You want me to rewrite and expand this Wikipedia article, preserving all facts and internal links, and making it at least as long as the original. Honestly, the sheer volume of information is… daunting. But, if you insist. Just try not to expect any enthusiasm from my end.

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Wikipedia

Wikipedia (/ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdiə/ WIK-ih-PEE-dee-ə or /ˌwɪki-/ WIK-ee-PEE-dee-ə) is a free online encyclopedia that is collaboratively written and maintained by a global community of volunteers, collectively known as Wikipedians. Its foundation is built upon the wiki software platform, specifically MediaWiki, which allows for open collaboration. Established in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, Wikipedia has been under the stewardship of the Wikimedia Foundation, a registered American nonprofit organization, since 2003. The foundation's operations are primarily supported through reader donations. Wikipedia stands as the most extensive and widely accessed reference work in the entirety of human history.

Initially launched as a singular English language edition, Wikipedia has since expanded to encompass over 340 languages, a testament to its global reach and influence. It consistently ranks among the world's top ten most visited websites. The English Wikipedia, boasting more than 7 million articles, remains the largest of these editions. Collectively, the various language versions comprise over 65 million articles, attracting an astounding 1.5 billion unique device visits and generating approximately 13 million edits each month—averaging around 5 edits every second as of April 2024. As of September 2025, the United States accounts for over 25% of Wikipedia's traffic, followed by Japan at nearly 7%, and the United Kingdom, Germany, and Russia each contributing around 5%.

Wikipedia has been widely lauded for its role in the democratization of knowledge, its comprehensive coverage, its unique collaborative structure, and its distinct culture. However, it has also faced censorship from various national governments, with some blocking specific pages and others the entire site. The dedication of Wikipedia's volunteer editors has resulted in extensive content across a vast array of topics. Yet, the encyclopedia has not been immune to criticism, particularly regarding systemic bias, including a notable gender bias against women and a geographical bias that underrepresents the Global South. While its reliability was a subject of frequent debate in the early 2000s, there has been a demonstrable improvement, with commendations growing from the late 2010s onward. Articles on breaking news are often among the first to be updated, serving as a primary source for current information on unfolding events.

The logo of Wikipedia is a recognizable globe constructed from puzzle pieces, adorned with glyphs from various writing systems.

History

Nupedia

Prior to Wikipedia's inception, several attempts were made to create collaborative online encyclopedias, though with limited success. Wikipedia originated as a supplementary initiative to Nupedia, an ambitious free online English-language encyclopedia project that emphasized expert authorship and a rigorous peer-review process. Nupedia was launched on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis, a web portal company. The key figures in its establishment were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, who served as Nupedia's editor-in-chief and later played a similar role in Wikipedia's early development. Initially, Nupedia operated under its own Nupedia Open Content License. However, prior to Wikipedia's launch, Nupedia transitioned to the GNU Free Documentation License at the strong recommendation of Richard Stallman. Wales is generally credited with articulating the vision of a publicly editable encyclopedia, while Sanger is recognized for proposing the strategic use of a wiki to achieve this objective. In January 2001, Sanger suggested on the Nupedia mailing list the creation of a wiki as a "feeder" project, intended to supply Nupedia with content.

Launch and rapid growth

Wikipedia officially launched on January 15, 2001, often referred to as Wikipedia Day. It began as a single English language edition, accessible via the domain name wikipedia.com, and its inauguration was announced by Sanger to the Nupedia mailing list. The name itself is a portmanteau, a blend of the words "wiki" and "encyclopedia." Within its inaugural year, the fundamental policy of a "neutral point of view" began to take shape. In its nascent stages, Wikipedia had relatively few rules and operated quite independently of Nupedia. Bomis initially envisioned Wikipedia as a for-profit venture.

Wikipedia's early growth was fueled by contributors from Nupedia, mentions on popular websites like Slashdot, and indexing by web search engine algorithms. The creation of language editions commenced in March 2001, and by the close of 2004, 161 distinct language versions were operational. Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until 2003, when Nupedia's servers were permanently decommissioned, with its textual content subsequently integrated into Wikipedia. A significant milestone was reached on September 9, 2007, when the English Wikipedia surpassed the 2 million article mark, solidifying its status as the largest encyclopedia ever compiled, eclipsing the Yongle Encyclopedia from China's Ming dynasty in 1408, which had held the record for nearly six centuries.

In February 2002, citing concerns over potential commercial advertising and a desire for greater editorial control, users of the Spanish Wikipedia initiated a fork, establishing Enciclopedia Libre. Subsequently, Wales declared that Wikipedia would refrain from displaying advertisements and altered the domain name from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org.

Following an initial period of exponential growth, the rate of new article creation and editor acquisition on the English Wikipedia appears to have peaked around early 2007. The English edition reached 3 million articles in August 2009. While roughly 1,800 articles were added daily in 2006, this average decreased to approximately 800 by 2013. Researchers at the Palo Alto Research Center attributed this slowdown to factors such as increased coordination complexities, a less welcoming environment for newcomers, and resistance to new editorial approaches. Others proposed that the growth naturally plateaued as topics that clearly merited inclusion and could be easily developed had already been covered extensively.

In November 2009, a study conducted by a researcher at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid indicated that the English Wikipedia had experienced a loss of 49,000 editors in the first three months of 2009, a significant increase compared to the 4,900 lost during the same period in 2008. The Wall Street Journal cited the intricate web of editing rules and content-related disputes as contributing factors to this trend. Wales, however, contested these findings in 2009, refuting the notion of a decline and questioning the study's methodology. Two years later, in 2011, he acknowledged a slight decrease, noting a drop from "a little more than 36,000 writers" in June 2010 to 35,800 in June 2011, while simultaneously asserting that the editor numbers were "stable and sustainable." A 2013 article in MIT Technology Review, titled "The Decline of Wikipedia," challenged this assertion, reporting that Wikipedia had lost a third of its volunteer editors since 2007 and suggesting that the remaining editors were increasingly focusing on minor details. In July 2012, The Atlantic noted a decline in the number of administrators. By November 2013, New York magazine declared, "Wikipedia, the sixth-most-used website, is facing an internal crisis." Despite these concerns, the number of active English Wikipedia editors has since stabilized after a prolonged period of decline.

Sister projects

Wikipedia has served as the progenitor for several related projects, all operated under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation. These include Wiktionary, a multilingual dictionary launched in December 2002; Wikiquote, a compilation of quotations established shortly thereafter; Wikibooks, dedicated to collaboratively written free textbooks; Wikimedia Commons, a repository for freely licensed multimedia files; Wikinews, focused on collaborative journalism; and Wikiversity, aimed at creating free learning materials and facilitating online learning activities. Wikispecies, a catalog of species, is another sister project, though it is not open to public editing. In 2012, Wikivoyage, an editable travel guide, and Wikidata, a collaboratively edited knowledge base, were launched.

Milestones

In January 2007, Wikipedia entered the top ten most popular websites in the United States, according to Comscore Networks. With 42.9 million unique visitors, it ranked ninth, surpassing The New York Times (tenth) and Apple (eleventh). This represented a substantial increase from January 2006, when Wikipedia was ranked thirty-third with approximately 18.3 million unique visitors. By 2014, the site was receiving 8 billion page views monthly. On February 9, 2014, The New York Times reported that Wikipedia garnered 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors per month, citing data from the ratings firm comScore. As of March 2023, it held the sixth position in popularity according to Similarweb. Academics Jeff Loveland and Joseph Reagle posit that Wikipedia's development process mirrors the historical trajectory of encyclopedias, accumulating improvements incrementally through "stigmergic accumulation."

