 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Encyclopedia :
W :
WI :
WIK :
Wikipedia |
|
|
WikipediaWikipedia is a Web-based, free-content encyclopedia, which is written collaboratively by volunteers. It consists of 195 independent language editions sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Entries on traditional encyclopedic topics exist alongside those on almanac, gazetteer and current events topics. Its purpose is to create and distribute, worldwide, a free encyclopedia in as many languages as possible. Wikipedia is one of the most popular reference sites on the Web, receiving around 50 million hits per day. Wikipedia contains approximately 1.5 million articles, more than 500,000 of which are in its English language edition, more than 200,000 in the German language and more than 100,000 in the Japanese language. It began as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia on 15 January 2001. Having steadily gained in popularity, it has spawned several conceptually related sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikibooks and Wikinews. Its articles are edited by volunteers in wiki fashion, meaning articles are subject to change by nearly anyone. Wikipedia's volunteers enforce a policy of "neutral point of view". Under this, the views presented by notable persons or literature are summarized without attempting to determine an objective truth. By its open nature, vandalism and inaccuracy are problems in Wikipedia. Wikipedia's status as a reference work has been controversial. It has received praise for being free, editable, and covering a wide range of topics. It has been criticized for lack of authority when compared with a traditional encyclopedia, systemic bias, and for deficiencies in traditional encyclopedic topics. Its articles have been cited by the mass media and academia. Wikipedia's articles are available under the GNU Free Documentation License, and, while having been mirrored and forked by websites, have not been distributed on physical media on a large scale. CharacteristicsWikipedia is described by Wikimedia President Jimmy Wales as "an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language." It is created on the wikipedia.org website using a type of software and philosophy known as Wiki, from the Hawaiian language "wiki wiki" which means "quick." Wales intends that Wikipedia should achieve an "[[Encyclopædia Britannica|[Encyclopædia] Britannica or better" quality and be published on physical media. Several other encyclopedia projects exist or have existed on the Internet. Traditional editorial policies and article ownership is used in some, such as the expert-written Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and defunct Nupedia. More casually, websites such as h2g2 or Everything2 serve as general guides whose articles are written and controlled by individuals. Projects such as Wikipedia, Susning.nu, and the Enciclopedia Libre, are wikis, in which articles are developed by numerous authors and there is no formal review process. Wikipedia has become the largest such encyclopedic wiki by article and word count. It is distinguished from many encyclopedias in licensing its content under the GNU Free Documentation License. Free contentThe GNU Free Documentation License, the license under which Wikipedia's articles are made available, is one of many "copyleft" copyright licenses that permit the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content provided its authors are attributed and this content remains available under the GFDL. When an author contributes original material to the project, the copyright over it is retained with them, but they agree to make the work available under the GFDL. Material on Wikipedia may thus be distributed to, or incorporated from, resources which also use this license. Wikipedia's content has been mirrored or forked by hundreds of resources from database dumps. Although all text is available under the GFDL, a significant percentage of Wikipedia's images and sounds are non-free. Items such as corporate logos, song samples or copyrighted news photos are used with a claim of fair use. Material has also been given to Wikipedia under no-derivative or for-Wikipedia-only conditions. Wikipedia has been used by the media, academics, and others as a reference or supplement. News organizations have referred to Wikipedia articles as sources or in sidebars containing related information on the Web, some regularly. According to lists maintained by Wikipedia's editors, its articles have been cited most frequently in the news media. Less frequently, it has been used in academic studies, books, conferences, and court cases. For instance, the Parliament of Canada website refers to Wikipedia's article on Same-sex marriage in the "further reading" list of Bill C-38. Noncomprehensive lists are maintained by Wikipedians of Wikipedia as a source. Language editionsWikipedia encompassed 92 "active" language editions in March 2005. Its five largest editions were, in descending order, English, German, Japanese, French and Swedish. In total, Wikipedia contained 195 language editions of varying states with a combined 1.5 million articles. Language editions operate independently of one another. Editions are not bound to the content of other language editions, and are only held to global policies such as "neutral point of view". Articles and images are nonetheless shared between Wikipedia editions, the former through pages to request translations organized on many of the larger language editions, and the latter through the Wikimedia Commons repository. Translated articles represent only a small fraction of the articles in any edition. The following is the list of major editions in the order of article number in April 2005. EditingNearly any visitor may edit Wikipedia's articles and have their changes be instantly displayed. It is built on the belief that collaboration among users will improve articles over time, in much the same way that open-source software develops. Its authors