Wikipedia is a wiki website that allows any visitor to edit or amend pages using a normal web browser. It has over 25 million pages and over 500 million edits. Studies have found Wikipedia to be as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica for science entries. While controversial topics can attract vandalism, the transparent editing history allows pages to be reverted and balanced discussions of different viewpoints to emerge.

1. Wikipedia 'The free encyclopaedia
that anyone can edit'
• A wiki is a website that any visitor can add
to, and amend, using a normal web
browser. Wikipedia is just the most widely
recognised.

2. How does it work?
• Alongside each wiki page there is a
discussion page, and a history of all edits,
so that its development is transparent.
• If a page is vandalised – or amended in a
way you happen to disagree with – it can
be restored to a former version, via the
history page

3. Links to the web’s roots
• In 2003, Jimmy Wales (one of the
founders of Wikipedia) founded the
Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit
charitable organisation, and donated
Wikipedia to it, an act intended to secure
its non-commercial future. In doing so,
Wales surrendered the opportunity to sell
Wikipedia, potentially losing out on an
estimated $3 billion

4. Statistics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
• 25,969,134 pages (as of 13/01/12)
• 510,216,526 page edits
• 19.65 edits per page (on average)
• Alexa rank #6

5. Accuracy
• The notion that any statement that anybody has
ever managed to get into a book or article is
going to be inherently better than Wikipedia
content clearly doesn't make sense, especially
as Wikipedia is subject to continuous checking
and updating – precisely unlike anything in print.
• A study published in the science journal Nature
compared Wikipedia and Encyclopedia
Brittanica and found that – and I quote –
'Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of
the accuracy of its science entries‘.

6. Why Contribute?
• Users spend hours collaborating on an
accessible resource for others, for very
little personal reward.
• Sense well-being from showing off
knowledge.
• Kudos from other contributors.
• Basic human need to feel a part of a
community, sense of belonging.

7. Vandalism and controversy
• Controversial topics attract people with axes to
grind, but then those people are forced into
dialogue with others, and a balanced
presentation of different viewpoints is arrived at.
• Controversial views not excluded, but may end
up with whole articles of their own: as in the
case of the detailed articles on, for example,
9/11 conspiracy theories, and holocaust denial).