On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia participated in a coordinated protest against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the United States Congress. This protest involved blacking out its pages for 24 hours. The explanation page that temporarily replaced the site's content was viewed by over 162 million people.

In January 2013, an asteroid was named "274301 Wikipedia" in honor of the encyclopedia. In October 2014, a Wikipedia Monument was erected in Słubice, Poland. Later, in July 2015, 106 volumes of a projected 7,473-volume printed version of Wikipedia became available. In April 2019, the Israeli lunar lander Beresheet, which unfortunately crash-landed on the Moon, carried a copy of nearly all of the English Wikipedia engraved on thin nickel plates, which experts believe likely survived the impact. In June 2019, scientists announced they had encoded all 16 GB of English Wikipedia's article text into synthetic DNA.

On January 20, 2014, Subodh Varma, writing for The Economic Times, noted a potential stalling of Wikipedia's growth, with a reported decline of nearly 2 billion page views between December 2012 and December 2013. The most popular versions, English, German, and Japanese, experienced declines of 12%, 17%, and 9% respectively. Varma suggested that while Wikipedia's management considered this potentially due to counting errors, experts speculated that Google's Knowledge Graphs initiative might be diverting users. Clay Shirky, an associate professor at New York University, concurred, suggesting that users might not need to click through to Wikipedia if they could find answers directly on the search results page. By the end of December 2016, Wikipedia had regained its position as the fifth most popular website globally. As of January 2023, over 55,000 English Wikipedia articles had been cited more than 92,000 times in scholarly journals, with cloud computing being the most frequently cited page.

On January 18, 2023, Wikipedia unveiled a new website redesign known as "Vector 2022". This update included a redesigned menu bar, relocating the table of contents to a left-hand sidebar, and various other interface adjustments. The rollout was met with initial backlash, notably from editors of the Swahili Wikipedia, who unanimously voted to revert the changes.

Impacts of generative AI on Wikipedia views

This section requires further elaboration. Your input would be appreciated. (As of October 2025)

Since January 2024, the Wikimedia Foundation has observed a significant increase, approximately 50%, in bandwidth usage for multimedia content downloads across its projects. The foundation attributes this surge primarily to automated programs, or "scraper" bots, which systematically collect vast amounts of data from Wikimedia sites for the purpose of training large language models and related artificial intelligence applications.

In October 2025, the Wikimedia Foundation reported an estimated 8% decline in human page views compared to the same period in 2024. The foundation speculates that this decrease may reflect the growing influence of generative AI and social media platforms on how individuals seek and consume information.

Collaborative editing

Differences between article versions are clearly highlighted within the interface.

Restrictions

Due to its escalating popularity, certain Wikipedia editions, including the English version, have implemented editing restrictions. For example, on the English Wikipedia and several other language editions, only registered users are permitted to create new articles. Additionally, particularly contentious, sensitive, or vandalism-prone pages are subject to varying degrees of protection. Articles frequently targeted by vandalism may be "semi-protected" or "extended confirmed protected," meaning only users who meet specific criteria for account age and edit history can modify them. Highly controversial articles might be fully locked, allowing changes only by administrators. A 2021 article in the Columbia Journalism Review identified Wikipedia's page protection policies as a crucial mechanism for "regulating its market of ideas." Wikipedia also utilizes bots for automated editing tasks, a form of algorithmic governance that facilitates scalability but may also contribute to a reduction in active Wikipedia editors due to automated rejection of edits. All bots require community approval before their functions are implemented.

In specific instances, while all users can propose modifications, some edits may require review by established users based on certain conditions. For example, the German Wikipedia maintains "stable versions" of articles that have undergone review. Following extensive trials and community deliberation, the English Wikipedia introduced the "pending changes" system in December 2012. This system mandates that edits made by new or unregistered users to selected controversial or vandalism-prone articles must be reviewed by experienced users before being published. However, such editing restrictions can potentially decrease editor engagement and hinder efforts to diversify the editing community.

Articles pertaining to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are under extended-confirmed protection. Editors are limited to one revert per day across the entire Wikipedia, and can be banned from editing related articles. These restrictions were implemented in 2008. More recently, in January 2025, the Arbitration Committee introduced the "balanced editing restriction," requiring sanctioned users to dedicate no more than one-third of their edits to articles concerning the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, even in the absence of explicit misconduct violations.

Review of changes

The Wikipedia editing interface displays revisions clearly.

While changes are not systematically reviewed by a central authority, Wikipedia's software provides tools that enable any user to examine edits made by others. Each article features a "History" page detailing every revision. On most articles, users can view recent changes and revert edits by accessing the article's History page. Registered users can maintain a "watchlist" of articles they are interested in, receiving notifications of any modifications. A process known as "New pages patrol" involves checking newly created articles for obvious issues.

In 2003, Andrea Ciffolilli, an economics PhD student, argued that the low transaction costs associated with wiki participation fostered collaborative development. He noted that features allowing easy access to past versions of a page encouraged "creative construction" over "creative destruction."

Vandalism

Any alteration that deliberately undermines Wikipedia's integrity is classified as vandalism. The most common forms include the insertion of obscenities and crude humor, as well as advertising and other forms of spam. Vandalism can also manifest as the removal of content or the complete blanking of a page. Less obvious forms, such as the deliberate introduction of plausible but false information, can be more challenging to detect. Vandals may also manipulate formatting, alter page titles or categories, disrupt the underlying code, or misuse images.

The American journalist John Seigenthaler (1927–2014), who was the subject of the Seigenthaler biography incident, experienced firsthand the impact of such vandalism.

Obvious vandalism is typically removed swiftly from Wikipedia articles, with the median detection and correction time being a matter of minutes. However, some instances of vandalism require considerably more time to identify and rectify. The Seigenthaler biography incident involved an anonymous editor introducing false information into the biography of American political figure John Seigenthaler in May 2005. This misinformation falsely implicated Seigenthaler in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and remained uncorrected for four months. Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of USA Today and founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, contacted Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales to inquire about identifying the perpetrator. Wales stated he could not, though the individual was eventually traced. Following the incident, Seigenthaler publicly denounced Wikipedia as "a flawed and irresponsible research tool." This event prompted policy changes at Wikipedia aimed at strengthening the verification of biographical information for living individuals.

Disputes and edit warring

Disagreements among Wikipedia editors regarding content are common and are typically discussed on article "Talk" pages. These disputes can escalate into repeated, conflicting edits, a phenomenon known as "edit warring." This is widely perceived as a counterproductive activity that consumes resources without contributing new knowledge. It has also been criticized for fostering a competitive and conflict-driven editing culture, potentially linked to traditional masculine gender roles. Research in this area has explored aspects such as the impoliteness within disputes, the influence of rival editing factions, the conversational dynamics of these conflicts, and the shift in focus towards disputes over sources.

Taha Yasseri of the University of Oxford conducted a study in 2013 examining editing conflicts and their resolution. Yasseri proposed that "mutually reverting edit pairs"—where one editor reverses another's edit, who then reverses the first editor's change in sequence—were a more significant indicator of counterproductive behavior than simple reverts. His analysis, applied to several language versions of Wikipedia, identified George W. Bush, anarchism, and Muhammad as the articles with the highest conflict rates on the English Wikipedia. In contrast, the German Wikipedia's top conflict rates were associated with articles on Croatia, Scientology, and 9/11 conspiracy theories. In 2020, researchers developed additional metrics beyond mutual reverts to identify editing conflicts across Wikipedia.

