[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.