Posted by ROSHAN B.S on Aug. 24, 2014, 2:37 p.m.
Wikipedia (
i/?w?k??pi?di?/ or i/?w?ki?pi?di?/ wik-i-pee-dee-?) is a free-access, free content Internet encyclopedia, supported and hosted by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Almost anyone who can access the site[5] can edit almost any of its articles. Wikipedia is the sixth most popular website[4] and constitutes the Internet's largest and most popular general reference work.[6][7][8] As of 2014, it has 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month.[9]
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia on January 15, 2001. Sanger[10]coined its name,[11] a portmanteau of wiki (from the Hawaiian word for "quick")[12] andencyclopedia. Although Wikipedia's content was initially only in English, it quickly became multilingual, through the launch of versions in different languages. All versions of Wikipedia are similar, but important differences exist in content and in editing practices. The English Wikipedia is now one of more than 200 Wikipedias, but remains the largest one, with over 4.5 million articles.