Editors also engage in debates regarding the deletion of articles on Wikipedia. These discussions, which have occurred hundreds of thousands of times since Wikipedia's inception, are typically resolved based on initial votes (to keep or delete) and adherence to topic-specific notability policies.

Policies and content

The fundamental principles guiding the Wikipedia community are encapsulated in the "Five pillars," supplemented by numerous detailed editorial policies and guidelines designed to shape content effectively. The five pillars are:

• Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
• Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view.
• Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute.
• Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility.
• Wikipedia has no firm rules.

The community continuously develops and revises these rules, which are stored in wiki format, reflecting community consensus. While early non-English editions of Wikipedia largely relied on translations of English Wikipedia's rules, divergence has occurred over time.

Content policies and guidelines

The community guidelines on the English Wikipedia stipulate that each entry must concern an encyclopedic topic and avoid dictionary-style definitions. Topics are also expected to meet Wikipedia's standards of "notability", which generally requires coverage in reliable, independent sources. Wikipedia aims to present established and recognized knowledge, prohibiting original research. Certain subjects, such as politicians and academics, have specific notability criteria. Adherence to a neutral point of view is paramount, achieved through summarizing reliable sources, employing impartial language, and ensuring that multiple viewpoints are presented proportionally to their prominence. Verifiability is also a core requirement; information lacking citations may be tagged or removed. This adherence to policy can sometimes lead to the removal of valid information that is not adequately sourced. As Wikipedia's policies have evolved and become more intricate, their number has increased significantly; from 44 policy pages and 248 guideline pages in 2008 to 383 policy pages and 449 guideline pages by 2013, according to scholarly counts.

Governance

Wikipedia's initial structure, characterized by a degree of anarchy, gradually integrated democratic and hierarchical elements. No single editor or group "owns" an article; ownership is considered a shared responsibility. Experienced editors in good standing can request additional user rights, which grant technical capabilities for specific actions. Some rights, like "autoconfirmed" and "extended confirmed," are granted automatically upon meeting certain account age and edit count thresholds.

Administrators

Experienced editors can pursue "adminship" through a community vetting process. Administrators possess the ability to delete pages or prevent modifications in cases of severe vandalism or editorial disputes. Their powers are primarily administrative, focused on implementing project-wide actions and enforcing restrictions to prevent disruptive editing, rather than holding special decision-making authority. By 2012, the administrator appointment process had become more rigorous, leading to fewer editors seeking this role compared to earlier years. A particularly contentious adminship request in 2022, related to a candidate's anti-Trump views, ultimately resulted in the candidate being granted adminship.

Dispute resolution

Over time, Wikipedia has established a semi-formal process for dispute resolution. Editors can initiate discussions on relevant community forums, seek third-party opinions, or launch a "request for comment" (RFC) for broader community input. Bots assist in managing RFCs by adding discussions to a centralized list, inviting participation, and removing them after 30 days, though editors can adjust these timelines. If consensus is unclear, an uninvolved editor, typically in good standing, may render a verdict based on the arguments presented. The community emphasizes that these processes are not simple votes, often referring to opinions as "!votes," with the exclamation mark signifying "not" in logical negation.

Wikipedia encourages localized conflict resolution, a characteristic that scholars like Jemielniak highlight as unique in organizational studies, noting a growing interest in consensus building within the field. Reagle and Sue Gardner draw parallels between Wikipedia's consensus-building methods and those of Quakers, with a key difference being the absence of a formal facilitator during disagreements, a role typically filled by a clerk in Quaker meetings.

Arbitration Committee

The Arbitration Committee serves as the ultimate authority in dispute resolution. While disputes often stem from differing content viewpoints, the committee explicitly avoids ruling on the specific content that should be adopted. Statistical analyses suggest the committee prioritizes addressing editor conduct over content disputes, focusing on identifying and mitigating problematic editors while allowing productive ones to participate. Consequently, the committee does not dictate article content, although it may address content changes that violate Wikipedia policies, such as those deemed biased. Common resolutions include cautions and probations (used in 63% of cases), banning editors from specific articles (43%), subject areas (23%), or the entire platform (16%). Complete bans are typically reserved for instances of impersonation and antisocial behavior. For less severe violations like edit warring, sanctions are usually limited to warnings.

Community

Each Wikipedia article and user profile includes a dedicated "talk" page, serving as the primary communication channel for editors to discuss, coordinate, and debate. The Wikipedia community has been described as having cultlike aspects, though not always negatively. Its emphasis on cohesion, even at the expense of disregarding credentials, has been termed "anti-elitism."

Wikipedians collaborating with British Museum curators on the Hoxne Hoard article in June 2010.

Wikipedia does not require users to provide identification. As the project grew, the question "Who writes Wikipedia?" became a frequent inquiry. Jimmy Wales once asserted that the majority of contributions come from a dedicated core group of several hundred volunteers, likening the project to a traditional organization. Due to its reliance on volunteer labor, editors often gravitate towards topics that personally interest them.

The English Wikipedia currently hosts 7,092,022 articles, with 50,172,635 registered editors and 202,416 active editors (defined as those making at least one edit in the past 30 days). Editors who fail to adhere to community norms, such as signing talk page comments, may be perceived as outsiders, potentially leading to their contributions being discounted. Becoming an "insider" involves a significant investment of time and effort, including learning specific technological protocols, navigating a complex dispute resolution process, and understanding a culture rich with in-jokes and insider references. Anonymous editors, identified only by their IP addresses, are considered "second-class citizens" in a sense, as their contributions cannot be definitively attributed to a specific individual. New editors often face challenges in comprehending Wikipedia's complexities, and experienced editors are encouraged to practice "not biting the newcomers" to foster a more welcoming environment.

Research

A 2007 study from Dartmouth College found that anonymous and infrequent contributors to Wikipedia were as reliable a source of knowledge as registered users. In 2009, Jimmy Wales stated that over 50% of all edits were made by a mere 0.7% of users (approximately 524 individuals), and the top 2% (around 1,400 users) accounted for 73.4% of all edits. Conversely, Business Insider editor Henry Blodget demonstrated in 2009 that in a sample of articles, the majority of Wikipedia content (measured by surviving text) was created by "outsiders," while "insiders" primarily handled editing and formatting.

A 2008 article in Slate reported that approximately 1% of Wikipedia users were responsible for about half of the site's edits. This methodology was later challenged by Aaron Swartz, who noted that in his sampled articles, users with low edit counts had contributed substantial portions of the content. A 2008 study suggested Wikipedians exhibited lower levels of agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness compared to other groups, though subsequent commentary highlighted methodological flaws, including data indicating higher openness and minimal differences with control groups. A 2009 study indicated growing resistance within the Wikipedia community to new content.

Diversity

Multiple studies have indicated a predominantly male demographic among Wikipedia's volunteer contributors. A 2008 Wikimedia Foundation survey revealed that only 13% of Wikipedia editors were female. This disparity has prompted universities across the United States to encourage female participation, with institutions like Yale and Brown offering college credit for students who create or edit articles related to women in science or technology. Professor and scientist Andrew Lih suggested that the significant male majority might stem from women potentially facing "ugly, intimidating behavior" if they identify themselves as female editors. Data also indicates an underrepresentation of Africans among Wikipedia editors.

