About Wikipedia
Wikipedia history
For more details on this topic, see History of Wikipedia.
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
Main pages: Wikipedia:Who writes Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Wikipedians
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
- See also: Reader’s Guide to Wikipedia
Exploring Wikipedia
Main page: Portal:Contents
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.
Main page: Help:Navigation
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
Main pages: Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia
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
- Main article: Wiki is not paper, on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki.
Strengths, weaknesses, and article quality in Wikipedia
See also: Reliability of Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Researching with 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.
Disclaimers
| Disclaimers |
|---|
| Core |
| Other |
Main page: Wikipedia: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
- Main pages: Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Starting an article, Wikipedia:New contributors' help page.
- Guide to fixing vandalism: Help:Reverting.
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
Main pages: Wikipedia:How to edit a page and Help:Wiki markup
Wikipedia uses a simple yet powerful page layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design. Page aspects facilitated include:- sections and subsections - which follow a page's lead section/introduction and (if specific conditions are met) a table of contents,
- references,
- images,
- tables,
- indentations
- lists,
- links,
- ISBNs,
- maths,
- formatting elements and most world alphabets and common symbols, Most of which have simple formats that are deliberately very easy and intuitive.
- 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 content criteria
Main page: Wikipedia:Wikipedia in brief
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.
Editorial administration, oversight, and management
Main page: Wikipedia:Editorial oversight and control
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
Main pages: Wikipedia:Vandalism, Wikipedia:Dispute resolution, Wikipedia:Consensus, Wikipedia:Sock puppetry and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest
Wikipedia has a rich set of methods to handle most abuses that
commonly arise. These methods are well-tested and should be relied upon.- Intentional vandalism can be reported and corrected by anyone.
- Unresolved disputes between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach, or validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or through Wikipedia's comprehensive dispute resolution process.
- Abuse of user accounts, such as the creation of "Internet sock puppets" or solicitation of friends and other parties to enforce a non-neutral viewpoint or inappropriate consensus within a discussion, or to disrupt other Wikipedia processes in an annoying manner, are addressed through the sock puppet policy.
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)
Main page: Wikipedia: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.- Talk pages—the associated discussion page for discussion of an article or policy's contents (usually the first place to go)
- Wikipedia:Vandalism—a facility for reporting vandalism (but fix vandalism as well as report it)
- Dispute resolution—the procedure for handling disputes that remain unresolved within an article's talk space
- Village pump—the Wikipedia discussion area, part of the community portal
- Wikipedia:Contact us
- Bug tracker—a facility for reporting problems with the Wikipedia website or the MediaWiki software that runs it
- Village pump: proposals page—a place for making non-policy suggestions
- And Wikipedia:Help desk—Wikipedia's general help desk, if other pages have not answered the query
Research help and similar questions
Facilities to help users researching specific topics can be found at:- Wikipedia:Requested articles—to suggest or request articles for the future.
- Wikipedia:Reference desk—to ask for help with any questions, or in finding specific facts.
- Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia—for information on using Wikipedia as a research tool.
Community discussion
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: |
Commons Free media repository |
 |
MediaWiki Wiki software development |
 |
Meta-Wiki Wikimedia project coordination |
 |
Wikibooks Free textbooks and manuals |
 |
Wikidata Free knowledge base |
 |
Wikinews Free-content news |
 |
Wikiquote Collection of quotations |
 |
Wikisource Free-content library |
 |
Wikispecies Directory of species |
 |
Wikiversity Free learning materials and activities |
 |
Wikivoyage Free travel guide |
 |
Wiktionary Dictionary and thesaurus |
- 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
 |
- List of online encyclopedias
- Wikipedia:A Primer for newcomers
- Wikipedia:Formal organization
- Wikipedia:History of Wikipedian processes and people
- Wikipedia:Quality control
- Wikipedia:Ten things you may not know about Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia (disambiguation)
- Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
- Wikipedia power structure (Meta)
References
- Report card. Wikimedia. Retrieved July 5, 2012.
- "Wikipedia announcements — May 2001". Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.
- "Wikipedia announcements — September 2001". Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org.
- Bill Thompson, "What is it with Wikipedia?" BBC, December 16, 2005.
Further reading
Main article: Bibliography of Wikipedia
- Phoebe Ayers; Charles Matthews; Ben Yates (2008). How Wikipedia Works:. No Starch Press. ISBN 978-1-59327-176-3.
- John Broughton (2008). Wikipedia Reader's Guide: The Missing Manual. O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN 978-0-596-55387-6.
- John Broughton (2008). Wikipedia: The Missing Manual. O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN 978-0-596-55377-7.
- Dan O'Sullivan (24 September 2009). Wikipedia: A New Community of Practice?. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-4094-8606-0.
- Andrew Lih (17 March 2009). The Wikipedia revolution: how a bunch of nobodies created the world's greatest encyclopedia. Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-4013-0371-6.
- Joseph Michael Reagle, Jr.; Lawrence Lessig (30 September 2010). Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-01447-2.
External links
- Mission statement - The Wikimedia Foundation
- Wikimedia values - The six values of the Wikimedia Foundation
- In a nutshell, what is Wikipedia? And what is the Wikimedia Foundation? - The Wikimedia Foundation
- Wikimedia founding principles - Principles generally supported by all of the Wikimedia communities
- Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia
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