need not have any expertise or formal qualifications in the subjects which they edit, and users are warned that their contributions may be "edited mercilessly" by anyone who so wishes. Its articles are not controlled by any particular user or editorial group, and decision-making on the content and editorial policies of Wikipedia is instead done by consensus and occasionally vote, though Jimmy Wales retains final judgement. By the nature of its openness, "edit wars" and prolonged disputes often occur when editors do not agree. Members of its community have explained its editing process as a collaborative work of art, a Darwinian-like evolutionary process, or an adversarial "battlefield of ideas." Articles are always subject to editing, such that Wikipedia does not declare any article finished. Vandalism has been a constant problem for Wikipedia. In a study of the page histories of Wikipedia's English language edition, MIT and IBM researchers Viegas, Wattenberg, and Dave found the mean time to correct "mass delete" and "mass delete obscene" vandalism to be 7.7 days and 1.8 days, and the median times 2.8 minutes and 1.7 minutes respectively. In contrast, the average persistency of a revision marked "all content" was found to be 22.3 days, the median time 90.4 minutes. PoliciesWikipedia requires that its contributors observe a "neutral point of view" when writing and not include original research. Neutral point of view, itself a "non-negotiable" policy, articulates the encyclopedia's goal as "representing disputes, characterizing them, rather than engaging in them." If achieved, Wikipedia would not be written from a single "objective" point of view, but rather fairly present all views on an issue, attributed to their adherents in a neutral way. It states that views should be given weight equal to their standing. This policy has been criticized as having an unattainable goal, being unnecessary with widely discredited material, and allowing the representation of "morally offensive" views. Opinions or theories that have not been previously published are considered "original research", which is not allowed. The "No original research" policy states that such material cannot be properly attributed under neutral point of view, and that editors' own novel ideas or perspectives are not to be introduced. Wikipedia's contributors additionally maintain a variety of lesser policies and guidelines. In contrast to other wikis of its time, such as Ward Cunningham's Portland Pattern Repository, Wikipedians use "talk" pages to discuss changes to articles, rather than discussing changes within the article itself. Wikipedia contributors often modify, move, or delete articles which are felt to be inappropriate to an encyclopedia, such as dictionary definitions or original source texts. Often, Wikipedia editions establish style conventions. AuthorsEvery user is intended to be of equal status when editing articles, and edit articles to reach consensus among editors. During January 2005, Wikipedia had approximately 13,000 users which made at least five edits that month; 9,000 of these active users worked on its three largest language editions. A more active group of approximately 3,000 users made more than 100 edits per month, over half of these users having worked in the three largest editions. According to Wikimedia, one-quarter of Wikipedia's traffic comes from users without accounts, who are less likely to be editors. Maintenance tasks are performed by a group of volunteer developers, stewards, bureaucrats, and administrators, which number in the hundreds. Admistrators are the largest such group, privileged with the ability to prevent articles from being edited, delete articles, or block users from editing in accordance with community policy. Many users have been temporarily or permanently blocked from editing Wikipedia. Vandalism or the minor infraction of policies may result in a temporary block, while long-term or permanent blocks are given by Wales or, on its English edition, an Arbitration Committee for prolonged and serious infractions. Former Wikipedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger has said that having the GFDL license as a "guarantee of freedom is a strong motivation to work on a free encyclopedia." In a study of Wikipedia as a community, Economics professor Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in wiki software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation. Wikipedia has been viewed as a social experiment in anarchy or democracy. Its founder has replied that it is not intended as one, though it is a consequence. In a page on researching with Wikipedia, its authors argue that Wikipedia is valuable for being a social community. That is, authors can be asked to defend or clarify their work, and disputes are readily seen. Wikipedia editions also often contain reference desks in which the community answers questions. Evaluations:See also: Criticism of Wikipedia Wikipedia's claim to be or status as an encyclopedia has been controversial. Wikipedia has been criticized for a perceived lack of reliability, comprehensiveness, and authority. It is considered to have no or limited utility as a reference work among many librarians, academicss, and the editors of more formally written encyclopedias. Wikipedia is considered to be of sufficient quality in at least some areas by others, notably winning a comparative test by c't. Much of its praise is for being both free-content and open to editing by anyone. QualityCritics argue that allowing anyone to edit makes Wikipedia an unreliable work. In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, librarian Philip Bradley said that he would not use Wikipedia and is "not aware of a single librarian who would. The main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window." Similarly, Encyclopædia Britannica's executive editor Ted Pappas said to the Guardian: "The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection. That premise is completely unproven." Discussing Wikipedia as