Language editions

The distribution of Wikipedia's 65,935,529 articles across various language editions as of November 17, 2025, shows English at 10.8%, followed by Cebuano at 9.30%, German at 4.70%, French at 4.10%, Swedish at 4.00%, and Dutch at 3.30%. The significant presence of Cebuano and Swedish editions is largely attributed to the article-creating bot Lsjbot, which, as of 2013, had generated approximately half the articles on the Swedish Wikipedia and the majority of articles in the Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias, both languages native to the Philippines.

Beyond the top six, twelve other Wikipedias exceed one million articles, including Spanish, Russian, Italian, Polish, Egyptian Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Arabic, Waray, and Portuguese. Seven more have over 500,000 articles (Persian, Catalan, Indonesian, Korean, Serbian, Chechen, and Norwegian), 44 have over 100,000, and 82 have over 10,000. The English Wikipedia remains the largest with over 7 million articles. As of January 2021, the English Wikipedia accounted for 48% of Wikipedia's total traffic, with the remaining share distributed among other languages. The top 10 editions collectively represent approximately 85% of the total traffic.

The global nature of Wikipedia means that contributors to the same language edition may originate from different countries and use varying dialects, potentially leading to conflicts over spelling differences (e.g., "colour" vs. "color") or differing points of view.

While global policies like "neutral point of view" are applied across all language editions, some variations exist, particularly concerning the use of non-free image files under fair use doctrines. The content on identical subjects can differ significantly between languages due to variations in editorial choices and source materials.

Jimmy Wales has articulated Wikipedia's mission as the creation and dissemination of a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every person on the planet, in their own language. Although each language edition operates with a degree of autonomy, coordination efforts are in place. Meta-Wiki, the Wikimedia Foundation's wiki for managing all its projects, plays a role in this coordination, providing essential statistics and maintaining a list of articles considered fundamental to every Wikipedia. This list covers core subjects like biography, history, geography, society, culture, science, technology, and mathematics. It is not uncommon for articles closely related to a specific language's cultural context to lack counterparts in other editions; for instance, articles about small towns in the United States might exist only in English, even if they meet the notability criteria for other Wikipedia projects.

Translated articles constitute a small fraction of content in most editions, partly due to limitations on fully automated translation. Articles available in multiple languages often feature "interwiki links" connecting to their counterparts in other editions. A 2012 study published in PLOS One estimated the contribution shares from different global regions to various Wikipedia editions, finding that North America contributed 51% of edits to the English Wikipedia and 25% to the Simple English Wikipedia.

English Wikipedia editor numbers

On March 1, 2014, The Economist, in an article titled "The Future of Wikipedia," highlighted a trend analysis indicating a one-third decrease in the number of editors for the English-language version over seven years. This attrition rate contrasted sharply with statistics for non-English Wikipedias, where the number of active editors (those with five or more edits per month) had remained relatively stable at approximately 42,000 since 2008. In contrast, the English Wikipedia's active editor count peaked around 50,000 in 2007, declining to 30,000 by early 2014. The Economist noted that the non-English editions' success in retaining editors suggested potential lessons for addressing editor attrition on the English Wikipedia, though no specific policy recommendations were made.

Reception

Various Wikipedians have voiced concerns regarding Wikipedia's extensive and growing regulatory framework, which comprised over fifty policies and nearly 150,000 words as of 2014. Critics argue that Wikipedia exhibits systemic bias. In 2010, columnist Edwin Black characterized Wikipedia as a mixture of "truth, half-truth, and some falsehoods." Articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Journal of Academic Librarianship have critiqued Wikipedia's "undue-weight policy," suggesting that the encyclopedia prioritizes presenting major viewpoints proportionally rather than ensuring absolute accuracy, potentially leading to omissions and misconceptions due to incomplete information.

Journalists Oliver Kamm and Edwin Black alleged in 2010 and 2011, respectively, that articles are often dominated by the most vocal and persistent contributors, typically groups with a vested interest in a particular topic. A 2008 article in the Education Next journal concluded that Wikipedia is susceptible to manipulation and spin when covering controversial subjects. In 2020, Omer Benjakob and Stephen Harrison observed a significant shift in media perception, noting that Wikipedia, once dismissed as an intellectual novelty, was increasingly lauded as the "last bastion of shared reality" online.

Numerous media outlets and commentators have accused Wikipedia of ideological bias. In February 2021, Fox News claimed Wikipedia was "whitewashing" communism and socialism, attributing this to excessive "leftist bias." Wikipedia co-founder Sanger expressed concern that Wikipedia had become a platform for left-leaning "propaganda" and could no longer be trusted. In 2022, libertarian commentator John Stossel suggested that Wikipedia had developed a significant bias toward the political left, particularly on political topics, despite his past financial support for the site. Some academic studies indicate that Wikipedia, especially the English version, exhibits a "western cultural bias" or "pro-western bias," and a "Eurocentric bias," which Anna Samoilenko notes mirrors biases found in academic scholarship. Carwil Bjork-James proposes that Wikipedia could adopt diversification patterns seen in contemporary scholarship, while Dangzhi Zhao advocates for a "decolonization" of Wikipedia to mitigate bias stemming from opinionated White male editors.

Accuracy of content

While traditional encyclopedias like Encyclopædia Britannica are known for their expert authorship and resulting reputation for accuracy, a 2005 peer review conducted by the science journal Nature comparing 42 scientific entries on both Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica found minimal differences in accuracy. The study concluded that Wikipedia's average science entry contained approximately four inaccuracies, while Britannica's contained about three. Joseph Reagle suggested that this finding might reflect Wikipedia's strength in scientific topics but acknowledged that a random sampling across all subjects or a focus on humanities might yield different results.

This study faced critiques, including challenges to its sample size and selection methodology, with arguments citing a "flawed study design," absence of statistical analysis, and insufficient "statistical power." Encyclopædia Britannica disputed Nature's findings, prompting a rebuttal from Nature. The open nature of Wikipedia inherently means it "makes no guarantee of validity," as ultimate responsibility for claims is diffused. Concerns have been raised regarding the lack of accountability stemming from user anonymity, the potential for introducing false information, vandalism, and related issues. Legal texts, such as Legal Research in a Nutshell (2011), cite Wikipedia as a valuable "general source" for gaining initial understanding of legal matters, providing basic facts and leads to more in-depth resources, although not as an authoritative source.

Economist Tyler Cowen stated that he would likely trust Wikipedia over the average peer-reviewed economics journal article for accuracy, noting that some traditional sources suffer from systemic biases and that novel findings are often overemphasized in journals, while relevant information is omitted from news reports. He cautioned, however, about the prevalence of errors on internet sites and the necessity for academics and experts to remain vigilant in correcting them. Amy Bruckman has argued that the extensive number of reviewers on Wikipedia could make its popular pages the most reliable form of information ever created. In September 2022, journalist Liam Mannix observed in The Sydney Morning Herald that while there's "no reason to expect Wikipedia to be accurate," it consistently proves to be. Mannix further noted that studies confirming Wikipedia's reliability relative to Encyclopædia Britannica suggest that dismissing such a valuable resource might be considered "petty."

Critics argue that Wikipedia's open structure and the variable quality of sources render it unreliable. Some commentators suggest that while Wikipedia can be reliable, the reliability of any specific article is not always apparent. Editors of traditional reference works, such as Encyclopædia Britannica, have questioned Wikipedia's utility and its standing as a true encyclopedia. Conversely, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales maintains that the community's regular debates on source quality help mitigate the issue of "fake news."

