Difference between revisions of "Directory:WikiMobs.com"
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| + | Wikipedia,Protection policy,About,Citing sources,Media help,Meta,Multilingual coordination,Sister projects,Spoken articles,Wikimedia Foundation,Wikipediahistory | ||
| + | wikipedia wikipedia the free encyclopedia import skins 1 5 monobook ie50fixes css 99 import skins 1 5 monobook ie55fixes css 99 import skins 1 5 monobook ie60fixes css 99 import skins 1 5 monobook ie70fixes css 99 ogg player options border solid 1px ccc padding 2pt text align left font size 10pt wikipedia from wikipedia the free encyclopedia jump to navigation search for wikipedia's non encyclopedic visitor introduction see wikipedia about wikipedia screenshot of wikipedia's multilingual portal url http www wikipedia org commercial no type of site internet encyclopedia project registration optional available language s 236 active editions 253 in total 1 owner wikimedia foundation created by jimmy wales larry sanger 2 wikipedia ipa wiki pi di wiki pe di or w ki pi di audio u s help info is a multilingual web based free content encyclopedia project operated by the wikimedia foundation a non profit organization it is the largest most extensive and fastest growing encyclopedia currently available on the internet as of september 2007 wikipedia had approximately 8 2 million articles in 253 languages comprising a combined total of over 1 41 billion words for all wikipedias the english wikipedia edition passed the 2 000 000 article mark on september 9 2007 with a total of over 609 million words roughly fifteen times as many as the largest edition of encyclop dia britannica 1 wikipedia's articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the internet steadily rising in popularity since its inception 3 it currently ranks among the top ten most visited websites worldwide 4 wikipedia's name is a portmanteau of the words wiki a type of collaborative website and encyclopedia its main servers are in tampa florida with additional servers located in amsterdam and seoul due to wikipedia's open nature critics have questioned its reliability and accuracy 5 the site has been criticized for its susceptibility to vandalism and the addition of false or unverified information 6 uneven quality systemic bias and inconsistencies 7 and for favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial process 8 wikipedia's content policies 9 and sub projects set up by contributors seek to address these concerns 10 two scholarly studies have concluded that vandalism is generally short lived 11 and that wikipedia is generally as accurate as other encyclopedias 12 when creators of on line content were collectively named time person of the year 2006 praising the accelerating success of collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world wikipedia was the first particular web 2 0 service mentioned followed by youtube and myspace 13 contents 1 founding 2 authorship and management 3 software and hardware 4 language editions 5 content redistribution 6 reliability and bias 7 criticism and controversy 8 awards 9 cultural significance 10 related projects 11 see also 12 references 13 external links founding main article history of wikipedia wikipedia's english edition was launched on january 15 2001 as a complement to nupedia an expert written and now defunct encyclopedia jimmy wales and larry sanger were identified as co founders of wikipedia in 2001 wikipedia's official personnel page from september 2001 states that wales and sanger were the two co founders and that there was no editor in chief 2 14 15 16 17 wales creator of the wikimedia foundation in 2003 today claims to be the sole founder of wikipedia and has told the boston globe that it's preposterous to call sanger the co founder 18 however sanger strongly contests that description he was identified as a co founder of wikipedia at least as early as september 2001 and referred to himself that way as early as january 2002 2 19 20 authorship and management the original wikipedia logo maintenance tasks are performed by a group of volunteers these include developers on the mediawiki software and other trusted users with various permission levels including steward bureaucrat and administrator 21 administrators are the largest group of specially privileged users and have the ability to delete remove pages lock articles from being changed and deter users from editing 22 wikipedia is funded through the wikimedia foundation its 4th quarter 2005 costs were 321 000 usd with hardware making up almost 60 of the budget 23 the wikimedia foundation currently relies primarily on private donations and holds regular fundraisers 24 the january 2007 fundraiser raised just over 1 million 25 software and hardware wikipedia receives between 10 000 and 35 000 page requests per second depending on time of day 26 more than 100 servers have been set up to handle the traffic the operation of wikipedia depends on mediawiki a custom made free and open source wiki software platform written in php and built upon the mysql database the software incorporates modern programming features such as a macro language variables a transclusion system for templates and url redirection mediawiki is licensed under the gnu general public license and used by all wikimedia projects as well as many other wiki projects originally wikipedia ran on usemodwiki written in perl by clifford adams phase i which initially required camelcase for article hyperlinks the present double bracket style was incorporated later starting in january 2002 phase ii wikipedia began running on a php wiki engine with a mysql database this software was custom made for wikipedia by magnus manske the phase ii software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand in july 2002 phase iii wikipedia shifted to the third generation software mediawiki originally written by lee daniel crocker overview of system architecture may 2006 see server layout diagrams on meta wiki wikipedia runs on dedicated clusters of linux servers in florida and in two other locations 27 wikipedia employed a single server until 2004 when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier 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 http server and seven squid cache servers by september 2005 its server cluster had grown to around 100 servers in three locations around the world 27 page requests are first passed to a front end layer of squid caching servers requests that cannot be served from the squid cache are sent to load balancing servers running the linux virtual server software which in turn pass the request to one of the apache web servers for page rendering from the database the web servers deliver pages as requested performing page rendering for all the language editions of wikipedia to increase speed further rendered pages for anonymous users are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses two larger clusters in the netherlands and korea now handle much of wikipedia's traffic