Wikipedia - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about Wikipedia in general. For Simple English Wikipedia's home page, see
Main Page
. For a formal introduction to Wikipedia, see
Wikipedia:About
. For the specific language Wikipedia this page is on, see
Simple English Wikipedia
"WP" redirects here. For the website software, see
WordPress
Wikipedia
The
Wikipedia logo
, a globe showing puzzle pieces with
glyphs
from several
writing systems
Screenshot
Wikipedia website portal showing the different languages sorted by article count
Type of site
Online encyclopedia
Available
in
334 languages
Owner
Wikimedia Foundation
Created
by
Jimmy Wales
Larry Sanger
Commercial
No
Registration
Optional
notes 1
Users
>633,418
broken anchor
active users
notes 2
and
>129,559,067
broken anchor
registered users and
1,067 administrators (English)
Launched
January
15, 2001
(25 years ago)
2001-01-15
Current
status
New, fresh, "innovative"
Content license
CC Attribution / Share-Alike
3.0
Most text is also dual-licensed under
GFDL
; media licensing varies
Written
in
LAMP
platform
OCLC
number
52075003
Wikipedia
is a
free content online
encyclopedia
website
in 343
languages
of the world in which 341 languages are currently active and 13 are closed. It is written and maintained by a community of
volunteers
, known as
Wikipedians
Users can freely use, share and change it, without having to pay. It is also one of the biggest
wiki
organizations
. People can choose to give money to the
Wikimedia Foundation
to fund Wikipedia and its sister projects. It is an
open content
website. This means anyone can copy or edit it and make changes to it as long as they follow the
rules
for copying or editing.
Wikipedia is owned by an United States organization, the
Wikimedia Foundation
, which is in
San Francisco
Wikipedia's name is a combination of two words,
wiki
and
encyclopedia
Wikipedia was started on January 9, 2001, by
Jimmy Wales
and
Larry Sanger
as part of an earlier
online encyclopedia
named
Nupedia
. On January 15, 2001, Wikipedia became a separate
website
of its own. It is a wiki that uses the
software
MediaWiki
(like all other
Wikimedia Foundation
projects).
Anyone who wishes to can change the pages on Wikipedia, or even make new ones. Wikipedia has a
standard
page layout
for all pages in the encyclopedia.
As of September 2011, Wikipedia had about 18 million pages in about 300
languages
and more than 3.50 billion words across all Wikipedias. The regular
English Wikipedia
is the largest
Wikipedia edition
Main Page
of the
English Wikipedia
on June 7, 2023
History
change
change source
Wikipedia began as a related project for
Nupedia
. Nupedia was a free
English-language
online encyclopedia
project. Nupedia's articles were written and owned by
Bomis, Inc
which was a
web portal
company. The important people of the company were
Jimmy Wales
the person in charge
of Bomis, and
Larry Sanger
, the
editor-in-chief
of Nupedia. Nupedia was first licensed under the Nupedia Open Content License which was changed to the
GNU Free Documentation License
before Wikipedia was founded and made their first article when
Richard Stallman
requested them.
Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales are the ones who started Wikipedia.
Wales is credited with defining the goals of the project.
Sanger created the
strategy
of using a
wiki
to reach Wales' goal.
On January 10, 2001,
Larry Sanger
proposed on the Nupedia
mailing list
to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia.
10
Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001. It was launched as an English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com,
11
and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list.
Wikipedia's policy of "neutral point-of-view"
12
was enforced in its initial months and was similar to Nupedia's earlier "nonbiased" policy. Otherwise, there weren't very many rules initially, and Wikipedia operated independently of Nupedia.
Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia,
Slashdot
, and from
people who looked it up
. It grew to about 20,000 articles and 18 languages by the end of 2001. By late 2002 it had 26 languages, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the end of 2004.
13
Nupedia and Wikipedia both existed until Nupedia's servers were stopped in 2003. After this, its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. The
English Wikipedia
reached 2 million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever. It is even larger than the
Yongle Encyclopedia
(1407), which had held the record for exactly 600
years.
14
The
English Wikipedia
reached 3 million articles in August 2009. The number of articles and contributors appeared to be growing less quickly around the spring of 2007.
15
In October 2014, the
Wikipedia Monument
was unveiled to the public in
Poland
to honor all the contributors of Wikipedia.