Coverage of topics and systemic bias

Wikipedia endeavors to compile a comprehensive summary of all human knowledge. Its vast storage capacity allows for coverage of a far greater number of topics than any printed encyclopedia. The extent and manner of coverage are subject to ongoing review and occasional disagreement among editors, particularly concerning deletionism and inclusionism. Wikipedia's content policies permit the inclusion of materials that some may find objectionable, offensive, or pornographic, adhering to a "Wikipedia is not censored" policy. This stance led to controversy in 2008 when Wikipedia declined an online petition to remove images of Muhammad from its article on the subject, citing this policy. The presence of politically, religiously, and sexually sensitive material has resulted in the censorship of Wikipedia by national authorities in countries including China and Pakistan.

Through initiatives like "Wikipedia Loves Libraries," Wikipedia collaborates with major public libraries, such as the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, to enhance coverage of underrepresented subjects. A 2011 study by researchers at the University of Minnesota indicated that male and female editors tend to focus on different subject areas: females showed a greater concentration in "people and arts," while males focused more on "geography and science." An editorial in The Guardian in 2014 claimed that more effort was dedicated to referencing a list of female porn actors than a list of women writers.

Systemic biases

Wikipedia's policies, such as prioritizing published sources as reliable, may inadvertently limit its capacity to represent global knowledge comprehensively. Oral traditions of Indigenous cultures, for instance, are not always captured in print. Similarly, marginalized topics often lack extensive coverage in reliable sources, thereby restricting Wikipedia's content.

Academic studies of Wikipedia consistently reveal that the average contributor to the English Wikipedia is an educated, technically inclined white male, aged 15–49, from a developed, predominantly Christian country. This demographic overrepresentation leads to a corresponding overrepresentation of this particular point of view (POV). This systemic bias in editor demographics results in cultural bias, gender bias, and geographical bias on Wikipedia. Biases manifest in two primary forms: implicit bias, where topics are omitted, and explicit bias, where a specific POV is overrepresented through article content or source selection. Interdisciplinary scholarly assessments suggest that while Wikipedia articles are generally accurate and free of misinformation, they often remain incomplete and may not consistently present all perspectives from a neutral point of view. In 2011, Wales attributed this uneven coverage to editor demographics, citing examples like the coverage of "biographies of famous women throughout history and issues surrounding early childcare." Tom Simonite's 2013 essay in MIT's Technology Review, "The Decline of Wikipedia," explored how systemic bias and policy creep contributed to the declining number of editors. Research by Mark Graham of the Oxford Internet Institute in 2009 indicated that the geographic distribution of article topics is highly uneven, with Africa being particularly underrepresented. Across 30 language editions, historical articles and sections generally exhibit a Eurocentric focus and a tendency to concentrate on recent events.

Explicit content

Wikipedia has faced criticism for including graphic content. Articles depicting what some critics deem objectionable material, such as feces, cadavers, the human penis, vulva, and nudity, often feature explicit imagery and detailed descriptions accessible to all internet users, including children. The site also hosts sexual content, including images and videos of masturbation and ejaculation, illustrations related to zoophilia, and photographs from hardcore pornographic films. Furthermore, it contains non-sexual photographs of nude children.

The Wikipedia article for Virgin Killer, an album by the German rock band Scorpions, features a picture of its original cover, which depicted a naked prepubescent girl. This controversial cover led to its replacement in some countries. In December 2008, access to the "Virgin Killer" article was blocked in the United Kingdom for four days by most Internet service providers after the Internet Watch Foundation classified the album cover as potentially illegal and added the article's URL to its "blacklist."

In April 2010, Sanger formally expressed concerns to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding two categories of images on Wikimedia Commons, alleging they constituted child pornography and violated US federal obscenity law. Sanger later clarified that the images, related to pedophilia and lolicon, did not depict real children but argued they constituted "obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children" under the PROTECT Act of 2003. This act prohibits photographic child pornography as well as cartoon images and drawings of children deemed obscene under American law. Sanger also voiced concerns about children accessing these images on Wikipedia from school environments.

A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, Jay Walsh, strongly refuted Sanger's allegations, stating that Wikipedia did not host "material we would deem to be illegal. If we did, we would remove it." Following Sanger's complaint, Wales proceeded to delete sexual images without community consultation. When some volunteer editors argued that the decision was made hastily, Wales voluntarily relinquished certain powers he held as a co-founder, explaining his action was "in the interest of encouraging this discussion to be about real philosophical/content issues, rather than be about me and how quickly I acted." However, critics, including those associated with Wikipediocracy, noted that many of the pornographic images deleted since 2010 have subsequently reappeared.

Privacy

A significant privacy concern related to Wikipedia involves an individual's right to remain a private citizen rather than being legally classified as a public figure. This presents a conflict between the right to anonymity in cyberspace and anonymity in real life. The Wikimedia Foundation's privacy policy states a commitment to not requiring personal information for participation in the free knowledge movement, while acknowledging that personal information may be shared for legal reasons, to protect users and the organization, or for research and experimentation.

In January 2006, a German court ordered the shutdown of the German Wikipedia within Germany due to its publication of the full name of Boris Floricic, also known as "Tron," a deceased hacker. However, on February 9, 2006, this injunction against Wikimedia Deutschland was overturned, with the court rejecting the claim that Tron's right to privacy, or that of his parents, had been violated.

Wikipedia employs a "Volunteer Response Team" utilizing Znuny, an open-source software fork of OTRS, to manage inquiries without revealing the identities of those involved. This system is used, for example, to verify permissions for using individual images and other media within the project.

In late April 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation announced its refusal to comply with any age verification requirements mandated by the UK's Online Safety Bill. Rebecca MacKinnon of the Wikimedia Foundation stated that such checks would contravene the website's core principle of minimal data collection from contributors and readers.

Sexism

Wikipedia was described in 2015 as a "battleground" culture rife with sexism and harassment. The perceived tolerance of abusive language was cited in 2013 as a reason for the gender gap in Wikipedia editorship. Edit-a-thons have been organized to encourage female editors and enhance coverage of women-related topics.

In May 2018, a Wikipedia editor rejected an article submission about Donna Strickland due to a perceived lack of media coverage. Five months later, Strickland was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for her "groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics," becoming only the third woman to receive the award. Prior to her Nobel win, Strickland's sole mention on Wikipedia was within the article of her collaborator and co-recipient, Gérard Mourou. Her exclusion from Wikipedia led to accusations of sexism, with Corinne Purtill writing for Quartz arguing that it served as a "pointed lesson in the hazards of gender bias in media, and of the broader consequences of underrepresentation," attributing the issue to systemic gender bias in media coverage.

A comprehensive 2008 survey, published in 2016 by Julia B. Bear of Stony Brook University's College of Business and Benjamin Collier of Carnegie Mellon University, identified significant gender differences in confidence, discomfort with editing, and responses to critical feedback. The study found that "Women reported less confidence in their expertise, expressed greater discomfort with editing (which typically involves conflict), and reported more negative responses to critical feedback compared to men."

Operation

Wikimedia Foundation and affiliate movements

Wikipedia is hosted and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also oversees related projects like Wiktionary and Wikibooks. The foundation's operational budget is sustained by public contributions and grants. Its 2020 IRS Form 990 indicated revenues of $124.6 million, expenses of nearly$112.2 million, assets totaling approximately $191.2 million, and liabilities of almost$11 million.