load language editions see also list of wikipedias wikipedia in hebrew 28 wikipedia has been described 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 29 there are presently 253 language editions of wikipedia of these the top 14 have over 100 000 articles and the top 139 have over 1 000 articles 1 since wikipedia is web based and therefore worldwide contributors of a same language edition may use different dialects or may come from different countries this is the case for the english edition these differences may lead to some conflicts about spelling 30 or points of view 31 the english subdomain en wikipedia org receives approximately 51 of wikipedia's cumulative traffic with the remaining 49 split among the other languages spanish 15 japanese 5 german 5 french 4 polish 3 portuguese 2 arabic 2 3 though the various language editions are held to global policies such as neutral point of view they diverge on some points of policy and practice most notably in their use of non free images 32 33 though each language edition functions more or less independently some efforts are made to supervise them all they are coordinated in part by meta wiki the wikimedia foundation's wiki devoted to maintaining all of its projects wikipedia and others for instance meta wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of wikipedia and maintain a list of articles every wikipedia should have the list concerns basic content by subject biography history geography society culture science technology foodstuffs and mathematics as for the rest it is not rare for articles strongly related to a particular language not to have counterparts in another edition for example articles about small towns in the united states might only be available in english multilingual editors of sufficient fluency are encouraged to translate articles manually automated translation of articles is explicitly disallowed 34 translated articles represent only a small portion of articles in most editions 35 articles available in more than one language may offer interwiki links usually in their left margin which link to the counterpart articles in other editions images and other non verbal media are shared among the various language editions through the wikimedia commons repository beyond translations some multilingual efforts are also realised thanks to the multilingual coordination content redistribution because of the nature of wikipedia copyright wikipedia's content has been mirrored and forked by many sites including database dumps citation needed there is a free downloadable dvd version 36 developed by linterweb which contains 1964 articles 37 38 reliability and bias main article reliability of wikipedia english wikipedia main page on july 4 2007 wikipedia appeals to the authority of peer reviewed publications rather than the personal authority of experts wikipedia does not require that its contributors give their legal names or provide other information to establish their identity although some contributors are authorities in their field wikipedia requires that even their contributions be supported by published and verifiable sources wikipedia tries to address the problem of systemic bias and to deal with zealous editors who seek to influence the presentation of an article in a biased way by insisting on a neutral point of view the english language wikipedia has introduced a scale against which the quality of articles is judged other editions have also adopted this roughly 1500 articles have passed a rigorous set of criteria to reach the highest rank featured article status such articles are intended to provide thorough well written coverage of their topic supported by many references to peer reviewed publications in a study of wikipedia as a community economics ph d student 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 39 in february 2007 an article in the harvard crimson newspaper reported that some of the professors at harvard university do include wikipedia in their syllabus but that there is a split in their perception of using wikipedia 40 in june 2007 former president of the american library association michael gorman condemned wikipedia along with google for contributing to the creation of a generation of intellectual sluggards 41 he also stated that academics who endorse the use of wikipedia are the intel lectual equivalent of a dietitian who recommends a steady diet of big macs with everything he also stated that a generation of intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the internet was being produced at universities he complains that the web based sources are discouraging students from learning from the more rare texts which are either found only on paper or are on subscription only web sites in the same article jenny fry a research fellow at the oxford internet institute commented on the academics who cite wikipedia that you cannot say children are intellectually lazy because they are using the internet when academics are using search engines in their research she said the difference is that they have more experience of being critical about what is retrieved and whether it is authoritative children need to be told how to use the internet in a critical and appropriate way 42 criticism and controversy main article criticism of wikipedia wikipedia has been accused of exhibiting systemic bias and inconsistency 5 critics argue that wikipedia's open nature and a lack of proper sources for much of the information makes it unreliable 43 some commentators suggest that wikipedia is usually reliable but that it is not always clear how much 8 the project's preference for consensus over credentials has been labeled anti elitism 7 editors of traditional reference works such as the encyclop dia britannica have questioned the project's utility and status as an encyclopedia 44 many university lecturers discourage students from citing any encyclopedia in academic work preferring primary sources 45 some specifically prohibit wikipedia citations 46 co founder jimmy wales stresses that encyclopedias of any type are not usually appropriate as primary sources and should not be relied upon as authoritative 47 technology writer bill thompson commented that the debate was possibly symptomatic of much learning about information which is happening in society today 48 in order to improve reliability some editors have called for stable versions of articles or articles that have been reviewed by the community and locked from further editing but these efforts have proven unsuccessful due to community disagreement and the fact that such a system would require a major software overhaul 49 50 however a similar version is being tested on the german wikipedia and there is an expectation that some form of that system will make its way onto the english version in a few months 51 concerns have also been raised regarding the lack of accountability that results from users' anonymity 52 and that it is vulnerable to vandalism and similar problems in one particularly well publicized