January 15 marks the foundation day of Wikipedia: Here a few interesting facts about it
Wikipedia was founded on January 15, 2001 & made our lives easier, take a look at some of the interesting facts
We all know of the many search engines that are widely used in the world. One of them is Wikipedia, the encyclopedia of free online content. It was founded on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Let us take a look at some of the interesting facts about it.
How the idea came into existence?
Wikipedia was founded in the year 2001 by Jimmy Wales ( the founder of Wikipedia) with the aid of his co-founder Larry Sanger. To establish an online media company Bomis, Wales, moved to San Diego. Through his utter diligence and commitment towards work, Wales along with Sanger created Nupedia: an open-source encyclopedia, based on software called Wiki. It was undertaken with the idea of allowing the public to contribute material, and Nupedia’s first wiki went online on January 10, 2001.
After some mumblings and considerable resistance on the part of editors and reviewers, Wikipedia was launched in a separate domain and became Wikipedia.
Astonishing growth chart & launch of other languages
By 2006, there were around one million articles on Wikipedia. The only constraint was – they all were in English. By 2006, the articles in English language. By its 10th anniversary, there were around 4 million articles on different topics. After 2010, Wikipedia faced a stagnation & decided to try its hands on different language. The main aim was to reach a wider audience. In the year 2011, Wikipedia launched 250 non- English versions
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How it helped the users?
Exploration: Many readers come to acquire knowledge through Wikipedia while some come to share their knowledge. It allows one to update as per their experiences in the requisite field. For instance, ample articles are improved and created. Changes can be viewed at the Recent changes page and a random page at random articles. A few are organised in a list: Featured list. Articles that reach the “Featured Article” status is judged to be well-written, comprehensive, well-researched, neutral, and stable.
Simple Navigation: Many online web portals, show various ads on the ” click” button but It’s “click” takes readers directly to the main subject. Some articles may also have links to dictionary definitions, audio-book readings, quotations, the same article in other languages, and further information on our sister projects. Additional links can be easily made if a relevant link is missing—this is one simple way to contribute.
Why prefer Wikipedia over any other online web search engine?
The ideal Wikipedia article is well written, balanced, neutral, and encyclopedic, containing comprehensive, notable, verifiable knowledge. An increasing number of articles reach this standard over time, and many already have. Some articles contain statements that have not yet been fully cited. Others will later be augmented with new sections. Some information will be considered by later contributors to be insufficiently founded and, therefore, may be removed.
While the overall trend is toward improvement, it is important to use Wikipedia carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source. Individual articles will vary in quality and maturity by their nature. Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, articles have the potential to be more up-to-date and often contain fewer errors than traditional printed encyclopedias. Also, unlike traditional encyclopedias, there is no limit on the length or depth of an article. Bias can be monitored and corrected (though it is not absent), and because Wikipedia is international, articles have the potential to reflect non-Western interpretations of the world.
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