16
Wikipedia main page on Pampanga Wikipedia
According to the TechCrunch website, on 23 January 2020, Wikipedia reached more than 6 million articles on the
English Wikipedia
17
On 13 January 2021, the English Wikipedia reached one billion edits, where the billionth edit was made by
Steven Pruitt
18
MIT Press
published an
open access
book of essays
Wikipedia @ 20
: Stories of an Unfinished Revolution
, edited by Joseph Reagle and Jackie Koerner with contributions from prominent Wikipedians, Wikimedians, researchers, journalists, librarians and other experts reflecting on particular histories and themes.
19
By November 2021, Wikipedia had fallen to the thirteenth-placed website in the world for global internet engagement.
20
20th anniversary
change
change source
In January 2021,
Wikipedia's 20th anniversary
was noted in the media.
21
22
23
24
Gallery
change
change source
The logo used on the
English Wikipedia
on January 15, 2011
The first view of the
Wikipedia logo
Wikipedia Monument
Wikipedia originally developed from another
online encyclopedia
project,
Nupedia
Related pages
change
change source
Simple English Wikipedia
Epistemic community
Notes
change
change source
Registration is required for certain tasks such as editing
protected pages
, creating pages in the English Wikipedia, and uploading files.
To be considered
active
, a user must make at least one edit or other action in a given month.
References
change
change source
Sidener, Jonathan (December 6, 2004).
"Everyone's Encyclopedia"
U-T San Diego
. Archived from
the original
on January 14, 2016
. Retrieved
October 15,
2006
Chapman, Roger (September 6, 2011).
"Top 40 Website Programming Languages"
roadchap.com
. Archived from
the original
on September 22, 2013
. Retrieved
September 6,
2011
Andreas Kaplan, Haenlein Michael (2014) Collaborative projects (social media application): About Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Business Horizons, Volume 57 Issue 5, pp.617-626
Richard M. Stallman
(2007-06-20).
"The Free Encyclopedia Project"
. Free Software Foundation
. Retrieved
2008-01-04
Jonathan Sidener (2004-12-06).
"Everyone's Encyclopedia"
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Archived
from the original on 2004-12-15
. Retrieved
2006-10-15
Meyers, Peter (2001-09-20).
"Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You"
New York Times
. Retrieved
2007-11-22
'I can start an article that will consist of one paragraph, and then a real expert will come along and add three paragraphs and clean up my one paragraph,' said Larry Sanger of Las Vegas, who founded Wikipedia with Mr. Wales.
Sanger, Larry (April 18, 2005).
"The Early History of Nupedia and Wikipedia: A Memoir"
Slashdot
. Retrieved
2008-12-26
Sanger, Larry (January 17, 2001).
"Wikipedia Is Up!"
. Internet Archive. Archived from the original on 2001-05-06
. Retrieved
2008-12-26
{{
cite news
}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (
link
"Wikipedia-l: LinkBacks?"
. Retrieved
2007-02-20
Sanger, Larry (2001-01-10).
"Let's Make a Wiki"
. Internet Archive. Archived from
the original
on 2003-04-14
. Retrieved
2008-12-26
"Wikipedia: HomePage"
. Archived from
the original
on 2001-03-31
. Retrieved
2001-03-31
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
, Wikipedia (January 21, 2007)
"Multilingual statistics"
Wikipedia
. March 30, 2005
. Retrieved
2008-12-25
"Encyclopedias and Dictionaries".
Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th ed
. Vol.
18. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. pp.
257–
286.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Bobbie Johnson.
"Wikipedia approaches its limits"
"Poland to honor Wikipedia with monument"
AP News
. 9 October 2014
. Retrieved
15 August
2023
Singh, Manish (January 23, 2020).
"Wikipedia now has more than 6 million articles in English"
. Retrieved
November 24,
2025
"The English Language Wikipedia Just Had Its Billionth Edit"
Vice
. 15 January 2021.
Archived
from the original on 15 January 2021
. Retrieved
26 February
2021
Reagle, Joseph; Koerner, Jackie, eds. (2020-10-13).
Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution
. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
ISBN
978-0-262-53817-6
"The top 500 sites on the web"
Alexa
. Archived from
the original
on February 3, 2021
. Retrieved
June 13,
2020
Kelly, Heather (January 15, 2021).
"Technology: On its 20th birthday, Wikipedia might be the safest place online"
Washington Post
The world's largest online encyclopedia has learned lessons from fighting misinformation for two decades
Kent, German (January 15, 2021).