incident false information was introduced into the biography of john seigenthaler sr and remained undetected for four months 53 some critics claim that wikipedia's open structure makes it an easy target for internet trolls advertisers and those with an agenda to push 54 55 the addition of political spin to articles by organizations including the u s house of representatives and special interest groups 6 has been noted 56 and organizations such as microsoft have offered financial incentives to work on certain articles 57 some claim that wikipedia's political articles have been taken over by left wing partisans 58 these issues have been parodied notably by stephen colbert in the colbert report 59 wikipedia's community has been described as cult like 60 although not always with entirely negative connotations 61 and criticised for failing to accommodate inexperienced users 62 wikipedia's content policies 9 and sub projects set up by contributors seek to address these concerns 63 several scholarly studies have concluded that vandalism is generally short lived 11 and that wikipedia is roughly as accurate as other online encyclopedias 12 with nearly hundreds of thousands of contributors over 2 million articles in english hundreds of thousands of articles in other languages the sheer scope of wikipedia dwarfs traditional encyclopedias in size of content human investigative resources peer review and editorial efforts and is unrivaled in human history as a collaborative effort in the written language in august of 2007 a new website developed by computer science graduate student virgil griffith named wikiscanner made its public debut wikiscanner traces the source of millions of changes made to wikipedia and has revealed some interesting and controversial edits its first few days of use many of these edits came from corporations or sovereign government agencies about articles related to them their personnel or their work and were attempts to remove criticism 64 wikiscanner has been generally welcomed by both the wikipedia and broader internet community in that it will help foster more responsible online conduct wikipedia founder jimmy wales called wikiscanner a very clever idea and said that he was considering some changes to wikipedia to help visitors better understand what information is recorded about them when someone clicks on edit it would be interesting if we could say hi thank you for editing we see you re logged in from the new york times keep in mind that we know that and it s public information he said that might make them stop and think 64 due to the large amount of links and content citations needed wikipedia is not very compliant with screen reading technology citation needed awards wikipedia won two major awards in may 2004 65 the first was a golden nica for digital communities of the annual prix ars electronica contest this came with a 10 000 6 588 12 700 grant and an invitation to present at the pae cyberarts festival in austria later that year the second was a judges' webby award for the community category 66 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 in a 2006 multiscope research study the dutch wikipedia was rated the third best dutch language site after google and gmail with a score of 8 1 67 on 26 january 2007 wikipedia was also awarded the fifth highest brand ranking by the readers of brandchannel com receiving 15 of the votes in answer to the question which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006 68 jimmy wales was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by time magazine in 2006 69 in 2006 the russian wikipedia won the science and education category of the runet prize russian award supervised 70 by the russian government agency fapmc in november 2006 turkish wikipedia was nominated under the science category for the alt n r mcek web d lleri golden spider web awards which are commonly known as the web oscars for turkey in january 2007 turkish wikipedia was given the award for best content in this competition the award was given in a ceremony on january 25 2007 at istanbul technical university cultural significance see also wikipedia in culture wikipedia's content has also been used in academic studies books conferences and court cases 71 72 the parliament of canada website refers to wikipedia's article on same sex marriage in the related links section of its further reading list for civil marriage act 73 the encyclopedia's assertions are increasingly used as a source by organizations such as the u s federal courts and the world intellectual property office 74 though mainly for supporting information rather than information decisive to a case 75 wikipedia has also been used as a source in journalism 76 sometimes without attribution several reporters have been dismissed for plagiarizing from wikipedia 77 78 79 in july 2007 wikipedia was the focus of a 30 minute documentary on bbc radio 4 80 which argued that with increased usage and awareness the number of references to wikipedia in popular culture is such that the term is one of a select band of 21st century nouns that are so familiar google facebook youtube that they no longer need explanation and are on a par with such 20th century terms as hoovering or coke many parody wikipedia's openness with characters vandalizing or modifying the online encyclopedia project's articles notably comedian stephen colbert has parodied or referenced wikipedia on numerous episodes of his show the colbert report and coined the related term wikiality 59 websites such as uncyclopedia have also been set up parodying wikipedia its main page claims that it is the content free encyclopedia that anyone can edit 81 parodying the english wikipedia's welcome message on its main page the first documentary film about wikipedia entitled truth in numbers the wikipedia story is scheduled for 2008 release shot on several continents the film will cover the history of wikipedia and feature interviews with wikipedia editors around the world 82 83 related projects a number of interactive multimedia encyclopedias incorporating entries written by the public existed long before wikipedia was founded the first of these was the 1986 bbc domesday project which included text entered on bbc micro computers and photographs from over 1 million contributors in the uk and covering the geography art and culture of the uk this was the first interactive multimedia encyclopedia and was also the first major multimedia document connected through internal links with the majority of articles being accessible through an interactive map of the uk the user interface and part of the content of the domesday project have now been emulated on a website 84 one of the most successful early online encyclopedias incorporating entries by the public was h2g2 which was also created by the bbc the h2g2 encyclopedia was relatively light hearted focusing on articles which were both witty and informative both of these projects had similarities with wikipedia but neither gave full editorial freedom to