about wikepedia annd its story

1. Wikipedia
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This article is about the online encyclopedia. For Wikipedia's home page, see Wikipedia's Main
Page. For Wikipedia's visitor introduction, see Wikipedia's About Page. For other uses,
see Wikipedia (disambiguation).
"The Free Encyclopedia" redirects here. For other encyclopedias, see List of encyclopedias.
Wikipedia
The logo of Wikipedia, a globe
featuring glyphsfrom several writing systems
show
Screenshot
Type of site Online encyclopedia
Available in 301 languages
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Createdby Jimmy Wales, Larry
Sanger[1]
Website wikipedia.org

2. Alexa rank 5 (Global, September 2018)
Commercial No
Registration Optional[notes 1]
Users >281,409 active users[notes
2]
and >76,986,852 registered
users
Launched January 15, 2001; 17 years
ago
Current status Active
Content license CC Attribution / Share-
Alike 3.0
Most text is also dual-licensed
underGFDL; media licensing
varies
Written in LAMP platform[2]
OCLC number 52075003
Wikipedia (/ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdiə/ ( listen), /ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ ( listen) WIK-ih-PEE-dee-ə) is a
multilingual, web-based, free encyclopedia based on a model of openly editable content. It is the
largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet,[3][4][5] and is one of the most
popular websites by Alexa rank.[6] It is owned and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-
profit organizationwhich operates on money it receives from donors.[7][8][9]
Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.[10] Sanger coined
its name,[11][12] as a portmanteau of wiki[notes 3] and "encyclopedia". Initially an English-language
encyclopedia, versions in other languages were quickly developed. With 5,717,073 articles,[notes
4]the English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 290 Wikipedia encyclopedias. Overall,
Wikipedia comprises more than 40 million articles in 301 different languages[14] and had 18 billion
page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month as of February 2014.[15]

3. In 2005, Nature published a peer review comparing 42 science articles from Encyclopædia
Britannicaand Wikipedia and found that Wikipedia's level of accuracy approached that
of Encyclopædia Britannica.[16] Time magazine stated that the open-door policy of allowing anyone
to edit had made Wikipedia the biggest and possibly the best encyclopedia in the world and it was
testament to the vision of Jimmy Wales.[17]
Wikipedia has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, for presenting a mixture of "truths, half
truths, and some falsehoods",[18] and for being subject to manipulation and spin in controversial
topics.[19] In 2017, Facebook announced that it would help readers detect fake news by suitable links
to Wikipedia articles. YouTube announced a similar plan in 2018. In response, The Washington
Postheadlined, "Wikipedia, the ‘good cop’ of the Internet".[20]