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Wikipedia
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Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project. The name is a portmanteau of the words wiki and encyclopedia. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most of its articles to be edited by almost anyone with access to the Web site. Its main servers are in Tampa, Florida, with additional servers in Amsterdam and Seoul.
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Wikipedia (a combination of the word wiki and encyclopedia) is an on-line copyleft encyclopedia that is constantly evolving and can be edited by anyone. Hosted and supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, this open source resource is collaboratively created and maintained by thousands of users worldwide. Any article contributed to Wikipedia becomes free content that may be used, edited, copied and redistributed by users. All materials contributed to Wikipedia must be verifiable by other users.
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As of December 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 9.25 million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.74 billion words for all Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000 article mark on September 9, 2007, and as of February 11, 2008 it had over 2,220,000 articles consisting of over 966,000,000 words.[2] Wikipedia's articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and the vast majority of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Having steadily risen in popularity since its inception,[1] it currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.[7]
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Criticisms of Wikipedia include assertions that its openness makes it unreliable and unauthorative. Because articles don't include bylines, authors aren't publicly accountable for what they write. Similarly, because anyone can edit any article, the site's entries are vulnerable to unscrupulous edits. In August 2007, Virgil Griffiths created a site, WikiScanner, where users could track the sources of edits to Wikipedia entries. Griffiths reported that self-serving edits typically involved whitewashing or removal of criticism of a person or organization or, conversely, insertion of negative comments into the entry about a competitor. Wikipedia depends upon the vigilance of editors to find and reverse such changes to content.
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Wikipedia has ... spawned several sister projects. The first, "In Memoriam: September 11 Wiki",[126] created in October 2002,[127] detailed the September 11, 2001 attacks; this project was closed in October 2006. Wiktionary, a dictionary project, was launched in December 2002;[128] Wikiquote, a collection of quotations, a week after Wikimedia launched, and Wikibooks, a collection of collaboratively written free books, the next month. Wikimedia has since started a number of other projects.[129]
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[T]he main problem with using Wikipedia as an important source in your research is not that it gets things wrong. Some of its contributors are leaders in their fields, and, besides, some print sources contain errors. The problem, instead, is that Wikipedia strives for a lower level of expertise than professors expect from Yale students. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is written for a common readership. But students in Yale courses are already consulting primary materials and learning from experts in the discipline. In this context, to rely on Wikipedia—even when the material is accurate—is to position your work as inexpert and immature.
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