public users wikipedia has also spawned several sister projects the first in memoriam september 11 wiki 85 created in october 2002 86 detailed the september 11 2001 attacks this project was closed in october 2006 87 wiktionary a dictionary project was launched in december 2002 88 wikiquote a collection of quotations a week after wikimedia launched and wikibooks a collection of collaboratively written free books the next month wikimedia has since started a number of other projects 89 a similar non wiki project the gnupedia project co existed with nupedia early in its history however it has been retired and its creator free software figure richard stallman has lent his support to wikipedia 90 other websites centered on collaborative knowledge base development have drawn inspiration from or inspired wikipedia some such as susning nu enciclopedia libre and wikiznanie likewise employ no formal review process whereas others use more traditional peer review such as the expert written stanford encyclopedia of philosophy h2g2 and everything2 jimmy wales the de facto leader of wikipedia 91 said in an interview in regard to the online encyclopedia citizendium which is overviewed by experts in their respective fields 92 we welcome a diversity of efforts if larry's project is able to produce good work we will benefit from it by copying it back into wikipedia 93 see also meta has a page about this at list of wikipedias congressional staffer edits to wikipedia list of encyclopedias list of wikipedias list of wikis open content user generated content wikipedia community wikipedia press coverage references a b c list of wikipedias meta wiki 2007 07 12 a b c jonathan sidener everyone's encyclopedia san diego union tribune retrieved on 2006 10 15 a b five year traffic statistics for wikipedia org alexa internet retrieved on 2007 01 29 three month traffic statistics for wikipedia org alexa internet retrieved on 2007 01 29 a b simon waldman 2004 10 26 who knows the guardian retrieved on 2007 02 11 a b ahrens frank 2006 07 09 death by wikipedia the kenneth lay chronicles the washington post retrieved on 2006 11 01 a b larry sanger why wikipedia must jettison its anti elitism kuro5hin december 31 2004 a b danah boyd 2005 01 04 academia and wikipedia many to many retrieved on 2007 02 11 a b list of policies and guidelines english wikipedia retrieved on 2007 01 31 wikipedia wikiproject english wikipedia retrieved on 2007 01 29 a b studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations pdf retrieved on 2007 01 24 a b rosenzweig roy 2006 can history be open source wikipedia and the future of the past the journal of american history 93 117 146 time's person of the year you time 2006 12 13 web archive mitchell dan insider editing at wikipedia the new york times 2005 12 24 retrieved on 2007 04 14 bergstein brian sanger says he co started wikipedia abc news associated press 2007 03 25 retrieved on 2007 04 14 the nascent web encyclopedia citizendium springs from larry sanger a philosophy ph d who counts himself as a co founder of wikipedia the site he now hopes to usurp the claim does not seem particularly controversial sanger has long been cited as a co founder yet the other founder jimmy wales is not happy about it poe marshall the hive the atlantic september 2006 retrieved on 2007 04 14 mehegan david bias sabotage haunt wikipedia's free world free registration required the boston globe 2006 02 12 retrieved on 2007 04 14 peter meyers fact driven collegial this site wants you new york times 2001 09 20 retrieved on 2006 10 15 sanger larry what wikipedia is and why it matters retrieved on 2006 04 12 wikipedia user access levels wikipedia january 12 2007 wikipedia administrators wikipedia january 23 2007 budget 2005 wikimedia foundation retrieved on 2006 03 11 fundraising wikimedia foundation fundraising report wikimedia foundation january 21 2007 monthly request statistics wikimedia retrieved on 2007 02 03 a b wikimedia servers at wikimedia org retrieved on 2007 02 06 main page hebrew wikipedia jimmy wales wikipedia is an encyclopedia march 8 2005 spelling manual of style wikipedia retrieved on 2007 05 19 countering systemic bias retrieved on 2007 05 19 fair use meta wiki retrieved on 2007 07 14 images on wikipedia meta wiki retrieved on 2007 07 14 wikipedia translation english wikipedia accessed on 2007 02 03 for example translation into english wikipedia march 9 2005 list of mirrors hosting the cd iso wikipedia on dvd linterweb accessed 1 june 2007 wikipedia on dvd linterweb accessed 1 june 2007 linterweb is authorized to make a commercial use of the wikipedia trademark restricted to the selling of the encyclopedia cds and dvds wikipedia 0 5 available on a cd rom wikipedia on dvd linterweb accessed 1 june 2007 the dvd or cd rom version 0 5 was commercially available for purchase andrea ciffolilli phantom authority self selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities the case of wikipedia first monday december 2003 child maxwell l professors split on wiki debate the harvard crimson monday february 26 2007 chloe stothart web threatens learning ethos the times higher education supplement 2007 1799 22 june page 2 1 chloe stothart web threatens learning ethos the times higher education supplement 2007 22 june issue stacy schiff know it all the new yorker 2006 07 31 robert mchenry the faith based encyclopedia tech central station november 15 2004 wide world of wikipedia the emory wheel april 21 2006 retrieved on 2007 01 25 jaschik scott a stand against wikipedia inside higher ed 2007 01 26 retrieved on 2007 01 27 helm burt wikipedia a work in progress businessweek 2005 12 14 retrieved on 2007 01 29 thompson bill what is it with wikipedia bbc 2005 12 16 http meta wikimedia org wiki reviewed article version http en wikipedia org wiki wikipedia stable versions http en wikipedia org wiki wikipedia flagged revisions public information research wikipedia watch retrieved on 2007 01 28 seigenthaler john a false wikipedia 'biography' usa today 2005 11 29 toward a new compendium of knowledge longer version citizendium org retrieved on 2006 10 10 kleinz torsten world of knowledge the wikipedia project linux magazine february 2005 retrieved on 2007 07 13 the wikipedia's open structure makes it a target for trolls and vandals who malevolently add incorrect information to articles get other people tied up in endless discussions and generally do everything to draw attention to themselves kane margaret 2006 01 30 politicians notice wikipedia cnet retrieved on 2007 01 28 bergstein brian 2007 01 23 microsoft offers cash for wikipedia edit msnbc retrieved on 2007 02 01 davis jim left in control of wikipedia newsmax may 14 2007 retrieved on 2007 07 13 a b caroline mccarthy colbert speaks america follows all hail wikiality c net news com 2006 08 01 arthur charles log on and join in but | ||
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Latest revision as of 13:09, 16 September 2007
WikiMobs.com is the free encyclopedia optimized for modern mobile phones.
