articles here. Some articles are protected due to vandalism or edit-warring, and can only be edited by certain editors.
- Anyone with an account that has been registered for four days or longer and has made at least ten edits becomes autoconfirmed, and gains the technical ability to do three things that non-autoconfirmed editors cannot:
- Move articles.
- Edit semi-protected articles.
- Vote in certain elections (minimum edit count to receive suffrage varies depending on the election).
- Many editors with accounts obtain access to certain tools that make
editing easier and faster. Few editors learn about most of those tools,
but one common privilege granted to editors in good standing is "rollback", which is the ability to undo edits more easily.
- Administrators ("admins" or "sysops") have been approved by the community, and have access to some significant administrative tools. They can delete articles, block accounts or IP addresses, and edit fully protected articles.
- Bureaucrats
are chosen in a process similar to that for selecting administrators.
There are not very many bureaucrats. They have the technical ability to
add or remove admin rights, approve or revoke "bot" privileges, and rename user accounts.
- The Arbitration Committee is analogous to Wikipedia's supreme court.
They deal with disputes that remain unresolved after other attempts at
dispute resolution have failed. Members of this Committee are elected by
the community and tend to be selected from among the pool of
experienced admins.
- Stewards
are the top echelon of technical permissions. Stewards can do a few
technical things, and one almost never hears much about them since they
normally only act when a local admin or bureaucrat is not available, and
hence almost never on the English Wikipedia. There are very few
stewards.
- Jimmy Wales,
the founder of Wikipedia, has several special roles and privileges. In
most instances, however, he does not expect to be treated differently
than any other editor or administrator.
Handling disputes and abuse
Wikipedia has a rich set of methods to handle most abuses that
commonly arise. These methods are well-tested and should be relied upon.
In addition, new users may initially find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal
polls in order to prevent abuse of
single-purpose accounts.
Editorial quality review
As well as systems to catch and control substandard and vandalistic edits, Wikipedia also has a full
style and content manual and a variety of positive systems for continual article review and improvement. Examples of the processes include
peer review,
good article assessment, and
the featured article process,
a rigorous review of articles that are intended to meet the highest
standards and showcase Wikipedia's capability to produce high-quality
work.
In addition, specific types of article or fields often have their own specialized and comprehensive
projects, assessment processes (such as
biographical article assessment), and expert reviewers within specific subjects. Nominated articles are also frequently the subject of specific focus on the
neutral point of view noticeboard or in
WikiProject Cleanup.
Technical attributes
Wikipedia uses
MediaWiki software, the
open-source program used not only on
Wikimedia projects but also on many other third-party websites. The hardware supporting the
Wikimedia projects is based on several hundred servers in various hosting centers around the world.
Full descriptions of these servers and their roles are available on this Meta-Wiki page. For technical information about Wikipedia, check
Technical FAQ. Wikipedia publishes various types of
metadata; and, across its pages, are many thousands of
microformats.
Feedback and questions
Wikipedia is run as a communal effort. It is a community project
whose result is an encyclopedia. Feedback about content should, in the
first instance, be raised on the discussion pages of those articles.
Be bold and edit the pages to add information or correct mistakes.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
Static help
The
Help:Contents may be accessed by clicking
help displayed under the
► Interaction tab at the top left of all pages.
- Help:Contents/Browse—is a menu-style page that will direct you to the right place to find information.
- Help:Contents/Directory—is a descriptive listing of all Wikipedia's informative, instructional and consultation pages.
Giving feedback
There is an established escalation-and-dispute process within
Wikipedia, as well as pages designed for questions, feedback,
suggestions, and comments. For a full listing of the services and
assistance that can be requested on Wikipedia, see
Wikipedia:Requests.
See also:
Research help and similar questions
Facilities to help users researching specific topics can be found at:
Because of the nature of Wikipedia, it is encouraged that people
looking for information should try to find it themselves in the first
instance. If, however, information is found to be missing from
Wikipedia,
be bold and
add it so others can gain.
For specific discussion not related to article content or editor conduct, see the
Village pump, which covers such subjects as
announcements,
policy and
technical discussion, and information on other specialized portals such as the
help,
reference and
peer review desks. The
Community Portal
is a centralized place to find things to do, collaborations, and
general editing help information, and find out what is happening.
The Signpost, a community-edited newspaper, has recent news regarding Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the
Wikimedia Foundation.
Contacting individual Wikipedia editors
To contact individual contributors, leave a message on their
talk page. Standard places to ask policy and project-related questions are the
Village Pump, online, and the
Wikipedia mailing-lists, over e-mail. Reach other
Wikipedians via
IRC and
e-mail.
In addition, the Wikimedia Foundation
Meta-Wiki
is a site for coordinating the various Wikipedia projects and sister
projects (and abstract discussions of policy and direction). Also
available are places for submitting
bug reports and feature requests.
For a full list of contact options, see
Wikipedia:Contact us.
Other languages
This Wikipedia is written in
English. Started in 2001, it currently contains
4,564,206 articles. Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below.
- More than 1,000,000 articles:
- More than 400,000 articles:
- More than 200,000 articles:
- More than 50,000 articles:
Sister projects
Wikipedia is hosted by the
Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other
projects:
- Please note that while other sites may also use MediaWiki software and therefore look similar to Wikipedia, or may have a name that includes “Wiki-” or “-pedia”, or a similar domain name,
the only projects which are part of the Wikimedia Foundation are those
listed above and Wikipedia, even if other projects claim to be part of
it.
See also
References
Further reading
External links
