Information sharing, the Wikipedia way

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Information sharing, the Wikipedia way

4 January 2009 367 views 2 Comments

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I think, anyone who uses internet regularly might already know about www.wikipedia.org. For the uninitiated, here is Wikipedia for you.

The founder of Wikipedia is Jimmy Wales. His famous quote is “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge”. Wikipedia.org has made rapid strides in achieving this dream.

Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia on the internet that anyone can edit and update. You might have heard about Encyclopedia Britannica, the comprehensive resource for information on subject under the sun. Wikipedia is the internet equivalent of Encyclopedia Britannica but is even better than that.

Consider these:

It is online updated by contributors around the world
The authenticity of the information that is updated is checked by editors around the world
It has entries in 265 languages around the world
It has over 12 million articles in all languages put together, at last count (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias)
Articles in English language alone total 2.7 million and has been edited 275 million times (which shows the rate at which these articles get updated)
It has 1.7 million images supporting the various articles
Among Indian languages there are 42K articles in Telugu, 24K articles in Hindi, 17K articles in Tamil and 9K articles in Malayalam.
Over 15 million users access Wikipedia looking for information
The social knowledge network is administrated by over 4500 people around the world, checking and editing the content that is contributed by users around the world

The most interesting part of this whole thing is that it is a social foundation and Jimmy Wales has kept this as a non-profit organization. Someone else with a business mind would have made this into a big commercial activity and minted billions. But not Mr. Jimmy Wales.

Wikipedia is one of the projects of the larger Wikimedia. The other projects of Wikimedia are (click on each link to learn about them)

Recently when I visited the site I noticed an appeal from the founder Mr. Jimmy Wales seeking contributions for the Wikimedia projects from the users with a view to raise US $ 6 million to cover the operating expenses for the organization till June 2009. Having used Wikimedia regularly, I felt compelled to make a contribution for this wonderful organization. Thrice before I tried to do it but could not complete the transaction due to difficulties in making the online payment (forgotten paypal passwords, credit card authorization pending at paypal etc.).

However, today I completed the payment and feel so happy to have started the year by making a contribution to a social cause.