Wikipedia has its detractors. It is considered not a reliable source of information. Yet, few would disagree that it is the most ‘go-to’ site for information seekers on the internet.
It is the world’s 13th most visited site offering more than 58 million articles in 325 languages. It has 300,000 active editors and nearly a 100 million registered users.
It was On This Day, January 15, 2001, Wikipedia was born, as part of Nupedia.com, founded a year ago by American entrepreneur Jimmy Wales with Larry Sanger as its Chief Editor. Nupedia was a conventional online encyclopaedia, authored by experts and with a lengthy review process. By January 2001, Nupedia had hosted less than two dozen articles.
The slow pace of content creation worried Sanger who advovated supplementing Nupedia with an open-source encyclopaedia based on Wiki software, which enabled anyone to edit a web page. The Wiki software takes its name from the Hawaiian word for ‘quick’ of ‘fast’.
Wales agreed, and within a week, on 15th January 2001, Nupedia posted its first wiki page. The Nupedia team, made up of experts and researchers was not amused. They objected to the idea of opening up the project to the general public, fearing questionable information getting mingled with professionally researched and edited material. Subsequently, Wikipedia was launched as a separate website after a few days.
In its first year Wikipedia expanded to some 20,000 articles in 18 languages, including French, German, Polish, Dutch, Hebrew, Chinese, and Esperanto. By the time of its 10th anniversary, it had surpassed 3.5 million. Rest is history.
Wikipedia has had its share of problems and faced severe criticism from scholars and educators. It is true that not all users are scrupulous about providing accurate information. At times there are deliberate attempts to deface particular articles, which of course are corrected by Wiki editors over a period of time.
While researchers still need to rely on authentic sources of information, either through online sources or visiting established libraries, for a common information seeker, Wikipedia just serves the purpose.
Thank You Wales ! Thank You Sanger !
MD/BPost/VIII.
ON THIS DAY 