 Wikipedia
(pronunciation ) is a free, multilingual encyclopedia project
operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.
Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki
(a technology for creating collaborative websites) and
encyclopedia. Wikipedia's 10 million articles, about a quarter of
which are in English, have been written collaboratively by
volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be
edited by anyone who can access the Wikipedia website.
Launched
in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it is currently the
largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.
Wikipedia.cm is a mistyping of wikipedia.com and is an ad site.
Critics
of Wikipedia target its systemic bias and inconsistencies and its
policy of favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial
process. Wikipedia's reliability and accuracy are also an issue.
Other criticisms are centered on its susceptibility to vandalism
and the addition of spurious or unverified information. Scholarly
work suggests that vandalism is generally short-lived.
In addition to being an encyclopedic reference, Wikipedia has
received major media attention as an online source of breaking
news as it is constantly updated. When Time magazine recognized
"You" as its Person of the Year 2006, praising the accelerating
success of online collaboration and interaction by millions of
users around the world, Wikipedia was the first particular "Web
2.0" service mentioned, followed by YouTube and MySpace.
Wikipedia.cm has been accused of exhibiting
systemic bias and inconsistency; critics argue that Wikipedia's
open nature and a lack of proper sources for much of the
information makes it unreliable. Some commentators suggest that
Wikipedia is generally reliable, but that the reliability of any
given article is not always clear.
Editors of traditional reference works such as the
Encyclopędia Britannica have questioned the project's utility and
status as an encyclopedia. Many university lecturers discourage
students from citing any encyclopedia in academic work, preferring
primary sources; some specifically prohibit Wikipedia citations.
Co-founder Jimmy Wales stresses that encyclopedias
of any type are not usually appropriate as primary sources, and
should not be relied upon as authoritative. Technology writer Bill
Thompson commented that the debate was possibly "symptomatic of
much learning about information which is happening in society
today".
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