Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia whose entries are created, edited, and maintained by anonymous users. Volunteers around the world contribute to the website's 19.8 million articles (in 282 different languages).
History
Wikipedia began as a subset of another free encyclopedia project, Nupedia, in early 2000. Nupedia was intended to be a free online English based encyclopedia whose articles were compiled and constructed by leading experts and formally reviewed before being included in the project. Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales formally founded Wikipedia in January 2001.
Founders
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched in January 2001. As the project grew in size, Wales became the projects spokesperson and promoter. Larry Sanger began his wiki career as editor-in-chief of Nupedia, then became chief organizer of Wikipedia from 2001-2002. As one of Wikipedia's community leaders, he helped to establish some of the original policies of Wikipedia.
Technology
Wikipedia relies on opensource software for it to function. There are a variety of bots that operate within Wikipedia that are responsible for "patrolling" the online environment in order to carry out tasks such as correcting minor edits and spelling errors and identifying copyrighted material.
Ethical Dilemmas
The credibility of Wikipedia articles has been called into question since the website's existence. There has been concern that the anonymous identity of Wikipedia's contributors has allowed misinformation to be printed through undesirable edits, poor quality of writing, and malicious intent.
