i/ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə/ or i/ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ WIK-i-PEE-dee-ə) is a collaboratively edited, multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia's 30 million articles in 287 languages, including over 4.4 million in the English Wikipedia, are written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone having access to the site.[4] It is the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet,[5][6][7][8][9] ranking sixth globally among all websites on Alexa, and having an estimated 365 million readers worldwide.[5][10]Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.[11] Sanger coined the name Wikipedia,[12] which is a portmanteau of wiki (a type of collaborative website, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick")[13] and encyclopedia.
Wikipedia's departure from the expert-driven style of encyclopedia-building and the presence of a large body of unacademic content have received extensive attention in print media. In 2006, Time magazine recognized Wikipedia's participation in the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction by millions of people around the world, in addition to YouTube, Reddit, MySpace, and Facebook.[14] Wikipedia has also become known as a news source because of the rapid update of articles related to breaking news.[15][16][17]
The open nature of Wikipedia has led to concerns about the quality of writing,[18][19] the amount of vandalism,[20][21] and the accuracy of information. Some articles contain unverified or inconsistent information,[22] though a 2005 investigation in Nature showed that the science articles they compared came close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopædia Britannica.[23]
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