Wikipedia is a renowned website that provides extensive knowledge to its readers on a wide range of topics that includes places, people, events, etc. The site is known for its exciting feature wherein users can collaboratively change and structure content from their web browser. The site is highly noted for being a reliable source of information. It is a “free to access” encyclopedia that is written by several authors and put in the form of a website.
Inception
Wikipedia got established on January 15, 2001, as an online encyclopedia by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Currently, it has more than 35,000,000 articles that are available in several languages, which includes 155,337 in Plain US English. Every day a hundred people from all parts of the globe access this website to gain information, make changes, and create several new articles.
This website is based on the Creative Commons license GNU Free Documentation License. According to this license, an author can create their pages on the site and make changes in it. The license provides them the permission to use and form copies of their pages as well as the modifications performed by them.
Evolution
The main page of Wikipedia appeared on December 20, 2001
Wikipedia started with its edit feature on January 15, 2001, two days later, when its domain got registered by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales.
Stallman’s concept was included in the overall website development that implies that no centralized organization should regulate editing on this website.
As per Alexa Internet, by December 2019, Wikipedia has become the ninth-most-famous website in the world in terms of the global internet engagement it creates among its users.
In October 2002, an automated program named “Rambot” was created by Derek Ramsey to add a considerable number of articles detailing US towns.
On October 15, 2003, Wikipedia installed a new logo on its website.
In January 2003, Wikipedia added support for mathematical formulas. Tomasz Wegrzanowski inserted the code for this functionality.
After December 6, 2003, Wikipedia admin for the ability to change specific areas of MediaWiki’s interface. One of these areas was the message that was displayed to blocked users.
On February 12, 2004, all server operations got shifted from San Diego, CA, to Tampa, Florida.
On May 30, 2004, the initial instances of “categorization” were seen on the website.
In March 2013, the initial phase of the Interwiki database became widely available in all language editions of Wikipedia.
In July 2013, Wikipedia launched the editing interface of Visual Editor for the first time. This interface enabled users to modify Wikipedia with the help of a WYSIWYG text editor. This editor is quite similar to a word processor.
In August 2002, Jimmy Wales declared on the media that he wouldn’t run any commercial ads on Wikipedia. Also, the URL of Wikipedia got modified to wikipedia.org from wikipedia.com.
On June 20, 2003, the Wikimedia Foundation got established.
In January 2006, the Communications Committee was established to deal with all media-related queries and emails received for this foundation. A new ticket handling system named OTRS got implemented on this website.
Florence Nibart-Devouard and Angela Beesley got chosen to the Panel of Trustees of the Foundation.
On January 10, 2006, Wikipedia got a registered trademark of the foundation.
In June 2006, Brad Patrick became the first ED (executive director) of this Foundation. In June 2007, he was replaced by Sue Gardner.
The English version of Wikipedia has expanded in all these years. It has become a huge repository of 6,020,077 articles that includes all language editions. Till 2024, Wikipedia has more than fifty-two 52 million articles that equal to almost 20,000 print volumes.
Awards & Achievements
Wikipedia has been noted as one of the successful knowledge bases throughout the web. From the time of its inception, the website has been awarded awards like Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation, and Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit
Net Worth of Wikipedia in 2024
Looking at the global popularity of this website, its net worth is speculated to be around $4 billion as of December 2024. One of the prime reasons for massive net worth is due to the significant donations that it receives from its viewers every year. That makes it one of the important reasons for its success.
Wikipedia is developed and maintained in the form of an open collaboration project by several volunteer editors who use a wiki-based editing system. Available in various languages, this multilingual online encyclopedia is one of the most frequently and widely visited websites in the present age. Due to its popularity, it is also seen to be on the top results on the search engine results page.