[Summary]
Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry
Sanger (Larry resigned later on) as a global free collaborative
online encyclopedia, financed by donations, with no advertising.
Its website is a wiki, which means that anyone can write, edit,
correct and improve information throughout the encyclopedia, with
people contributing under a pseudonym. The articles stay the
property of their authors, and can be freely used according to
Creative Commons or GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License).
Wikipedia quickly became the largest reference website. It was in
the top ten websites in December 2006, and in the top five
websites in 2008. In May 2007, Wikipedia had 7 million articles in
192 languages, including 1.8 million articles in English, 589,000
articles in German, 500,000 articles in French, 260,000 articles
in Portuguese, and 236,000 articles in Spanish. Wikipedia
celebrated its tenth anniversary in January 2011 with 17 million
articles in 270 languages et 400 million individual visits per
month for all websites.
***
Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry
Sanger (Larry resigned later on) as a global free collaborative
online encyclopedia.
Wikipedia was financed by donations, with no advertising. Its
website is a wiki, which means that anyone can write, edit,
correct and improve information throughout the encyclopedia, with
people contributing under a pseudonym. The articles stay the
property of their authors, and can be freely used according to
Creative Commons or GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License).
Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, founded in June
2003, which has run a number of other projects, beginning with
Wiktionary (launched in December 2002) and Wikibooks (launched in
June 2003), followed by Wikiquote, Wikisource (texts from public
domain), Wikimedia Commons (multimedia), Wikispecies (animals and
plants), Wikinews and Wikiversity (textbooks).
Wikipedia quickly became the largest reference website, with
thousands of people contributing worldwide. In December 2004,
Wikipedia had 1.3 million articles by 13,000 contributors in 100
languages. In December 2006, Wikipedia was among the top ten sites
on the web, with 6 million articles. In May 2007, Wikipedia had 7
million articles in 192 languages, including 1.8 million articles
in English, 589,000 articles in German, 500,000 articles in French,
260,000 articles in Portuguese, and 236,000 articles in Spanish.
In 2008, Wikipedia was in the top five websites. In September 2010,
Wikipedia had 14 million articles in 272 languages, including 3.4
million articles in English, 1.1 million articles in German and 1
million articles in French. Wikipedia celebrated its tenth
anniversary in January 2011 with 17 million articles in 270
languages et 400 million individual visits per month for all
websites.
Wikipedia also inspired many other projects over the years, for
example Citizendium, launched in 2007 as a pilot project to build
a new encyclopedia.
Citizendium, an acronym for “The Citizen’s Compendium”, was
launched in March 2007 at the initiative of Larry Sanger, who co-
founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in January 2001, but resigned
later on over policy and content quality issues, as well as the
use of anonymous pseudonyms.
Citizendium is a wiki project open to public collaboration, but
combining "public participation with gentle expert guidance". The
project is experts-led, not experts-only. Contributors use their
own names, and they are guided by expert editors. As explained by
Larry in his essay "Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge", posted
in September 2006 and updated in March 2007: "Editors will be able
to make content decisions in their areas of specialization, but
otherwise working shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary authors."
There are also constables who make sure the rules are respected.
There were 1,100 high-quality articles, 820 authors, and 180
editors in March 2007, 11,800 articles in August 2009, and 15,000
articles in September 2010. Citizendium wants to act as a
prototype for upcoming large scale knowledge-building projects
that would deliver reliable reference, scholarly and educational
content.