"In a post-truth world, we need Wikipedia more than ever"
CNET
Commentary: Wikipedia celebrated its 20th anniversary today. The free encyclopedia may not be exciting, but its neutral, volunteer-driven content is incredibly valuable.
"World in Progress: 20 years of Wikipedia"
(Audio)
Deutsche Welle
The year marks the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia. Every month, more than 1.7 billion people visit the open-source website in search of information about, well, just about anything! We speak with Dr. Bernie Hogan from the
Oxford Internet Institute
about Wikipedia's successes, where it fits into the discrimination crisis and the website's future.
Wales, Jimmy
(January 14, 2021).
"As Wikipedia turns 20 it aims to reach more readers"
via
Yahoo!
Wikipedia is the web's seventh-most visited site
Other websites
change
change source
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
- multilingual portal (contains links to all language editions of the project)
Wikipedia
Archived
2007-08-31 at the
Wayback Machine
at the
Open Directory Project
CBC News: I, editor
Wikipedia
Citizendium
Listen to this article
(info)
Spoken Wikipedia
This audio file was created from an article revision dated July 19, 2006, and does not play the most recent changes to the article. (
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Meta-Wiki
List of Wikipedias
by article count
7,000,000+
en
) (7,172,500)
6,000,000+
Cebuano
ceb
2,000,000+
German
de
French
fr
Swedish
sv
Dutch
nl
Russian
ru
1,000,000+
Arabic
ar
Chinese
zh
Egyptian Arabic
arz
Italian
it
Japanese
ja
Persian
fa
Polish
pl
Portuguese
pt
Spanish
es
Ukrainian
uk
Vietnamese
vi
Waray
war
200,000
–999,999
Armenian
hy
Azerbaijani
az
Basque
eu
Belarusian
be
Bulgarian
bg
Catalan
ca
Chechen
ce
Croatian
hr
Czech
cs
Danish
da
Esperanto
eo
Estonian
et
Finnish
fi
Galician
ga
Greek
el
Hebrew
he
Hungarian
hu
Indonesian
id
Kazakh
kk
Korean
ko
Lithuanian
lt
Malay
ms
Minangkabau
min
Norwegian (Bokmål)
no
Romanian
ro
Serbian
sr
Serbo-Croatian
sh
Simple English
simple
Slovak
sk
Southern Min
zh-min-nan
Tatar
tt
Turkish
tr
Urdu
ur
Uzbek
uz
Welsh
cy
50,000
–199,999
Afrikaans
af
Albanian
sq
Belarusian (Taraškievica)
be-tarask
Bengali
bn
Bosnian
bs
Breton
br
Cantonese
zh-yue
Chuvash
cv
Georgian
ka
Haitian Creole
ht
Hindi
hi
Icelandic
is
Irish
ga
Javanese
jv
Ladin
lld
Latin
la
Latvian
lv
Luxembourgish
lb
Macedonian
mk
Malagasy
mg
Malayalam
ml
Marathi
mr
Nepal Bhasa
new
Norwegian (Nynorsk)
nn
Occitan
oc
Piedmontese
pms
Punjabi
pa
Silesian
szl
Slovene
sl
Sundanese
su
Swahili
sw
Tamil
ta
Telugu
te
Thai
th
West Frisian
fy
Western Punjabi
pnb
>50,000
Alemannic
als
Aragonese
an
Dutch Low Saxon
nds-nl
Extremaduran
ext
Kannada
kn
Ligurian
lij
Meitei
mni
Mongolian
mn
Neapolitan
nap
Pashto
ps
Sanskrit
sa
Scots
sco
Sicilian
scn
Sindhi
sd
Tagalog
tl
Volapük
vo
Yiddish
yi
Zhuang
za
See also:
List of Wikimedia wikis
Authority control databases
International
VIAF
FAST
National
Germany
United States
France
BnF data
Czech Republic
Norway
Croatia
Argentina
Sweden
Israel
Catalonia
Artists
MusicBrainz
Other
IdRef
MusicBrainz label
Retrieved from "
Categories
2001 establishments in the United States
Wikipedia
Wikis
Websites established in 2001
Encyclopedia websites
Free encyclopedias
Hidden categories:
Pages with broken anchors
CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown
Commons category link from Wikidata
Webarchive template wayback links
Spoken articles
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