This is a great resource for learning how to edit Wikipedia articles:
How to Edit Wikipedia
You must register to editing protected pages, creating pages in English Wikipedia, as well as to upload files.
A Look Inside Wikipedia
How is Wikipedia Organized?
Articles in Wikipedia are organized according to their development status as well as their subject matter. A short, new article often starts as a "stub," and has some definitions and some links. The most developed articles may be nominated for "featured article" status.
There are nine categories in the "category tree" of Wikipedia: Everyday life, Geography, History, Knowledge, Language, Literature, People, Religion, and Science. These are the main "branches" of the category tree. Within each group there is a smaller group, and with that one an even smaller group (and so on). The articles themselves are like the leaves of the category tree, except each one is linked to a multitude of near or distant articles, making Wikipedia more cyclical.
Right now there are over 4 million articles in nine categories English alone. This graph shows the exponential growth of Wikipedia since its conception.
There are nine categories in the "category tree" of Wikipedia: Everyday life, Geography, History, Knowledge, Language, Literature, People, Religion, and Science. These are the main "branches" of the category tree. Within each group there is a smaller group, and with that one an even smaller group (and so on). The articles themselves are like the leaves of the category tree, except each one is linked to a multitude of near or distant articles, making Wikipedia more cyclical.
Right now there are over 4 million articles in nine categories English alone. This graph shows the exponential growth of Wikipedia since its conception.
In 2008, a study was done to see how much of Wikipedia was in each category. This is a pie chart of their findings:
The majority of articles on Wikipedia are ones about culture and the arts.
References:
Wikipedia's Logo
Wikipedia's logo is an unfinished globe constructed from jigsaw pieces with some pieces missing at the top. The pieces are all inscribed with glyphs and letters from many different languages, which symbolizes Wikipedia's multilingualism . The part that remains unfinished symbolizes the incomplete nature of Wikipedia.
Logo Conception - December 6, 2001.
Logo December 2, 2001 - October 12, 2003.
Logo October 13, 2003 - May 13, 2010
Logo May 14, 2010 - Present
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_of_Wikipedia
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_of_Wikipedia
The Development of Wikipedia
A timeline of Wikipedia's developments illustrates how the website became what it is today:
2000:Nupedia was founded by Jimmy Wales alongside editor-in-chief Larry Sanger.
2001:
Wikipedia began and the domain names wikipedia.org and wikipedia.com were registered in January. French, Catalan, Swedish, German, and Italian versions all began between March and May.
2002:
Larry Sanger left Wikipedia due to his dislike of its lack of credibility and its "disrespect towards expertise." The Spanish version of Wikipedia was created. Jimmy Wales also announced that Wikipedia would never run commercial advertisements (which is why there are never any ads on the site).
2003:
The English Wikipedia passed 100,000 articles. The Wikimedia Foundation was founded and Wikipedia adopted the jigsaw logo.
2004:
Wikipedia went from 500,000 articles at the beginning of the year to 1 million in over 100 languages by the end of the year. China attempted to block Wikipedia for two weeks as part of an ongoing censorship project. Bourgeois v. Peters was the first court case to reference and cite Wikipedia in a case. The first formal projects to remove error from Wikipedia's articles began.
2005:
Wikipedia became the most popular reference site in the world and a formal fundraiser was held to raise money for system upgrades to handle all the traffic. The first major Wikipedia scandal happened when John Seigenthaler's page was vandalized and left unnoticed for months. This led to a more strict policy being introduced that required more article citations for biographies of people.
2006:
Another scandal occurred when congressional staffers and a campaign manager were caught trying to secretly change Wikipedia biographies. Wales introduced a new feature that allowed articles that were not verified or were full of errors to be marked as "unviewable."
2007:
By August, Wikipedia contained a combined total of 7.5 million articles, totaling 1.74 billion words in about 250 languages, and grew at a rate of about 1,700 new articles a day. A new trend was created that redirected a person of interest in a news story to the larger story, rather than creating a separate biography page for them.