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Name: WikiMobs.com
Web: [WikiMobs.com WikiMobs.com]
<sharethis />
<embed> <textarea rows="1" cols="1"> Wikipedia,Protection policy,About,Citing sources,Media help,Meta,Multilingual coordination,Sister projects,Spoken articles,Wikimedia Foundation,Wikipediahistory wikipedia wikipedia the free encyclopedia import skins 1 5 monobook ie50fixes css 99 import skins 1 5 monobook ie55fixes css 99 import skins 1 5 monobook ie60fixes css 99 import skins 1 5 monobook ie70fixes css 99 ogg player options border solid 1px ccc padding 2pt text align left font size 10pt wikipedia from wikipedia the free encyclopedia jump to navigation search for wikipedia's non encyclopedic visitor introduction see wikipedia about wikipedia screenshot of wikipedia's multilingual portal url http www wikipedia org commercial no type of site internet encyclopedia project registration optional available language s 236 active editions 253 in total 1 owner wikimedia foundation created by jimmy wales larry sanger 2 wikipedia ipa wiki pi di wiki pe di or w ki pi di audio u s help info is a multilingual web based free content encyclopedia project operated by the wikimedia foundation a non profit organization it is the largest most extensive and fastest growing encyclopedia currently available on the internet as of september 2007 wikipedia had approximately 8 2 million articles in 253 languages comprising a combined total of over 1 41 billion words for all wikipedias the english wikipedia edition passed the 2 000 000 article mark on september 9 2007 with a total of over 609 million words roughly fifteen times as many as the largest edition of encyclop dia britannica 1 wikipedia's articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the internet steadily rising in popularity since its inception 3 it currently ranks among the top ten most visited websites worldwide 4 wikipedia's name is a portmanteau of the words wiki a type of collaborative website and encyclopedia its main servers are in tampa florida with additional servers located in amsterdam and seoul due to wikipedia's open nature critics have questioned its reliability and accuracy 5 the site has been criticized for its susceptibility to vandalism and the addition of false or unverified information 6 uneven quality systemic bias and inconsistencies 7 and for favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial process 8 wikipedia's content policies 9 and sub projects set up by contributors seek to address these concerns 10 two scholarly studies have concluded that vandalism is generally short lived 11 and that wikipedia is generally as accurate as other encyclopedias 12 when creators of on line content were collectively named time person of the year 2006 praising the accelerating success of collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world wikipedia was the first particular web 2 0 service mentioned followed by youtube and myspace 13 contents 1 founding 2 authorship and management 3 software and hardware 4 language editions 5 content redistribution 6 reliability and bias 7 criticism and controversy 8 awards 9 cultural significance 10 related projects 11 see also 12 references 13 external links founding main article history of wikipedia wikipedia's english edition was launched on january 15 2001 as a complement to nupedia an expert written and now defunct encyclopedia jimmy wales and larry sanger were identified as co founders of wikipedia in 2001 wikipedia's official personnel page from september 2001 states that wales and sanger were the two co founders and that there was no editor in chief 2 14 15 16 17 wales creator of the wikimedia foundation in 2003 today claims to be the sole founder of wikipedia and has told the boston globe that it's preposterous to call sanger the co founder 18 however sanger strongly contests that description he was identified as a co founder of wikipedia at least as early as september 2001 and referred to himself that way as early as january 2002 2 19 20 authorship and management the original wikipedia logo maintenance tasks are performed by a group of volunteers these include developers on the mediawiki software and other trusted users with various permission levels including steward bureaucrat and administrator 21 administrators are the largest group of specially privileged users and have the ability to delete remove pages lock articles from being changed and deter users from editing 22 wikipedia is funded through the wikimedia foundation its 4th quarter 2005 costs were 321 000 usd with hardware making up almost 60 of the budget 23 the wikimedia foundation currently relies primarily on private donations and holds regular fundraisers 24 the january 2007 fundraiser raised just over 1 million 25 software and hardware wikipedia receives between 10 000 and 35 000 page requests per second depending on time of day 26 more than 100 servers have been set up to handle the traffic the operation of wikipedia depends on mediawiki a custom made free and open source wiki software platform written in php and built upon the mysql database the software incorporates modern programming features such as a macro language variables a transclusion system for templates and url redirection mediawiki is licensed under the gnu general public license and used by all wikimedia projects as well as many other wiki projects originally wikipedia ran on usemodwiki written in perl by clifford adams phase i which initially required camelcase for article hyperlinks the present double bracket style was incorporated later starting in january 2002 phase ii wikipedia began running on a php wiki engine with a mysql database this software was custom made for wikipedia by magnus manske the phase ii software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand in july 2002 phase iii wikipedia shifted to the third generation software mediawiki originally written by lee daniel crocker overview of system architecture may 2006 see server layout diagrams on meta wiki wikipedia runs on dedicated clusters of linux servers in florida and in two other locations 27 wikipedia employed a single server until 2004 when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier 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 http server and seven squid cache servers by september 2005 its server cluster had grown to around 100 servers in three locations around the world 27 page requests are first passed to a front end layer of squid caching servers requests that cannot be served from the squid cache are sent to load balancing servers running the linux virtual server software which in turn pass the request to one of the apache web servers for page rendering from the database the web servers deliver pages as requested performing page rendering for all the language editions of wikipedia to increase speed further rendered pages for anonymous users are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses two larger clusters in the netherlands and korea now handle much