Wikipedia, a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers known as Wikipedians, began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered. It grew out of Nupedia, a more structured free encyclopedia, as a way to allow easier and faster drafting of articles and translations.
The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition.
Jimmy Donal Wales, also known as Jimbo Wales, is an American Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the non-profit free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and the for-profit wiki hosting service Fandom. He has worked on other online projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and WT Social.
Some edits to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia by staff of the United States Congress have created controversy, notably in early to mid-2006. Several such instances, such as those involving Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns, and Joe Biden, received significant media attention. Others, such as those involving Gil Gutknecht, were reported but received less widespread coverage.
The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias.
The reliability of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors, who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; its English-language edition has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Citizendium is an English-language wiki-based free online encyclopedia launched by Larry Sanger, co-founder of Nupedia and Wikipedia.
WikiScanner was a publicly searchable database that linked anonymous edits on Wikipedia to the organizations where those edits apparently originated. It did this by cross-referencing the edits with data on the owners of the associated block of IP addresses, though it did not investigate edits made under a username. It was created by Virgil Griffith and released on August 13, 2007.
Wikipedia has been studied extensively. Between 2001 and 2010, researchers published at least 1,746 peer-reviewed articles about the online encyclopedia. Such studies are greatly facilitated by the fact that Wikipedia's database can be downloaded without help from the site owner.
A series of incidents in 2009 led to Church of Scientology–owned networks being blocked from making edits to Wikipedia articles relating to Scientology. The Church of Scientology has long had a controversial history on the Internet and had initiated campaigns to manipulate material and remove information critical of itself from the web. From early in Wikipedia's history, conflict arose regarding the website's coverage of Scientology. Disputes began in earnest in 2005, with users disagreeing about whether or not to describe Scientology as an abusive cult or religion, and continued through the decade.
Wiki-Watch, formally known as Arbeitsstelle Wiki-Watch im "Studien- und Forschungsschwerpunkt Medienrecht" der Juristischen Fakultät der Europa-Universität Viadrina is a German university project for transparency of Wikipedia and Wikipedia articles, aimed especially at media professionals.
This is a list of books about Wikipedia or for which Wikipedia is a major subject.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
Conflict-of-interest (COI) editing on Wikipedia occurs when editors use Wikipedia to advance the interests of their external roles or relationships. The type of COI editing that compromises Wikipedia the most is paid editing for public relations (PR) purposes. Several policies and guidelines exist to combat conflict of interest editing, including Wikipedia's conflict of interest guideline and the Wikimedia Foundation's paid-contribution disclosure policy.
Wikipediocracy is a website for discussion and criticism of Wikipedia. Its members have brought information about Wikipedia's controversies to the attention of the media. The site was founded in March 2012 by users of Wikipedia Review, another site dedicated to criticism of Wikipedia.
The Hillsborough disaster Wikipedia posts refers to vandalism edits on various Wikipedia articles, yet mostly the Hillsborough disaster article, via the use of British Government computers, causing a British Government scandal. On 24 April 2014, Oliver Duggan, in the Liverpool Echo, reported that users of computers that used IP addresses registered to the Government Secure Intranet had added derogatory and offensive material to Wikipedia articles, particularly the article about the Hillsborough disaster. The vandalism was quickly re-reported by other media, and subsequent reports highlighted other acts of vandalism, on various articles, originated by computers using those IP addresses. After an investigation by The Daily Telegraph and Wikipediocracy, the person behind the edits was identified as a "junior civil servant" within the UK government and was dismissed.
James Bridle is an artist, writer and publisher based in London. Bridle coined the New Aesthetic; their work "deals with the ways in which the digital, networked world reaches into the physical, offline one." Their work has explored aspects of the western security apparatus including drones and asylum seeker deportation. Bridle has written for WIRED, Icon, Domus, Cabinet Magazine, The Atlantic and many other publications, and writes a regular column for The Guardian on publishing and technology.
Ideological bias on Wikipedia, especially in its English-language edition, has been the subject of academic analysis and public criticism of the project. Questions relate to whether its content is biased due to the political, religious, or other ideologies its volunteer editors may adhere to. These all draw concerns as to the possible effects this may have on the encyclopedia's reliability.
Coverage of American politics in Wikipedia is a subject that has received substantial attention from the media. Since its founding in 2001, Wikipedia has provided coverage of six United States presidential elections, six mid-term elections at the federal level, and numerous "off-year" state elections and special elections.