2008:
The 10 millionth article was created.
2009:
Wikipedia restricted access to its site from the Church of Scientology due to an ongoing article battle between the Church and anti-scientology editors.
2010:
In May, Wikipedia released a new interface. The changes included a new logo, new navigation tools, and a link wizard. However, the classic interface remained available.
2011:
Wikipedia and its users held ten year anniversary celebrations worldwide. Wikimedia launched of Wikipedia Zero, a project that allows free mobile access to Wikipedia in developing countries.
2012:
On January 18, Wikipedia shut down for 24 hours as part of a protest meant to call public attention to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act, two anti-piracy laws under debate in the United States Congress
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia
What is a Wiki?
Wikipedia is a wiki, meaning it is a web application that allows a collaboration of users to edit, add, or delete content. It is characteristically different than other content management systems (like a blog) because there is "no defined owner or leader, and wikis have little implicit structure, allowing structure to emerge according to the needs of the users."
Rather than being relatively linear as are many websites, sites that use wikis are fluid and interwoven. They promote meaningful associations between different related topic pages by allowing users to easily create multiple links. The wiki is not a carefully designed and published page - instead it relies on the input of multiple users to create and polish its content. The crafting of a wiki is an ongoing and collaborative process.
The first wiki was called "WikiWikiWeb" and was launched by Ward Cunningham on March 25, 1995. He chose the word "wiki" as a substitute for the word "quick" after recollecting the quick shuttles that ran at the Honolulu airport (called the Wiki Wiki Shuttle). The purpose of WikiWikiWeb was to "link together the experiences of multiple people to create a new literature to document programming patterns, and to harness people's natural desire to talk and tell stories with a technology."
Read more about wikis here.
Rather than being relatively linear as are many websites, sites that use wikis are fluid and interwoven. They promote meaningful associations between different related topic pages by allowing users to easily create multiple links. The wiki is not a carefully designed and published page - instead it relies on the input of multiple users to create and polish its content. The crafting of a wiki is an ongoing and collaborative process.
The first wiki was called "WikiWikiWeb" and was launched by Ward Cunningham on March 25, 1995. He chose the word "wiki" as a substitute for the word "quick" after recollecting the quick shuttles that ran at the Honolulu airport (called the Wiki Wiki Shuttle). The purpose of WikiWikiWeb was to "link together the experiences of multiple people to create a new literature to document programming patterns, and to harness people's natural desire to talk and tell stories with a technology."
 |
| Ward Cunningham |
Currently, the most popular wiki is Wikipedia. However, there are many other sites that use wikis.
A list of some "notable" wikis can be found here: Notable Wikis
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Wikipedia: "The Free Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit"
Wikipedia is, as their slogan suggests, a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Currently, there is over 300 million articles in 287 languages. It is the most popular reference site and is the sixth most visited site in the entire world.
The original proposal for an internet encyclopedia came from Rick Gates in 1993. However, it was not until January 15, 2001 that Gates' idea was made into a reality when Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia.
Originally, Wikipedia was designed to supplement an earlier project, Nupedia, an online encyclopedia that contained only peer-reviewed articles. After seeing how slowly Nupedia was developing (only twelve articles were published in the first year), the two decided to create Wikipedia. Wikipedia was able to quickly expand content because it is a wiki (see later post), while Nupedia was not.
Read more about Nupedia here.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
The original proposal for an internet encyclopedia came from Rick Gates in 1993. However, it was not until January 15, 2001 that Gates' idea was made into a reality when Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia.
 |
| Jimmy Wales |
 |
| Larry Sanger |
Originally, Wikipedia was designed to supplement an earlier project, Nupedia, an online encyclopedia that contained only peer-reviewed articles. After seeing how slowly Nupedia was developing (only twelve articles were published in the first year), the two decided to create Wikipedia. Wikipedia was able to quickly expand content because it is a wiki (see later post), while Nupedia was not.
Read more about Nupedia here.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
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