of wikipedia's traffic load language editions see also list of wikipedias wikipedia in hebrew 28 wikipedia has been described 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 29 there are presently 253 language editions of wikipedia of these the top 14 have over 100 000 articles and the top 139 have over 1 000 articles 1 since wikipedia is web based and therefore worldwide contributors of a same language edition may use different dialects or may come from different countries this is the case for the english edition these differences may lead to some conflicts about spelling 30 or points of view 31 the english subdomain en wikipedia org receives approximately 51 of wikipedia's cumulative traffic with the remaining 49 split among the other languages spanish 15 japanese 5 german 5 french 4 polish 3 portuguese 2 arabic 2 3 though the various language editions are held to global policies such as neutral point of view they diverge on some points of policy and practice most notably in their use of non free images 32 33 though each language edition functions more or less independently some efforts are made to supervise them all they are coordinated in part by meta wiki the wikimedia foundation's wiki devoted to maintaining all of its projects wikipedia and others for instance meta wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of wikipedia and maintain a list of articles every wikipedia should have the list concerns basic content by subject biography history geography society culture science technology foodstuffs and mathematics as for the rest it is not rare for articles strongly related to a particular language not to have counterparts in another edition for example articles about small towns in the united states might only be available in english multilingual editors of sufficient fluency are encouraged to translate articles manually automated translation of articles is explicitly disallowed 34 translated articles represent only a small portion of articles in most editions 35 articles available in more than one language may offer interwiki links usually in their left margin which link to the counterpart articles in other editions images and other non verbal media are shared among the various language editions through the wikimedia commons repository beyond translations some multilingual efforts are also realised thanks to the multilingual coordination content redistribution because of the nature of wikipedia copyright wikipedia's content has been mirrored and forked by many sites including database dumps citation needed there is a free downloadable dvd version 36 developed by linterweb which contains 1964 articles 37 38 reliability and bias main article reliability of wikipedia english wikipedia main page on july 4 2007 wikipedia appeals to the authority of peer reviewed publications rather than the personal authority of experts wikipedia does not require that its contributors give their legal names or provide other information to establish their identity although some contributors are authorities in their field wikipedia requires that even their contributions be supported by published and verifiable sources wikipedia tries to address the problem of systemic bias and to deal with zealous editors who seek to influence the presentation of an article in a biased way by insisting on a neutral point of view the english language wikipedia has introduced a scale against which the quality of articles is judged other editions have also adopted this roughly 1500 articles have passed a rigorous set of criteria to reach the highest rank featured article status such articles are intended to provide thorough well written coverage of their topic supported by many references to peer reviewed publications in a study of wikipedia as a community economics ph d student 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 39 in february 2007 an article in the harvard crimson newspaper reported that some of the professors at harvard university do include wikipedia in their syllabus but that there is a split in their perception of using wikipedia 40 in june 2007 former president of the american library association michael gorman condemned wikipedia along with google for contributing to the creation of a generation of intellectual sluggards 41 he also stated that academics who endorse the use of wikipedia are the intel lectual equivalent of a dietitian who recommends a steady diet of big macs with everything he also stated that a generation of intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the internet was being produced at universities he complains that the web based sources are discouraging students from learning from the more rare texts which are either found only on paper or are on subscription only web sites in the same article jenny fry a research fellow at the oxford internet institute commented on the academics who cite wikipedia that you cannot say children are intellectually lazy because they are using the internet when academics are using search engines in their research she said the difference is that they have more experience of being critical about what is retrieved and whether it is authoritative children need to be told how to use the internet in a critical and appropriate way 42 criticism and controversy main article criticism of wikipedia wikipedia has been accused of exhibiting systemic bias and inconsistency 5 critics argue that wikipedia's open nature and a lack of proper sources for much of the information makes it unreliable 43 some commentators suggest that wikipedia is usually reliable but that it is not always clear how much 8 the project's preference for consensus over credentials has been labeled anti elitism 7 editors of traditional reference works such as the encyclop dia britannica have questioned the project's utility and status as an encyclopedia 44 many university lecturers discourage students from citing any encyclopedia in academic work preferring primary sources 45 some specifically prohibit wikipedia citations 46 co founder jimmy wales stresses that encyclopedias of any type are not usually appropriate as primary sources and should not be relied upon as authoritative 47 technology writer bill thompson commented that the debate was possibly symptomatic of much learning about information which is happening in society today 48 in order to improve reliability some editors have called for stable versions of articles or articles that have been reviewed by the community and locked from further editing but these efforts have proven unsuccessful due to community disagreement and the fact that such a system would require a major software overhaul 49 50 however a similar version is being tested on the german wikipedia and there is an expectation that some form of that system will make its way onto the english version in a few months 51 concerns have also been raised regarding the lack of accountability that results from users' anonymity 52 and that it is vulnerable to vandalism and similar problems in one