What is a “Wikipedia”?

“Wikipedia” - an online encyclopedia article for which can be written by anyone who has access to the web.

Today, this encyclopedia, which appeared due to the collective work of volunteer amateur encyclopedists, more than three million articles in more than 130 languages, including such exotic, like Esperanto or Latin. “Wikipedia” is public and freely available encyclopedia.

Happy Birthday “Wikipedia” is January 15, 2001 - on that day began to work the first version of online encyclopedia site.
The basis of “Wikipedia” is the technology «wiki» («wiki-wiki» - it is borrowing by technology - an American programmer Howard Cunningham - made from the Hawaiian language in which it means “fast”). This is a special software, which is usually built into the interface of the Web site. Learn more about wikipedy.com!

Purpose «wiki» - recording and structuring of information, «wiki» allows you to simultaneously operate a large number of users can create their own articles or to amend the articles of other users.

The biggest advantage of “Wikipedia” is that it is not required to send articles to editors and proofreaders - the author creates an article (or by clicking the “edit”, makes corrections to a foreign article), presses the button “save” and all! All changes are immediately visible to all visitors. To create or edit articles do not even need to register on the site “Wikipedia”.

Unfortunately, every coin has another side. “Wikipedia”, in this respect, is no exception. Among the users of the encyclopedia is the so-called vandals - people who, for various reasons, make inaccurate data in the articles by other authors (replaced by the date, mutilated images, etc.) Fortunately, the “Wikipedia” keep all options update, which allows a comparison and discard the obvious lie.

“Wikipedia” promotes the principle of “neutral point of view”, ie author should provide the reader all the controversial views on the subject of the article. Another principle - the reliance on sources (links to allow for collective checking out the facts). Despite this, the common article, full of subjectivism or incorrectly describing an event or fact.

In addition to the encyclopedia, the owner of “Wikipedia” - Wikimedia Foundation (Wikimedia Foundation Inc.) - Oversees a number of related projects: library (“Wikisource”), a dictionary (“Wiki”), a virtual Quotations (“Wiki”), a collection of texts (” Wikibooks’), a news site (“Wikinews”), a collection of media files (“Wikimedia Commons”). Content (or, as it is now fashionable to say, - content) of these projects can be used freely for some information and articles to create a “Wikipedia”.

Sometimes we hear about the uniqueness of this project. But the idea of ​​”Wikipedia” is not new. In particular, in 1998 (almost 3 years before the “Wikipedia”) was created by site Everything, later reformed into the project Everything2. The project was designed to collect data on all areas of knowledge using technology similar to «wiki». The only thing “Wikipedia” is unique - mass participation in the project of people: Encyclopedia has long been considered “outdid” such monsters as “Britannia” or the “Great Soviet Encyclopedia.”