transport: History of Wikipedia

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

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 technological and conceptual underpinnings of Wikipedia predate this; the earliest known proposal for an online encyclopedia was made by Rick Gates in 1993, and the concept of a free-as-in-freedom online encyclopedia (as distinct from mere open source) was proposed by Richard Stallman in 1998. Stallman's concept specifically included the idea that n…

Evidence: 56 • authority: 72

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteer editors, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, Wikipedia has been hosted since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization funded mainly by donations from readers. Wikipedia is the largest and most read reference work in history. Initially available only in English, Wikipedia has grown to over 300 languages and is one of the world's most visited websites as of 2026. The English Wikipedia, with over 7 million articles, remains the largest of the editions, which together comprise more th…

Evidence: 41 • authority: 72

The reliability of Wikipedia and its volunteer-driven and community-regulated editing model, particularly its English-language edition, has been questioned and tested. Wikipedia is written and edited by volunteer editors (known as Wikipedians) 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 editor…

Evidence: 33 • authority: 72

The Chinese Wikipedia (traditional Chinese: 中文維基百科; simplified Chinese: 中文维基百科; pinyin: Zhōngwén Wéijī Bǎikē) is the written vernacular Chinese edition of Wikipedia. It was created on 11 May 2001. It is one of multiple projects supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Chinese Wikipedia has been blocked in mainland China since May 2015. Nonetheless, the Chinese Wikipedia is still one of the top ten most active versions of Wikipedia by number of edits and number of editors, due to contributions from users from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Chinese diaspora. Readers from Taiwan and Hong Kong contribute most of the page views of the Chinese Wikipedia. Despite being ce…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The German Wikipedia (German: Deutschsprachige Wikipedia) is the German-language edition of Wikipedia, a free and publicly editable online encyclopedia. Founded on 16 March 2001, it is the second-oldest Wikipedia edition (after the English Wikipedia). It has 3,158,204 articles, making it the third-largest edition of Wikipedia by number of articles as of 2026, behind the English Wikipedia and the mostly bot-generated Cebuano Wikipedia. It has the second-largest number of edits and of active users behind the English Wikipedia. On 7 November 2011, the German Wikipedia became the second edition of Wikipedia, after the English edition, to exceed 100 million page edits.

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered and registered as a charitable foundation in San Francisco, California. It is most known for hosting Wikipedia, a free online collaboratively edited encylopedia that is one of the world's most visited websites. It also hosts and operates 14 related open collaboration projects, and supports the development of MediaWiki, which is the wiki software that underpins them. The foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales, as a nonprofit way to fund Wikipedia and other wiki projects that had previously been hosted by Bomis, Wales's for-profit company. The Wikimedia Foun…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

On Wikipedia, vandalism is editing a page in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionally humorous, nonsensical, a hoax, offensive, libelous or degrading in any way. Throughout its history, Wikipedia has struggled to maintain a balance between allowing the freedom of open editing and protecting the accuracy of its information when false information can be potentially damaging to its subjects. Vandalism is easy to commit on Wikipedia, as anyone can edit the site, with the exception of protected pages (which, depending on the level of protection, can only be edited by users with certain privileges). Certain Wi…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

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. The English Wikipedia is hosted alongside other language editions by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization. Its content, written independently of other editions by volunteer editors known as Wikipedians, is in various varieties of English while aiming to stay consistent within articles. Its internal newspaper is The Signpost. The English Wikipedia is the most read version of Wikipedia, accounting for 48% of Wikipedia's cumulative traffic, with the remaining percentage split…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Wikipedia is a free multilingual wiki-based open-source online encyclopedia edited and maintained by a community of volunteer editors, started on 15 January 2001 as an English-language encyclopedia. Non-English editions followed in the same year: the German and Catalan editions were created on 16 March, the French edition was created on 23 March, and the Swedish edition was created on 23 May. As of October 2026, Wikipedia articles have been created in 364 editions, with 348 currently active, 16 closed and 11 moved to Wikimedia Incubator. The Meta-Wiki language committee manages policies on creating new Wikimedia projects. To be eligible, a language must have a valid ISO 639 code, be "suffic…