In May 2014, the Wikimedia Foundation appointed Lila Tretikov as its second executive director, succeeding Sue Gardner. The Wall Street Journal reported on May 1, 2014, that Tretikov's background in information technology, honed during her tenure at the University of California, offered Wikipedia an opportunity to pursue more focused development, aligning with her stated belief that "Information, like air, wants to be free." The same article cited Wikimedia spokesman Jay Walsh, who indicated that Tretikov would prioritize addressing issues like paid advocacy editing, emphasizing a drive for greater transparency and reinforcing the stance that "paid advocacy is not welcome." Other stated priorities included fostering greater contributor diversity, improving mobile accessibility, developing geo-location tools for local content discovery, and enhancing user support in developing nations.

Following Tretikov's departure due to controversies surrounding the use of the "superprotection" feature implemented on some Wikipedia language versions, Katherine Maher became the third executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation in June 2016. Maher identified editor harassment on Wikipedia as a key priority, stating to Bloomberg Businessweek that addressing this issue required "more than words."

Maher served as executive director until April 2021. Maryana Iskander was appointed CEO in September 2021 and assumed the role in January 2022, focusing on increasing diversity within the Wikimedia community.

Wikipedia also receives support from numerous independent organizations and groups affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, known as Wikimedia movement affiliates. These include Wikimedia chapters (national or sub-national organizations), thematic organizations (such as Amical Wikimedia for the Catalan language community), and user groups. These affiliates play a crucial role in promoting, developing, and funding Wikipedia.

Software operations and support

The functionality of Wikipedia relies on MediaWiki, a custom-built, free and open-source wiki software platform developed in PHP and utilizing the MySQL database system. MediaWiki incorporates advanced programming features such as a macro language, variables, a transclusion system for templates, and URL redirection. Licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), MediaWiki is employed across all Wikimedia projects and numerous other wiki initiatives. Initially, Wikipedia operated on UseModWiki, developed in Perl by Clifford Adams. This early version required CamelCase for article hyperlinks, a convention later replaced by the present double-bracket system. In January 2002, Wikipedia transitioned to a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database, software custom-developed for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. This Phase II software underwent continuous modifications to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. By July 2002, Wikipedia adopted its third-generation software, MediaWiki, initially developed by Lee Daniel Crocker.

Several MediaWiki extensions enhance the software's capabilities. A Lucene extension was added in April 2005 to improve Wikipedia's search functionality, replacing MySQL's built-in search. Lucene was later superseded by CirrusSearch, which is based on Elasticsearch. In July 2013, after extensive testing, a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) extension, VisualEditor, was made publicly available. It faced considerable rejection and criticism, with users describing it as "slow and buggy," leading to its transition from an opt-out to an opt-in feature.

Automated editing

Computer programs known as bots are frequently employed to automate repetitive tasks, such as correcting common misspellings and stylistic errors, or generating articles on topics like geography based on statistical data. Sverker Johansson, a notable contributor, utilized his bot Lsjbot to create an estimated 10,000 articles on the Swedish Wikipedia on certain days. Additionally, bots are programmed to notify editors of common editing mistakes, such as unmatched quotes or parentheses. Edits incorrectly flagged as originating from a banned editor can be reverted by other users. Anti-vandal bots are designed for the rapid detection and reversal of vandalism. Bots can also identify edits originating from specific accounts or IP address ranges, as was noted in July 2014 when edits related to the downing of the MH17 jet were linked to IPs controlled by the Russian government. All bots operating on Wikipedia must receive community approval before activation. According to Andrew Lih, the current expansion of Wikipedia to millions of articles would be difficult to achieve without the assistance of such bots.

Hardware operations and support

As of 2021, page requests are processed through a front-end layer of Varnish caching servers, with back-end caching handled by Apache Traffic Server. Requests not served by the Varnish cache are directed to load-balancing servers running Linux Virtual Server software, which then forward them to Apache web servers for page rendering from the database. These web servers deliver pages for all Wikipedia language editions. To further enhance speed, rendered pages are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated, effectively bypassing the rendering process for most frequent accesses.

Wikipedia currently operates on dedicated clusters of Linux servers running the Debian operating system. By January 22, 2013, Wikipedia had migrated its primary data center to an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia. A second application data center was established in 2014 in Carrollton, Texas, to bolster Wikipedia's reliability. These data centers alternate as primary and secondary sites each semester. In 2017, Wikipedia installed a caching cluster at an Equinix facility in Singapore, its first in Asia. A caching data center was opened in Marseille, France, in 2022, followed by one in São Paulo in 2024, its first in South America. As of November 2024, caching clusters are located in Amsterdam, San Francisco, Singapore, Marseille, and São Paulo.

Internal research and operational development

With donation revenues exceeding seven figures in 2013, the Wikimedia Foundation achieved a financial threshold warranting reinvestment into internal research and development, aligning with principles of industrial organization economics. Two key R&D projects focused on improving editor retention were the development of a Visual Editor and the "Thank" tab in the edit history. Industry benchmarks for R&D reinvestment, as studied by Adam Jaffe, suggest an annual range of 4% to 25%, with higher technology sectors requiring greater investment. Based on Wikimedia's 2013 contributions of $45 million, Jaffe's estimates indicate an annual reinvestment budget of$1.8 million to $11.3 million. By 2019, contributions had risen to$120 million annually, suggesting a recommended reinvestment range of $3.08 million to$19.2 million.

Internal news publications

Multiple Wikimedia projects maintain internal news publications. The Signpost, Wikipedia's online newspaper, was founded in 2005 by Michael Snow, a Wikipedia administrator who later joined the Wikimedia Foundation's board of trustees. The publication covers news and events relevant to the English Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wikipedia's sister projects.

The Wikipedia Library

Wikipedia editors often encounter difficulties accessing paywalled sources essential for improving article content. The Wikipedia Library serves as a resource providing editors with free access to a broad spectrum of digital publications, facilitating their consultation and citation during the editing process. Over 60 publishers have partnered with The Wikipedia Library, offering access to their resources. ICE Publishing, upon joining in 2020, stated its intention to "further the research community's resources – creating and updating Wikipedia entries on civil engineering which are read by thousands of monthly readers."

Access to content

Content licensing

When Wikipedia was launched in 2001, all text was covered by the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), a copyleft license allowing redistribution and derivative works, including commercial use, while preserving author copyright. The GFDL, designed for software manuals accompanying free software licensed under the GPL, proved ill-suited for a general reference work, notably requiring full GFDL text reprints. In December 2002, the Creative Commons license, specifically tailored for creative works, was released. Wikipedia sought to transition to this new license. Due to incompatibility between the GFDL and Creative Commons licenses, the Free Software Foundation released a new GFDL version in November 2008, enabling Wikipedia to relicense its content to CC BY-SA by August 1, 2009. A community-wide referendum in June 2009 confirmed this migration.

The handling of media files, such as images, varies across language editions. Some, like the English Wikipedia, incorporate non-free image files under fair use principles, while others abstain due to the absence of fair use doctrines in their respective legal frameworks (e.g., Japanese copyright law). Media files licensed under free content licenses (e.g., Creative Commons' CC BY-SA) are shared globally through the Wikimedia Commons repository. The Wikimedia Foundation acts solely as a hosting service for contributors and licensors, not as a content licensor, a position upheld in a 2004 French court case.

