DAVID ADAMS looks at the rise and rise of Wikipedia…
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Launched 10 years ago as an online free encyclopaedia to which anyone can contribute, Wikipedia has grown into an internet behemoth, attracting more than 400 million visitors a month to become the world’s fifth most visited website.
Following an earlier attempt to launch a more typical free online encyclopedia, the site’s domain name went live on 15th January 2001. Jimmy Wales, the site’s co-founder recently recalled the first moment: “I remember that first day. I clicked on ‘Edit’ and I wrote ‘Hello World’, and that was the beginning of Wikipedia…”
While initial entries were simplistic – the entry for physics, for example, initiall read “Physics is a very broad subject”, the site now boasts from than 17 million articles generated by its 100,000 volunteers who have made more than a billion edits.
The website is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation founded by Wales. Funding comes from donations which have so far amounted to more than $US16 million.
Slate recently published an article showing how the entry on Jesus Christ can be used to map the evolution of the site. First created by Wales on 3rd March, 2001, with the phrase “Jesus Christ is a central figure in Christianity”, the entry has since undergone thousands of edits and survived numerous ‘vandalism’ attempts.
The site, which is aiming to attract a billion users by 2015, has faced numerous controversies during its short lifetime including concerns about its accuracy although those behind Wikipedia say it compares well in that regard against traditional encyclopaedias.
If you have a word you’d like to know the origins of, simply send an email to [email protected].