particularly well publicized incident false information was introduced into the biography of john seigenthaler sr and remained undetected for four months 53 some critics claim that wikipedia's open structure makes it an easy target for internet trolls advertisers and those with an agenda to push 54 55 the addition of political spin to articles by organizations including the u s house of representatives and special interest groups 6 has been noted 56 and organizations such as microsoft have offered financial incentives to work on certain articles 57 some claim that wikipedia's political articles have been taken over by left wing partisans 58 these issues have been parodied notably by stephen colbert in the colbert report 59 wikipedia's community has been described as cult like 60 although not always with entirely negative connotations 61 and criticised for failing to accommodate inexperienced users 62 wikipedia's content policies 9 and sub projects set up by contributors seek to address these concerns 63 several scholarly studies have concluded that vandalism is generally short lived 11 and that wikipedia is roughly as accurate as other online encyclopedias 12 with nearly hundreds of thousands of contributors over 2 million articles in english hundreds of thousands of articles in other languages the sheer scope of wikipedia dwarfs traditional encyclopedias in size of content human investigative resources peer review and editorial efforts and is unrivaled in human history as a collaborative effort in the written language in august of 2007 a new website developed by computer science graduate student virgil griffith named wikiscanner made its public debut wikiscanner traces the source of millions of changes made to wikipedia and has revealed some interesting and controversial edits its first few days of use many of these edits came from corporations or sovereign government agencies about articles related to them their personnel or their work and were attempts to remove criticism 64 wikiscanner has been generally welcomed by both the wikipedia and broader internet community in that it will help foster more responsible online conduct wikipedia founder jimmy wales called wikiscanner a very clever idea and said that he was considering some changes to wikipedia to help visitors better understand what information is recorded about them when someone clicks on edit it would be interesting if we could say hi thank you for editing we see you re logged in from the new york times keep in mind that we know that and it s public information he said that might make them stop and think 64 due to the large amount of links and content citations needed wikipedia is not very compliant with screen reading technology citation needed awards wikipedia won two major awards in may 2004 65 the first was a golden nica for digital communities of the annual prix ars electronica contest this came with a 10 000 6 588 12 700 grant and an invitation to present at the pae cyberarts festival in austria later that year the second was a judges' webby award for the community category 66 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 in a 2006 multiscope research study the dutch wikipedia was rated the third best dutch language site after google and gmail with a score of 8 1 67 on 26 january 2007 wikipedia was also awarded the fifth highest brand ranking by the readers of brandchannel com receiving 15 of the votes in answer to the question which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006 68 jimmy wales was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by time magazine in 2006 69 in 2006 the russian wikipedia won the science and education category of the runet prize russian award supervised 70 by the russian government agency fapmc in november 2006 turkish wikipedia was nominated under the science category for the alt n r mcek web d lleri golden spider web awards which are commonly known as the web oscars for turkey in january 2007 turkish wikipedia was given the award for best content in this competition the award was given in a ceremony on january 25 2007 at istanbul technical university cultural significance see also wikipedia in culture wikipedia's content has also been used in academic studies books conferences and court cases 71 72 the parliament of canada website refers to wikipedia's article on same sex marriage in the related links section of its further reading list for civil marriage act 73 the encyclopedia's assertions are increasingly used as a source by organizations such as the u s federal courts and the world intellectual property office 74 though mainly for supporting information rather than information decisive to a case 75 wikipedia has also been used as a source in journalism 76 sometimes without attribution several reporters have been dismissed for plagiarizing from wikipedia 77 78 79 in july 2007 wikipedia was the focus of a 30 minute documentary on bbc radio 4 80 which argued that with increased usage and awareness the number of references to wikipedia in popular culture is such that the term is one of a select band of 21st century nouns that are so familiar google facebook youtube that they no longer need explanation and are on a par with such 20th century terms as hoovering or coke many parody wikipedia's openness with characters vandalizing or modifying the online encyclopedia project's articles notably comedian stephen colbert has parodied or referenced wikipedia on numerous episodes of his show the colbert report and coined the related term wikiality 59 websites such as uncyclopedia have also been set up parodying wikipedia its main page claims that it is the content free encyclopedia that anyone can edit 81 parodying the english wikipedia's welcome message on its main page the first documentary film about wikipedia entitled truth in numbers the wikipedia story is scheduled for 2008 release shot on several continents the film will cover the history of wikipedia and feature interviews with wikipedia editors around the world 82 83 related projects a number of interactive multimedia encyclopedias incorporating entries written by the public existed long before wikipedia was founded the first of these was the 1986 bbc domesday project which included text entered on bbc micro computers and photographs from over 1 million contributors in the uk and covering the geography art and culture of the uk this was the first interactive multimedia encyclopedia and was also the first major multimedia document connected through internal links with the majority of articles being accessible through an interactive map of the uk the user interface and part of the content of the domesday project have now been emulated on a website 84 one of the most successful early online encyclopedias incorporating entries by the public was h2g2 which was also created by the bbc the h2g2 encyclopedia was relatively light hearted focusing on articles which were both witty and informative both of these projects had similarities with wikipedia but neither gave full