Methods of access

Wikipedia's open licensing allows anyone to reuse or redistribute its content freely. Wikipedia content has been published in numerous forms, both online and offline, beyond the official website. Thousands of "mirror sites" republish Wikipedia content, with prominent examples including Reference.com and Answers.com, which also aggregate content from other sources. Wapedia was an early service that displayed Wikipedia content in a mobile-friendly format before Wikipedia itself offered such a feature. Several search engines, including Microsoft Bing (utilizing technology from Powerset) and DuckDuckGo, incorporate Wikipedia content into their search results.

Collections of Wikipedia articles have been published on optical discs. A 2006 English version contained approximately 2,000 articles, while the 2006 Polish version featured nearly 240,000 articles. The 2007/2008 German version included over 620,000 articles, and the 2011 Spanish version contained 886,000 articles. Additionally, "Wikipedia for Schools," a selection of Wikipedia articles produced by Wikipedia and SOS Children, is freely distributed for educational purposes to children aged eight to seventeen.

Efforts have been made to publish select Wikipedia articles in printed book form. Since 2009, companies like Books LLC and subsidiaries of the German publisher VDM have produced tens of thousands of print-on-demand books reproducing English, German, Russian, and French Wikipedia articles.

The website DBpedia, launched in 2007, extracts data from Wikipedia's infoboxes and category declarations. The Wikidata project aims to store and provide queryable access to factual information from Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in a semantic format, such as RDF. As of February 2023, Wikidata contained over 101 million items. The WikiReader, a dedicated device for accessing an offline copy of Wikipedia, was released by OpenMoko in 2009.

Obtaining Wikipedia's full content for reuse presents challenges, as direct cloning via a web crawler is discouraged. Wikipedia publishes "dumps" of its content, but these are text-only; as of 2023, no image dump is available. Wikimedia Enterprise offers a commercial solution for this. Several Wikipedia language editions maintain reference desks where volunteers answer public queries. A study by Pnina Shachaf in the Journal of Documentation found the accuracy of the Wikipedia reference desk to be comparable to standard library reference desks, with an accuracy rate of 55 percent.

Mobile access

A mobile version displays Wikipedia's Main Page on October 2, 2024.

While Wikipedia content has been accessible via the mobile web since July 2013, The New York Times reported on February 9, 2014, that only 20% of English Wikipedia's readership accessed the site via mobile devices, significantly lower than the 50% seen on other media sites. The shift to mobile editing had lagged even further. In 2014, a team of ten software developers was assigned to focus on mobile development within the Wikimedia Foundation's approximately 200 employees. A primary concern cited was Wikipedia's ability to address editor attrition in a mobile environment. By 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation's staff had grown to over 700 employees.

Access to Wikipedia from mobile phones was possible as early as 2004 through the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) via the Wapedia service. In June 2007, Wikipedia launched en.mobile.wikipedia.org for wireless devices, followed by a newer mobile service at en.m.wikipedia.org in 2009, catering to advanced devices like the iPhone, Android-based devices, and WebOS-based devices. Numerous other mobile access methods have since emerged, with applications optimizing Wikipedia content display and incorporating features like metadata such as geoinformation.

The Android app for Wikipedia, released in January 2012, garnered over 500,000 installs and generally positive reviews. The iOS version followed on April 3, 2013, receiving similar feedback. Wikipedia Zero was an initiative by the Wikimedia Foundation to provide free access in developing countries through partnerships with mobile operators, but it was discontinued in February 2018 due to a lack of operator participation.

Andrew Lih and Andrew Brown suggest that editing Wikipedia via smartphones is challenging, potentially discouraging new contributors. Lih notes a declining trend in Wikipedia editorship, while Tom Simonite of MIT Technology Review attributes this partly to the platform's bureaucratic structure and rules, suggesting some editors exploit these to maintain the status quo. Lih expresses concern for Wikipedia's long-term future, while Brown fears persistent issues and the lack of a viable alternative encyclopedia.

Chinese access

Access to Wikipedia has been blocked in mainland China since May 2015, following Wikipedia's adoption of HTTPS encryption, which complicated selective censorship efforts.

Cultural significance

Trusted source to combat fake news

In response to a surge in false news reports during 2017–18, both Facebook and YouTube announced their intention to utilize Wikipedia to help users evaluate information and identify misinformation. Noam Cohen, writing in The Washington Post, noted that YouTube's reliance on Wikipedia mirrored Facebook's approach to combating "fake news."

Readership

In February 2014, The New York Times reported Wikipedia's ranking as the fifth most popular website globally, with 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors monthly, trailing only Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google. However, its ranking dropped to 13th globally by June 2020, largely due to the rise of Chinese e-commerce sites. The website has since recovered its standing as of April 2022.

Beyond its logistic growth in article count, Wikipedia has steadily gained status as a primary reference website since its 2001 launch. Global readership reached 365 million by the end of 2009. The Pew Internet and American Life project found that one-third of US internet users consulted Wikipedia. In 2011, Business Insider estimated Wikipedia's valuation at $4 billion if it were to implement advertising.

According to the "Wikipedia Readership Survey 2011," the average Wikipedia reader is 36 years old, with a near gender parity. Almost half of readers visit the site more than five times monthly, and a similar proportion actively seek out Wikipedia in search engine results. Approximately 47% of Wikipedia readers are unaware that it is a non-profit organization. As of February 2023, Wikipedia attracts around 2 billion unique devices monthly, with the English Wikipedia alone receiving 10 billion pageviews each month.

COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wikipedia's coverage of the pandemic and its efforts to combat misinformation garnered international media attention, contributing to a notable increase in overall readership. Noam Cohen, writing for Wired, observed that Wikipedia's approach to addressing pandemic-related misinformation differed from other major platforms, suggesting, "Unless Twitter, Facebook and the others can learn to address misinformation more effectively, Wikipedia will remain the last best place on the Internet." In October 2020, the World Health Organization announced the free licensing of its infographics and other materials for use on Wikimedia projects. As of November 2021, nearly 7,000 COVID-19 related articles existed across 188 different Wikipedias.

Cultural significance

The Wikipedia Monument in Słubice, Poland, created by Mihran Hakobyan (2014).

Wikipedia's content has been utilized in academic research, books, conferences, and legal proceedings. The Parliament of Canada's website references Wikipedia's article on same-sex marriage in its "further reading" section for the Civil Marriage Act. The encyclopedia's assertions are increasingly cited as a source by organizations such as US federal courts and the World Intellectual Property Organization, primarily for supporting information. Wikipedia content has also appeared in some US intelligence agency reports. In December 2008, the scientific journal RNA Biology established a new section for descriptions of RNA molecule families, requiring contributors to submit draft Wikipedia articles on RNA families. Wikipedia has also been used in journalism, often without attribution, leading to the dismissal of several reporters for plagiarism from Wikipedia.

In 2006, Time magazine recognized Wikipedia's role, alongside platforms like YouTube, Reddit, MySpace, and Facebook, in fostering the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction among millions worldwide. On September 16, 2007, The Washington Post highlighted Wikipedia's prominence in the 2008 US election campaign, stating that candidate Wikipedia pages, frequently edited and debated, were arguably as influential as campaign ads in shaping public perception. An October 2007 Reuters article, titled "Wikipedia page the latest status symbol," noted the phenomenon of having a Wikipedia article as a marker of notability.

One of Wikipedia's early involvements in governmental affairs occurred on September 28, 2007, when Italian politician Franco Grillini raised a parliamentary question regarding the necessity of freedom of panorama. He argued that its absence restricted Wikipedia's ability to display images of modern Italian architecture and art, potentially harming tourism revenues.

