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''This article has been nominated on [[Wikipedia:Featured article candidates]]. Please refer to that page if you wish to second or contest the nomination.'' 

'''Wikipedia''' is a [[wiki]]-based [[free content]] [[encyclopedia]] which includes [[almanac]]-like and [[gazetteer]]-like information. "Free" means free to use, free to edit, and free to copy and redistribute. Wikipedia is multilingual, and an [[open content|open-content]], collaboratively developed creation, managed and operated by the non-profit [[Wikimedia|Wikimedia Foundation]]. As of [[March]] [[2004]], it contains over 230,000 articles in [[English language|English]], and over 300,000 articles in other languages.

Wikipedia started as an [[English language]] project on [[January 15]], [[2001]]. Later projects were begun to build Wikipedia in other languages.  More [[Wikipedia:Statistics|statistics]] and executive summaries may be found in the archive of Wikipedia press releases. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Press_releases]

==History==
Apart from brief downtimes caused by technical problems, Wikipedia has been in continuous operation since [[January 10]], [[2001]]. See [[History of Wikipedia]] for more.

==Antecedents==   
The idea of collecting all of the world's knowledge within arm's reach under a single roof goes back to the ancient [[Library of Alexandria]] and [[Pergamon]].

The [[China|Chinese]] emperor Chengzu oversaw the compilation of the [[Yongle Encyclopedia]], one of the largest encyclopedias in history, which was completed in [[1408]] and comprised over 11,000 handwritten volumes, of which only about 400 now survive.

The [[Early Muslim philosophy|early Muslim compilations of knowledge]] in the middle ages included many comprehensive works, and much development of what we now call [[scientific method]], [[historical method]], and [[citation]].  Notable works include [[Razi|Abu Bakr al-Razi]]'s encyclopedia of science, the [[Mutazilite]] [[Al-Kindi]]'s prolific output of 270 books, and [[Ibn Sina]]'s medical encyclopedia, which was a standard reference work for centuries.  Also notable are works of universal history (or sociology) from [[Asharite]]s, [[al-Tabri]], [[al-Masudi]], [[Ibn Rustah]], [[al-Athir]], and [[Ibn Khaldun]], whose [[The Muqadimmah|Muqadimmah]] contains cautions regarding trust in written records that remain wholly applicable today.  These people had an incalculable influence on methods of research and editing, due in part to the Islamic practice of [[isnad]] which emphasized fidelity to written record, checking sources, and skeptical inquiry.

However, these works were rarely available to more than specialists:  they were expensive, and written for those extending knowledge rather than (with some exceptions in medicine) using it. The modern idea of the general purpose widely distributed printed encyclopedia goes back to just a little before [[Denis Diderot]] and the [[18th century]] [[encyclopedist]]s. Major university libraries can be seen as museums of monumental encyclopedic endeavors in various countries. Frequently found titles are the [[English language|English]] ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'', the [[Spanish language|Spanish]] ''[[Enciclopedia Universal Illustrada]]'', the [[German language|German]] ''[[Meyers Konversations-Lexikon]]'' and ''[[Brockhaus]]''. See [[encyclopedia]] for more information.

The idea to use automated machinery beyond the [[printing press]] to build a more useful encyclopedia can be traced to [[H. G. Wells]]'s short story of  a ''[[World Brain]]'' ([[1937]]) and [[Vannevar Bush]]'s future vision of the microfilm based [[Memex]], in ''[[As We May Think]]'' ([[1945]]). An important milestone along this path is also [[Ted Nelson]]'s [[Project Xanadu]] ([[1960]]). 

With the development of the [[Internet]], many people attempted to develop online encyclopedia projects. See [[History of Internet encyclopedia projects]]. [[Free software]] exponent [[Richard Stallman]] articulated the usefulness of a "Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource" in [[1999]]. He described Wikipedia's formation as "exciting news," and his [[Free Software Foundation]] encourages people "to visit and contribute to the site."

==Essential characteristics==
There are three essential characteristics of the Wikipedia project, which together define its niche on the [[World Wide Web]]:
#It is, or aims to become, primarily an [[encyclopedia]].
#It is a [[WikiWiki|wiki]], in that (with a few exceptions) it can be edited by anyone.
#It is [[open content]], and uses the [[copyleft]] [[GNU Free Documentation License]].

