wiki
Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.[11] Sanger coined the name Wikipedia,[12] which is a portmanteau of wiki (a type of collaborative website, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick")[13] and encyclopedia. A year before, Sanger and Wales had tried to establish another online encyclopedia, the English-language Nupedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content. Nupedia, however, only produced c. 20 articles in its first year and was soon overshadowed by Wikipedia which produced 18,000.[14]
Wikipedia's departure from the expert-driven style of encyclopedia building and the presence of a large body of unacademic content have received extensive attention in print media. In 2006, Time magazine recognized Wikipedia's participation in the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction by millions of people around the world, in addition to YouTube, Reddit, MySpace, and Facebook.[15] Wikipedia has also been praised as a news source due to articles related to breaking news often being rapidly updated.[16][17][18]
The open nature of Wikipedia has led to various concerns, such as the quality of writing,[19][20] the amount of vandalism,[21][22] and the accuracy of information. Some articles contain unverified or inconsistent information,[23] though a 2005 investigation in Nature showed that the science articles they compared came close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[24] Britannica replied that the study's methodology and conclusions were flawed,[25] but Nature reacted to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica's main objections.[26]
Any edit that changes content in a way that deliberately compromises the integrity of Wikipedia is considered vandalism. The most common and obvious types of vandalism include insertion of obscenities and crude humor. Vandalism can also include
Wikipedia's departure from the expert-driven style of encyclopedia building and the presence of a large body of unacademic content have received extensive attention in print media. In 2006, Time magazine recognized Wikipedia's participation in the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction by millions of people around the world, in addition to YouTube, Reddit, MySpace, and Facebook.[15] Wikipedia has also been praised as a news source due to articles related to breaking news often being rapidly updated.[16][17][18]
The open nature of Wikipedia has led to various concerns, such as the quality of writing,[19][20] the amount of vandalism,[21][22] and the accuracy of information. Some articles contain unverified or inconsistent information,[23] though a 2005 investigation in Nature showed that the science articles they compared came close to the level of accuracy of Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[24] Britannica replied that the study's methodology and conclusions were flawed,[25] but Nature reacted to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica's main objections.[26]
Any edit that changes content in a way that deliberately compromises the integrity of Wikipedia is considered vandalism. The most common and obvious types of vandalism include insertion of obscenities and crude humor. Vandalism can also include