Wikipedia, an introduction – recipient of the Erasmus Prize in 2015. Jimmy Wales accepting the 2008 Quadriga "A Mission of Enlightenment" award on behalf of Wikipedia.

A working group led by Peter Stone, part of the Stanford-based One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, described Wikipedia as "the best-known example of crowdsourcing... that far exceeds traditionally-compiled information sources, such as encyclopedias and dictionaries, in scale and depth."

In a 2017 opinion piece for Wired, Hossein Derakhshan characterized Wikipedia as "one of the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web," contrasting its text-based knowledge repository with the values-driven content of social media platforms. Derakhshan posits that Wikipedia embodies the Age of Enlightenment tradition of rationality triumphing over emotion, a trend he views as "endangered" by the shift from a typographic to a photographic culture, prioritizing emotion and entertainment over exposition. He contrasts the Enlightenment motto "dare to know" (sapere aude) with a social media culture of "dare not to care to know." Derakhshan identifies Wikipedia's "flattening growth rate in the number of contributors" as a more significant challenge than funding, emphasizing the need to "save Wikipedia and its promise of a free and open collection of all human knowledge amid the conquest of new and old television—how to collect and preserve knowledge when nobody cares to know."

Awards

Wikipedia has received numerous awards, including its first two major accolades in May 2004: a Golden Nica for Digital Communities at the Prix Ars Electronica contest, which included a grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival, and a Judges' Webby Award for the "community" category.

In September 2008, Wikipedia was honored with the Quadriga "A Mission of Enlightenment" award from Werkstatt Deutschland, presented alongside recipients such as Boris Tadić, Eckart Höfling, and Peter Gabriel. In 2015, Wikipedia received both the annual Erasmus Prize, recognizing significant contributions to culture, society, or social sciences, and Spain's Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation. During the award ceremony in Oviedo, Jimmy Wales acknowledged the contributions of Asturian Wikipedia users.

Satire

Comedian Stephen Colbert has frequently parodied or referenced Wikipedia on his show The Colbert Report, coining the term wikiality to describe the creation of a collectively agreed-upon reality. Other satirical references include a July 2006 front-page article in The Onion titled "'Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence'," and a 2010 article titled "'L.A. Law' Wikipedia Page Viewed 874 Times Today."

In a 2007 episode of the American television comedy The Office, office manager Michael Scott consults a hypothetical Wikipedia article on negotiation tactics. Viewers attempted to add this reference to the actual Wikipedia article on negotiation, but their edits were prevented by other users on the article's talk page.

The 2007 television show Scrubs episode "My Number One Doctor" played on the perception of Wikipedia's unreliability, featuring a scene where Perry Cox dismisses a patient's reliance on a Wikipedia article about the raw food diet reversing bone cancer by noting the same editor also wrote the Battlestar Galactica episode guide.

In 2008, the comedy website CollegeHumor released a video sketch titled "Professor Wikipedia," depicting a fictional professor presenting unverifiable and absurd information. The Dilbert comic strip from May 8, 2009, featured a character supporting a dubious claim by stating, "Give me ten minutes and then check Wikipedia." BBC Radio 4 broadcasted a comedy series in July 2009 called Bigipedia, a parody of Wikipedia, with sketches directly inspired by the site and its articles.

A cartoon published on New Yorker website in August 2013, captioned "Dammit, Manning, have you considered the pronoun war that this is going to start on your Wikipedia page?", referenced Chelsea Elizabeth Manning's recent coming out as a trans woman. In June 2024, nature.com published a fictional Wikipedia Talk page titled "Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday," by Emma Burnett, humorously depicting typical Wikipedia talk page discussions regarding article changes and priority levels.

Publishing

The widespread availability of Wikipedia has significantly impacted the commercial encyclopedia market, particularly affecting printed versions like Encyclopædia Britannica, which struggled to compete with a free alternative. Nicholas Carr's 2005 essay "The amorality of Web 2.0" criticized user-generated content platforms like Wikipedia for potentially displacing professional content creators, arguing that "free trumps quality all the time" and expressing concern about the "hegemony of the amateur." Conversely, others, like Chris Anderson, former editor-in-chief of Wired, argue that Wikipedia's "wisdom of crowds" approach will not supersede rigorous peer review processes in top scientific journals.

Wikipedia's influence on biography publishing has raised concerns. Nielsen BookScan, a book publishing data tracker, reported a sharp decline in biography sales in 2013, with Kathryn Hughes, a professor of life writing, questioning the future of biography if readily accessible information from Wikipedia diminishes reader interest.

Research use

Wikipedia serves as a valuable corpus for research in computational linguistics, information retrieval, and natural language processing. It is frequently used as a target knowledge base for "wikification," the process of linking documents to encyclopedic knowledge, and for word-sense disambiguation. Similar techniques can also identify "missing" links within Wikipedia itself.

In 2015, French researchers developed a global university ranking system based on Wikipedia scholarly citations, employing algorithms like PageRank and [CheiRank], factoring in appearances across 24 language editions and founding centuries. This study was updated in 2019. In December 2015, John Julius Norwich, a historian, stated he consulted Wikipedia "at least a dozen times a day" and had "never caught it out," describing it as an invaluable reference work that was crucial for his own writing. A 2017 MIT study suggested that words originating in Wikipedia articles often appear in subsequent scientific publications. Research related to Wikipedia increasingly utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence for tasks such as vandalism detection and data quality assessment.

Related projects

Several interactive multimedia encyclopedias predated Wikipedia, featuring public contributions. The BBC Domesday Project in 1986, which collected text and photographs from over a million UK contributors, covered British geography, art, and culture. It was the first interactive multimedia encyclopedia with internal links, accessible via an interactive map. Its user interface and content were emulated on a website until 2008.

Around the same time as Wikipedia's launch, other free-content, collaborative encyclopedias emerged, such as Everything2, with some later merging into Wikipedia, like GNE. h2g2, created by Douglas Adams in 1999, was another successful early online encyclopedia known for its witty and informative articles.

Subsequent collaborative knowledge websites have drawn inspiration from Wikipedia. Others, like Encyclopedia of Life, Scholarpedia, and Citizendium, utilize more traditional peer review. Citizendium was founded by Sanger as an alternative to Wikipedia, emphasizing expert oversight.

See also

• Internet portal
• Wikipedia portal
• Democratization of knowledge
• Interpedia – an early proposal for a collaborative Internet encyclopedia.
• List of films about Wikipedia
• List of online encyclopedias
• List of Wikipedia controversies
• List of wikis
• Outline of Wikipedia – a guide to the subject, distinct from an outline of Wikipedia's contents (Portal:Contents/Outlines).
• QRpedia – a multilingual, mobile interface for Wikipedia.
• Wikipedia Review
• Main Category: Wikipedia

Notes

• Registration is required for specific actions, such as editing protected pages, creating new pages on the English Wikipedia, and uploading files.
• Most text is also dual-licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License; media licensing varies.
• Pronunciation: /ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdiə/ WIK-ih-PEE-dee-ə or /ˌwɪki-/ WIK-ee-PEE-dee-ə.
• Available as an archive at the Nostalgia Wikipedia.
• Revisions containing libelous content, criminal threats, or copyright infringements may be entirely removed.
• The Arbitration Committee may rule on the appropriateness of content changes but does not directly rule on the content itself.
• See "Libel" by David McHam for legal distinctions.