Wikipedia

Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. In its eight year life it has turned into a goldmine of information. Wikipedia is the ultimate wiki, it works as such. Anyone can join for free. Once joined up anyone can write an article on just about anything they choose. Once written that article can then be accessed by anyone on the internet regardless of whether they are a member or not. Once the article is published then any other member of wikipedia can edit that article if they see a mistake or a fact which needs updating. This system has resulted in the biggest most reliable encyclopaedia ever. Today Wikipedia has over 12 million articles in many different languages; 2 million of these articles are written in English. Wikipedia is so huge that nowadays if you type a random object, person or event into Google then a wikipedia page is usually in the top 5 results. So why is it so reliable? Wikipedia could never work if half the facts on their pages were incorrect. So whenever someone writes a page they also have to write a bibliography explaining where they got all their facts from. This bibliography can be looked at by anyone. Another way to check if a page is reliable is to look at the amount of edits a page has had. Again anyone can access this information, the edits page lists all the people who have edited the page and puts their edits in chronological order. Naturally a page with lots of edits is more likely to be correct than one with very few edits. Some pages have been edited hundreds of times. Of course a massive website like wikipedia is prone to vandalism as anyone can edit its pages. Wikipedia are extremely good at fighting vandalism. They have huge security teams who scan wikipedia constantly, meaning that incorrect facts and fantasy articles are only ever on wikipedia for a matter of hours. As wikipedia has millions of users it is also becoming a great source of news. The best example of this is the July bombings. Someone heard the explosions went home and minutes after the event had created a wikipedia page asking people to update with all the news they could get. Within hours the page had been edited hundreds of times and the result was wikipedia had a in depth account of the incident hours before news teams across the world. The interesting thing about wikipedia is that about 90% of its edits are done by just under 2% of its users. This means if the top 10% of wikipedia editors and writer’s packs up and stop editing, wikipedia would cease to exist within a day or two, as the mobs of vandals would take control. For a more detailed history of wikipedia just follow this hyperlink. Wikipedia is a great website as it provides the world with countless facts. It is Vanevar Bush's dream come true and also would sit comfortably with the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. Berners-Lee wanted the World Wide Web to be used for science and education and for it to be free; Wikipedia fits both of these credentials. Below is a video which shows the Wikipedia article of the July bombings while it is being edited.