editorial freedom to public users wikipedia has also spawned several sister projects the first in memoriam september 11 wiki 85 created in october 2002 86 detailed the september 11 2001 attacks this project was closed in october 2006 87 wiktionary a dictionary project was launched in december 2002 88 wikiquote a collection of quotations a week after wikimedia launched and wikibooks a collection of collaboratively written free books the next month wikimedia has since started a number of other projects 89 a similar non wiki project the gnupedia project co existed with nupedia early in its history however it has been retired and its creator free software figure richard stallman has lent his support to wikipedia 90 other websites centered on collaborative knowledge base development have drawn inspiration from or inspired wikipedia some such as susning nu enciclopedia libre and wikiznanie likewise employ no formal review process whereas others use more traditional peer review such as the expert written stanford encyclopedia of philosophy h2g2 and everything2 jimmy wales the de facto leader of wikipedia 91 said in an interview in regard to the online encyclopedia citizendium which is overviewed by experts in their respective fields 92 we welcome a diversity of efforts if larry's project is able to produce good work we will benefit from it by copying it back into wikipedia 93 see also meta has a page about this at list of wikipedias congressional staffer edits to wikipedia list of encyclopedias list of wikipedias list of wikis open content user generated content wikipedia community wikipedia press coverage references a b c list of wikipedias meta wiki 2007 07 12 a b c jonathan sidener everyone's encyclopedia san diego union tribune retrieved on 2006 10 15 a b five year traffic statistics for wikipedia org alexa internet retrieved on 2007 01 29 three month traffic statistics for wikipedia org alexa internet retrieved on 2007 01 29 a b simon waldman 2004 10 26 who knows the guardian retrieved on 2007 02 11 a b ahrens frank 2006 07 09 death by wikipedia the kenneth lay chronicles the washington post retrieved on 2006 11 01 a b larry sanger why wikipedia must jettison its anti elitism kuro5hin december 31 2004 a b danah boyd 2005 01 04 academia and wikipedia many to many retrieved on 2007 02 11 a b list of policies and guidelines english wikipedia retrieved on 2007 01 31 wikipedia wikiproject english wikipedia retrieved on 2007 01 29 a b studying cooperation and conflict between authors with history flow visualizations pdf retrieved on 2007 01 24 a b rosenzweig roy 2006 can history be open source wikipedia and the future of the past the journal of american history 93 117 146 time's person of the year you time 2006 12 13 web archive mitchell dan insider editing at wikipedia the new york times 2005 12 24 retrieved on 2007 04 14 bergstein brian sanger says he co started wikipedia abc news associated press 2007 03 25 retrieved on 2007 04 14 the nascent web encyclopedia citizendium springs from larry sanger a philosophy ph d who counts himself as a co founder of wikipedia the site he now hopes to usurp the claim does not seem particularly controversial sanger has long been cited as a co founder yet the other founder jimmy wales is not happy about it poe marshall the hive the atlantic september 2006 retrieved on 2007 04 14 mehegan david bias sabotage haunt wikipedia's free world free registration required the boston globe 2006 02 12 retrieved on 2007 04 14 peter meyers fact driven collegial this site wants you new york times 2001 09 20 retrieved on 2006 10 15 sanger larry what wikipedia is and why it matters retrieved on 2006 04 12 wikipedia user access levels wikipedia january 12 2007 wikipedia administrators wikipedia january 23 2007 budget 2005 wikimedia foundation retrieved on 2006 03 11 fundraising wikimedia foundation fundraising report wikimedia foundation january 21 2007 monthly request statistics wikimedia retrieved on 2007 02 03 a b wikimedia servers at wikimedia org retrieved on 2007 02 06 main page hebrew wikipedia jimmy wales wikipedia is an encyclopedia march 8 2005 spelling manual of style wikipedia retrieved on 2007 05 19 countering systemic bias retrieved on 2007 05 19 fair use meta wiki retrieved on 2007 07 14 images on wikipedia meta wiki retrieved on 2007 07 14 wikipedia translation english wikipedia accessed on 2007 02 03 for example translation into english wikipedia march 9 2005 list of mirrors hosting the cd iso wikipedia on dvd linterweb accessed 1 june 2007 wikipedia on dvd linterweb accessed 1 june 2007 linterweb is authorized to make a commercial use of the wikipedia trademark restricted to the selling of the encyclopedia cds and dvds wikipedia 0 5 available on a cd rom wikipedia on dvd linterweb accessed 1 june 2007 the dvd or cd rom version 0 5 was commercially available for purchase andrea ciffolilli phantom authority self selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities the case of wikipedia first monday december 2003 child maxwell l professors split on wiki debate the harvard crimson monday february 26 2007 chloe stothart web threatens learning ethos the times higher education supplement 2007 1799 22 june page 2 1 chloe stothart web threatens learning ethos the times higher education supplement 2007 22 june issue stacy schiff know it all the new yorker 2006 07 31 robert mchenry the faith based encyclopedia tech central station november 15 2004 wide world of wikipedia the emory wheel april 21 2006 retrieved on 2007 01 25 jaschik scott a stand against wikipedia inside higher ed 2007 01 26 retrieved on 2007 01 27 helm burt wikipedia a work in progress businessweek 2005 12 14 retrieved on 2007 01 29 thompson bill what is it with wikipedia bbc 2005 12 16 http meta wikimedia org wiki reviewed article version http en wikipedia org wiki wikipedia stable versions http en wikipedia org wiki wikipedia flagged revisions public information research wikipedia watch retrieved on 2007 01 28 seigenthaler john a false wikipedia 'biography' usa today 2005 11 29 toward a new compendium of knowledge longer version citizendium org retrieved on 2006 10 10 kleinz torsten world of knowledge the wikipedia project linux magazine february 2005 retrieved on 2007 07 13 the wikipedia's open structure makes it a target for trolls and vandals who malevolently add incorrect information to articles get other people tied up in endless discussions and generally do everything to draw attention to themselves kane margaret 2006 01 30 politicians notice wikipedia cnet retrieved on 2007 01 28 bergstein brian 2007 01 23 microsoft offers cash for wikipedia edit msnbc retrieved on 2007 02 01 davis jim left in control of wikipedia newsmax may 14 2007 retrieved on 2007 07 13 a b caroline mccarthy colbert speaks america follows all hail wikiality c net news com 2006 08 01 arthur charles log on and join in but </textarea> </embed> <embed> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> var 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