Wikipedia is the largest and most popular reference work available on the Internetđšâđ».
This free, open content encyclopediađ has been created through the collective effort of a community of usersknown as Wikipedians.
It has the worldâs largest collectionâ of articles with the figure reaching over 59 lakh in Nov. 2019.
How it started?
Wikipedia was foundedđ± by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001.
It was a subsidiary of an earlier online encyclopedia called Nupedia.
Initially, Wikipedia was available only in English but now it is available in more than 200 languagesđ.
How it works?
Anyone registered on Wikipedia can create an articleđ for publication.
Significantly, any visitor to the site is free to editđ€ any page.
This fact itself brings in criticismđŁÂ for Wikipedia as many questionâ the reliability of such articles whose contributors are not publicly accountableđđ»ââ for their content.
Wikipedia thus depends upon its editorsâ vigilanceđ§Â to find and reverse such changes made to the content.
A measure of its popularity
Wikipedia ranks among the worldâs top 10đ visited sites over the past decadeđ.
It is also the most popular among wikiâs knowledge-basedđ websites.
Other resources from the house of Wiki include Wikimedia Commons, MediaWiki, Wikinews, Wikiquotes, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikidata, Wikispecies and Meta-Wiki.