What is a Wikipedia ? In the words of the Wikipedia web site, ?imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing [at Wikipedia].? Sound amazing? It is incredible. Wikipedia, in everyday terms, is an online encyclopedia that is free to access, unlike paid services from Britannica.com and Encarta.com.
Wikipedia plays on a term from the Hawaiian language, wiki wiki, which means super fast or quick. The Internet adopted the term ?wiki? to mean a web site where anyone can edit or contribute to its content. So putting the terms together you get an online encyclopedia that is free to access and open for anyone and everyone to contribute to and edit. Wikipedia can be found at www.wikipedia.org .
In 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger embarked on this project with enormous goals and even more enormous possibilities. It was decided that this project would be an open project. In the online world, ?open? refers to a project where no one person or entity truly ?owns? or runs the project; it belongs to the masses, the people. Sanger and Wales determined that allowing anyone and everyone willing to work on the project access to do so would be the fastest and most complete means of building this dream.
Today, a mere four years since the project started, Wikipedia boasts more than 1.7 million English articles and almost 3 million combined articles covering nearly 200 languages. It is a non-profit organization relying solely on donations from the public and a mostly volunteer staff. Because absolutely anyone can contribute to or edit existing articles on the Wikipedia web site, vandalism will sometimes occur. Again, the community rises to the occasion, spots the problem and rectifies it ?internally?. When left to its own devices, projects like these succeed because nay Sayers or not, good outnumbers evil.
When you visit wikipedia.org, and I recommend you do as soon as you finish this article, click the language of your choice, and then look for the ?Search? box on the left side of the page. Type in a search term keeping in mind, this is an encyclopedia so search for facts, people, nature, etc. You will get an immediate return of possible answers. Click on the one that matches what you are looking for and you will be rewarded with a thorough article on the subject complete with references to other Wikipedia articles and links to other sites on the Internet related to the topic. Don?t expect a lot of gloss and glamour when you reach Wikipedia, the site responds quickly because it is primarily text based.
As discussed earlier, if you are an expert in a particular area or see a discrepancy when you read articles at Wikipedia, by all means click the ?Edit? button at the top of the article. When you click the Edit button, you will be asked to create an account with Wikipedia (free), so that they can keep track of who is contributing and registering gives you easier access to add new articles or edit existing article?s in the future.
I loosely equate this tremendous project with eBay. eBay designed their service to simply be a skeleton of a commerce system and the people provided the commerce. Now eBay is a commercial venture and makes money (one of the few websites that do make money), but the model is unique and works well. When left to its own accord, people will govern themselves and largely be successful IF a basic structure and guidelines are provided. Wikipedia does this and does it well.
In the past ten years, no other entity, arguably, provided more change and worldwide impact than the Internet. The promise of a global information base available to anyone willing to seek it out and use it is here. Seeing sites like Wikipedia excite me about the promise and the future of the Internet. Take some time to look at the site and see what good ol? human ingenuity and community can accomplish.