an academic source, Dana Boyd said in 2005 that "[i]t will never be an encyclopedia, but it will contain extensive knowledge that is quite valuable for different purposes." In an oft-cited 2004 piece called "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia", former Britannica editor Robert McHenry criticised the wiki approach, writing "[h]owever closely a Wikipedia article may at some point in its life attain to reliability, it is forever open to the uninformed or semiliterate meddler." Aaron Krowne wrote a rebuttal article in which he criticised McHenry's methods, and labelled it FUD, the marketing technique of "fear, uncertainty, and doubt." Former editor-in-chief Larry Sanger criticised Wikipedia in late 2004 for having, according to Sanger, an "anti-elitist" philosophy of rejecting formal review which would prevent its articles from being perceived as authoritative. Wikipedia's editing process assumes that exposing an article to many users will result in accuracy. Referencing Linus's law of open-source development, Sanger stated earlier: "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow." Technology figure Joi Ito wrote on Wikipedia's authority, "[a]lthough it depends a bit on the field, the question is whether something is more likely to be true coming from a source whose resume sounds authoritative or a source that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (with the ability to comment) and has survived." Conversely, in an informal test of Wikipedia's ability to detect misinformation its author remarked that its process "isn't really a fact-checking mechanism so much as a voting mechanism", and that material which did not appear "blatantly false" may be accepted as true. Wikipedia has been accused of deficiencies in comprehensiveness because of its voluntary nature, and of reflecting the systemic biases of its contributors. Encyclopædia Britannica editor-in-chief Dale Hoiberg has argued that "people write of things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair." Former Nupedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger stated in 2004, "when it comes to relatively specialized topics (outside of the interests of most of the contributors), the project's credibility is very It has been praised for, as a wiki, allowing articles to be updated or created in response to current events. For example, the then-new "2004 Indian Ocean earthquake" article of its English edition was cited often by the press shortly after the incident. Its editors have also argued as a website, Wikipedia is able to include articles on a greater number of subjects than print encyclopedias may. German computing magazine c't performed a comparison of three encyclopedias in October 2004: Brockhaus Premium, Microsoft Encarta, and Wikipedia. Experts evaluated 66 articles in various fields. In overall score, Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points ("B-"), Brockhaus Premium 3.3, and Microsoft Encarta 3.1. In an analysis of online encyclopedias, Indiana University professors Emigh and Herring wrote that "Wikipedia improves on traditional information sources, especially for the content areas in which it is strong, such as technology and current events." CommunityWikipedia has a community of users who are proportionarly few, but highly active. Emigh and Herring argue that "a few active users, when acting in concert with established norms within an open editing system, can achieve ultimate control over the content produced within the system, literally erasing diversity, controversy, and inconsistency, and homo-genizing contributors' voices." Editors on Wikinfo, a fork of Wikipedia, similarly argue that new or controversial editors to Wikipedia are often unjustly labelled "trollss" or "problem users" and blocked from editing. Its community has also been criticised for expecting users who make complaints about an article's quality to fix it themselves. In a page on researching with Wikipedia, its authors argue that Wikipedia is valuable for being a social community. That is, authors can be asked to defend or clarify their work, and disputes are readily seen. Wikipedia editions also often contain reference desks in which the community answers questions. AwardsWikipedia won two major awards in May of 2004: The first was a Golden Nica for Digital Communities, awarded by Prix Ars Electronica; this came with a 10,000 Euro grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival in Austria later that year. The second was a Judges' Webby award for "Community". Wikipedia was also nominated for a "Best Practices" Webby. In September 2004, the Japanese Wikipedia was awarded a Web Creation Award from the Japan Advertisers Association. This award, normally given to individuals for great contributions to the Web in Japanese, was accepted by a long-standing contributor on behalf of the project. Wikipedia has received plaudits from sources including BBC News, USA Today, The Economist, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Wired Magazine. Awards to the Wikipedia project and press clippings are listed by Wikimedia contributors on its website. History:Main article: History of Wikipedia . Wikipedia began as a complementary project of Nupedia, a free online encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts through a formal process. Nupedia was founded on 9 March 2000 under the ownership of Bomis, Inc, a Web portal company. Its principal figures were Jimmy Wales, Bomis CEO and final authority, and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. Nupedia was described by Sanger as differing from existing encyclopedias in being open content; not having size limitations, as it was on the Internet; and being free of bias, due to its public nature and potentially broad base of contributors. Nupedia had a seven-step review process by appointed subject-area experts, but was later widely viewed as too slow for producing a limited number of articles. Funded by Bomis, there were initial plans to recoup its investment by the use of advertisements. It was licensed under its own Nupedia Open Content License license initially, switching to the GNU Free Documentation License prior to Wikipedia's founding at the urging of Richard Stallman. , 2001, two and one-half months after starting. Wikipedia was formally launched on 15 January 2001 as a single English-language edition at wikipedia.com. It had been, from 10 January, a feature of nupedia.com in which the public could write articles which could be incorporated into Nupedia after review. But it was relaunched off-site after Nupedia's Advisory Board of subject experts dissapproved of its production model. Wikipedia thereafter operated as a standalone project without control from Nupedia. Its policy of "neutral point of view" was codified in its initial months, though is similar to Nupedia's earlier "nonbias" policy. There were otherwise few rules initially. Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and search engine indexing. It grew to approximately 20,000 articles among 18 language editions by the end of its first year. It had 26 language editions by the end of 2002, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the end of 2004. Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former's servers went down, permanently, in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. Wales and Sanger attribute the concept of using a wiki to Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb or Portland Pattern Repository, the original wiki, though disagree regarding credit. Sanger attributes the idea to Ben Kovitz, a regular at this wiki, in January 2001. Wales credits Jeremy Rosenfeld, an employee of Bomis who showed him the same wiki, in December 2000. Under a similar concept of free content, though not wiki production, the GNUPedia project existed alongside Wikipedia early in its history. It subsequently became inactive and its creator, free software figure Richard Stallman, lent his support to Wikipedia. Citing fear of commercial advertising and lack of control in a perceived English-centric Wikipedia, users of the Spanish Wikipedia forked from Wikipedia to create the Enciclopedia Libre in February 2002. Later that year, Wales announced that Wikipedia would not display advertisementss, and moved its website to wikipedia.org. Projects have since forked from Wikipedia's content for editorial reasons, such as Wikinfo, which abandoned "neutral point of view" in favor of multiple complementary articles written from a "sympathetic point of view." From Wikipedia and Nupedia the Wikimedia Foundation was created on 20 June, 2003. Wikipedia and its sister projects thereafter operated under this non-profit organization. Wikipedia's first sister project, "In Memoriam", had been created in October 2002 to detail the September 11, 2001 attacks; it gained Wiktionary, a dictionary project, in December 2002; Wikiquotes, a collection of quotes, a week after Wikimedia launched; and Wikibooks, collaboratively-written free books, the next month. Wikimedia has since started a number of other projects, detailed below. Software and hardwareWikipedia is run by MediaWiki open source software on a cluster of dedicated servers located in Florida. MediaWiki is Phase III of the program's software. Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki by Clifford Adams (Phase I). At first it required CamelCase for links; later it was also possible to use double brackets. Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database in January 2002. This software, Phase II, was written specifically for the Wikipedia project by Magnus Manske. Several rounds of modifications were made to improve performance in response to increased demand. Ultimately, the software was rewritten again, this time by Lee Daniel Crocker. Instituted in July 2002, this Phase III software was called MediaWiki. It was licensed under the GNU General Public License and used by all Wikimedia projects. Wikipedia was served from a single server until 2004, when the server setup was expanded into an n-tier distributed architecture. In January 2005, the project ran on 39 dedicated servers located in Florida. This configuration included a single master database server running MySQL, multiple slave database servers, 21 web servers running the Apache software, and 7 Squid cache servers. Page requests are processed by first passing to a front-end layer of Squid caching servers. Requests that cannot be served from the Squid cache are sent to two load-balancing servers running the perlbal software, which then pass the request to one of the Apache web servers for page-rendering from the database. The web servers serve pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the Wikipedias. To increase speed further, rendered pages for anonymous users are cached in a filesystem until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. Wikimedia has begun building a global network of caching servers with the addition of three such servers in France. The ongoing status of Wikipedia's website is posted at an status page on OpenFacts. Sister projectsWikipedia has free-content sister projects which fulfill non-encyclopedic roles. Its largest are: Wiktionary, a free dictionary project; Wikibooks, a free textbook project; Wikiquote, a free encyclopedia of quotations; Wikisource, a multilingual repository of free source texts; Wikimedia Commons, a shared media respository; and Wikinews, a free news source. Wikipedia and its sister projects are administered by the Wikimedia Foundation.See alsoReferences"Complete list of language Wikipedias available", Meta-Wiki (28 March 2005)."All languages", Wikipedia statistics, 21 March 2005. "Power structure", Meta-Wiki, 10:55 4 Apr 2005."Wikipedia:Edit war", Wikipedia (26 March 2005)."Wikipedia sociology", Meta-Wiki, 23:30 24 Mar 2005. "Critical views of Wikipedia", Wikinfo, 07:28 30 Mar 2005. "Trophy Box", Meta-Wiki (28 March 2005). Further readingExternal links
|
|
|
This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. |
|
| © 2008 Chamas Enterprises Inc. |