:''If you wish to become a Wikipedia contributor, please take a look at the page titled [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Welcome%2C_newcomers Welcome, newcomers].''

==Vandalism==
One pertinent issue on Wikipedia is "[[vandalism]]": silly or offensive edits to its encyclopedia articles. For example, [[Sarah Lane]], presenter of "Sarah's Blog Report," part of ''[[The Screen Savers]]'' TV program on [[TechTV]], "vandalised" the Wikipedia page on [[monkeypox]] live on air [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Monkeypox&diff=1025690&oldid=1025666] - leading to a surge of vandalism on that page by viewers of the TV show. Lane later wrote that "Although this excites me in its ease and simplicity, it's a little frightening. I mean, what if I had instead written 'My boss is a big fat **** and his phone number is ****'? Sure, somebody would delete it, but this calls for some seriously dedicated moderators." [http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/answerstips/jump/0,24331,3463497,00.html]

"Because Wikipedia is a radically free, open project, it attracts an anarchistic element," [[Larry Sanger]], co-founder of Wikipedia, admitted to [[Wired Magazine|Wired News]]. "Fortunately, most of us are willing to take a definite stand against vandalism ... and to get rid of it instantly."

==Policies==
Wikipedia's participants commonly follow, and enforce, a few basic policies.

First, because there is a huge variety of participants of all [[ideology|ideologies]], and from around the world, Wikipedia is committed to making its articles as unbiased as possible. The aim is not to write articles from a single ''objective'' point of view -- this is a common misunderstanding of the policy -- but rather, to fairly present all views on an issue, attributed to their adherents.

Second, there are a number of article naming conventions; for example, when several names exist, the most common one in the respective Wikipedia language is to be used.

Third, Wikipedians use "talk" pages to discuss changes to the text, rather than discussing the changes within the text itself. Concerns which seem to span many articles may require a more general treatment at Meta-Wikipedia or on the mailing lists.

Fourth, there are a number of kinds of entries which are generally discouraged, because they do not, strictly speaking, constitute encyclopedia articles. For example, Wikipedia entries are not dictionary definitions, and the wholesale addition of source material such as the text of laws and speeches is generally frowned upon.

Fifth, there are a variety of rules, guidelines, policies, and common practices that have been proposed and which have varying amounts of support within the Wikipedia community.

==Personnel==
Wikipedia has been edited by thousands of people. Wikipedia calls people who edit it ''Wikipedians''. The total number of edits approximately doubled between January 2002 and January 2003, from 1,000 a day to 2,000 a day.

There is no editor-in-chief, as such. The two people who founded Wikipedia are Jimmy Wales (CEO of the small [[Internet company]] [[Bomis]], Inc.) and Larry Sanger. For the first thirteen months, Sanger was paid by Bomis to work on Wikipedia. Sanger was said to have taken a role of mediator at times, making decisions on issues of heated debates. This was based not on formal authority, but on demands from users at large. Funding ran out for his position, leading to his resignation in February of 2002. Other current and past Bomis employees who have done some work on the encyclopedia include Tim Shell, one of the co-founders of Bomis, as well as programmers Jason Richey and Toan Vo.

==Software and hardware==
The particular version of wiki software that originally ran Wikipedia was [[UseModWiki]], written by Clifford Adams ("Phase I"). First it required [[CamelCase]] for links; soon it was also possible to use the current linking method with double brackets.  In January 2002, Wikipedia began running on [[PHP programming language|PHP]] [[wiki software]], which used an underlying [[MySQL]] [[database]], added many features (and abolished the behaviour of CamelCase words automatically becoming links), and was specifically written for the Wikipedia project by Magnus Manske ("Phase II"). After a while, the site started to slow down to an extent where editing became almost impossible; several rounds of modifications to the software provided only temporary relief. Then Lee Daniel Crocker rewrote the software from scratch; the new version, a major improvement, has been running since July 2002; this "Phase III" software is now also called [[MediaWiki]]. Brion Vibber has since taken the lead in fixing bugs and tuning the database for performance.

In late 2003, server outages had become a serious problem to Wikipedia contributors. Many of them reported they had difficulty editing articles by getting time-outs and severe slowness. This was due to congestion on the single server that was running all the Wikipedias at the time.

The project runs on a set of three dedicated servers, which are the original configuration, located in [[San Diego]], and an additional nine dedicated servers, located in [[Florida]]. The new configuration currently includes a single database server and four web servers, which serve up pages as requested,   performing page rendering for all the Wikipedias.  To increase speed further, rendered pages for anonymous users are cached in a filesystem until rendered invalid, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. Cached requests are served by two ''squid'' servers; the new servers are linked via two file system [[NFS]] servers (one primary and one backup - the primary NFS server is currently also the email server).

==Sister projects==
Wikipedia has the following sister projects:
*[[Wiktionary]], a free dictionary project
*[[Wikibooks]], a free textbook project
*[[Wikiquote]], a free encyclopedia of quotations
*[[Wikisource]], a repository of source texts in any language which are either in the public domain or are released under the GFDL.

==Similar projects==
Wikipedia has been occasionally compared to the following collaborative online projects:
*[[Nupedia]], a slow-moving project to produce a free peer reviewed encyclopedia.
*[[Everything2]] has a wider range and does not exclusively focus on building an encyclopedia; its contents are not available under a [[copyleft]] license.
*[[Indymedia]], which focuses on networking first-hand source material from local, diverse groups of people around the world, linking grassroots, non-virtual social reality and the internet community.
*[[H2G2]], a collection of sometimes humorous encyclopedia articles, based on an idea from Douglas Adams's ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Articles are not freely redistributable.
*[[EvoWiki]] is "a Wiki about evolution and origins. The focus is on evolution education, particularly addressing the arguments of Creationism and Intelligent Design from the perspective of mainstream science. It is inspired by webpages such as talkorigins.org and talkdesign.org, and the goal of EvoWiki is to complement rather than duplicate these online resources".
*[[Disinfopedia]], a project to expose [[propaganda]] and paid spin doctors.
*[[Consumerium]], a project to provide consumers with product information and increase the power of the consumer in a market economy.
*[[Wikitravel]], a free travel guide started in [[July]] [[2003]].
* [[PlanetMath]] is a free Wiki-style mathematical encyclopedia which was originally built to replace [[MathWorld]], a proprietary system hosted at Wolfram Research which was down for some time due to legal difficulties. Since MathWorld has returned, PlanetMath has still thrived.
* [[Gnupedia]], an initiative which didn't come to fruition but had some interesting [[philosophy]].

==Downloading the database==
If people want to use Wikipedia's [[open content]] for something that cannot best be done on Wikipedia, they may at any time download a nearly-current version of the entire article database to use for any purpose, within the terms of the [[GFDL]].

A number of sites, such as "4reference.net" and "nationmaster" have used this to [[mirror (computing)|mirror]] or [[fork (software)|fork]] Wikipedia's content. [OpenFacts]

==External links==
===Related Sites===
*[http://meta.wikipedia.org/ Meta-Wikipedia]
*[http://wikipedia.sf.net MediaWiki Phase III Software] at [[SourceForge]]
* [http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=Copies_of_Wikipedia_content OpenFacts: Copies of Wikipedia content]

===Related papers and academic articles===
*[http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/free-encyclopedia.html The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource] by [[Richard Stallman]] (RMS)
*[http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/ IBM History Flow]: Technical experiment on "visualizing dynamic, evolving documents and   the interactions of multiple collaborating authors". Uses various Wikipedia articles as example data.
*[http://aronsson.se/wikipaper.html "Operation of a Large Scale, General Purpose Wiki Website"], Nov 2002, by Lars Aronsson, founder of [[susning.nu]].

===Reviews, endorsements, and discussion of Wikipedia===
* Official [http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/wikipedia:press%20coverage Wikipedia press coverage]
* News articles that mention Wikipedia (updated regularly):  [http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?c=&p=wikipedia Yahoo] [http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=Wikipedia Google]
* Aug 2003 [http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/03/wikipedia/index.html CNN Article about Wikipedia]
* Nov 2001 [http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2001-September/000481.html RMS describes Wikipedia as "exciting news"]
* July 2001 [http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/25/103136/121 Britannica or Nupedia? The Future of Free Encyclopedias] - Larry Sanger's response to [[Britannica]]'s decision to charge fee (July 2001).
* 1999 [http://www.gnu.org/encyclopedia/encyclopedia.html FSF endorsement of Wikipedia]


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