For the version of Wikipedia written in Basic English, see Simple English Wikipedia. Wikipedi be a free-content online encyclopedia wey community of volunteers, dem know as Wikipedians dey wrep den dey maintain am, thru open collaboration den de wiki software MediaWiki. When no license is specified, an implied license to read and add content to a wiki may be deemed to exist on the grounds of business necessity and the inherent nature of a wiki. Some copyright issues can be alleviated through the use of an open content license.
- Some wikis may be subject to external structures of governance which address the behavior of persons with access to the system, for example in academic contexts.
- There are hundreds of thousands of wikis in use, both public and private, including wikis functioning as knowledge management resources, note-taking tools, community websites, and intranets.
- A person willing to maintain pages will be alerted of modifications to them, allowing them to verify the validity of new editions quickly.
- Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias.
- The study identified the most disputed entries on the English Wikipedia as George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity.
It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and ideological bias. English Wikipedia, often as a stand-in for Wikipedia overall, has been praised for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, culture, and reduced degree of commercial bias. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia’s first edition.
The trend analysis published in The Economist presents Wikipedia in other languages (non-English Wikipedia) as successful in retaining their active editors on a renewable and sustained basis, with their numbers remaining relatively constant at approximately 42,000. The Economist reported that the number of contributors with an average of five or more edits per month was relatively constant since 2008 for Wikipedia in other languages at approximately 42,000 editors within narrow seasonal variances of about 2,000 editors up or down. These ideas include “featured articles”, the neutral-point-of-view policy, navigation templates, the sorting of short “stub” articles into sub-categories, dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration, and weekly collaborations. Editors of the English Wikipedia have pioneered some ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by Wikipedia editions in some of the other languages. The English Wikipedia currently has 54,334,804 registered accounts of which 811 are administrators. English Wikipedia has been characterized as having less cultural bias than other language editions due to its broader editor base.
Example of syntax
The edit history view in many wiki implementations will include edit summaries written by users when submitting changes to a page. The list displays metadata for each revision to the page, such as the time and date of when it was stored, and the name of the person who created it, alongside a link to view that specific revision. Disagreements between users over the content or appearance of pages may cause edit wars, where competing users repetitively change a page back to a version that they favor. Critics of publicly editable wikis argue that they could be easily tampered with by malicious individuals, or even by well-meaning but unskilled users who introduce errors into the content. On implementations where an administrator is able to restrict editing of a page or group of pages to a specific group of users, they may have the option to prevent anonymous editing while allowing it for registered users. Some wikis can filter the list to remove edits flagged by users as “minor” and automated edits.
- WYSIWYG editors may not provide all the features available in wiki markup, and some users prefer not to use them, so a source editor will often be available simultaneously.
- Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules.
- In addition to using the approach of soft security for protecting themselves, larger wikis may employ sophisticated methods, such as bots that automatically identify and revert vandalism.
- The range of quality classes begins with “Stub” (very short pages), followed by “Start”, “C” and “B” (in increasing order of quality).
- Of the about 6.5 million articles and lists assessed as of April 2022, more than 6,000 (0.09%) are featured articles, and fewer than 4,000 (0.06%) are featured lists.
The version history feature allows harmful changes to be reverted quickly and easily. Most wikis offer a recent changes page which shows recent edits, or a list of edits made within a given time frame. Some hosting services offer private, password-protected wikis requiring authentication to access. The software which powers a wiki may be implemented as a series of scripts which operate an existing web server, a standalone application server that runs on one or more web servers, or in the case of personal wikis, run as a standalone application on a single computer.
Some wiki engines offer a blacklist feature which prevents users from adding hyperlinks to specific sites that have been placed on the list by the wiki’s administrators. Wiki implementations retaining and allowing access to specific versions of articles has been useful to the scientific community, by allowing expert peer reviewers to provide royaldogs casino links to trusted version of articles which they have analyzed. For example, in 2006 a German Wikipedia article about the Blaster Worm was edited to include a hyperlink to a malicious website, and users of vulnerable Microsoft Windows systems who followed the link had their systems infected with the worm. Some wiki engines provide additional content control, allowing remote monitoring and management of a page or set of pages to maintain quality. Wiki administrators maintain content and, through having elevated privileges, are granted additional functions (including, for example, preventing edits to pages, deleting pages, changing users’ access rights, or blocking them from editing). In this concept of wiki federation, in which the same content can be hosted and edited in more than one location in a manner similar to distributed version control, the idea of a single discrete “wiki” no longer made sense.
Further reading
Modified version of the logo of English Wikipedia celebrating its 25th anniversary Many other Wikipedias are available; some of the largest are listed below. It has a history of consumption by the Māori, with the larva being consumed either raw or traditionally cooked in a hāngī.
The range of quality classes begins with “Stub” (very short pages), followed by “Start”, “C” and “B” (in increasing order of quality). The study identified the most disputed entries on the English Wikipedia as George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity. In contrast, articles on other languages’ Wikipedias often focus on regional issues.
Other community news publications include the “WikiWorld” web comic, the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, and newsletters of specific WikiProjects like The Bugle from WikiProject Military History and the monthly newsletter from The Guild of Copy Editors. These groups may focus on a specific topic area (for example, women’s history), a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Version 2 of the GNU Free Documentation License includes a specific provision for wiki relicensing, and Creative Commons licenses are also popular.
In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Wikipedia introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles. Various suggestions have been made, ranging from standardizing a single form of English to creating separate versions of the English Wikipedia project. The English Wikipedia is the most read version of Wikipedia, accounting for 48% of Wikipedia’s cumulative traffic, with the remaining percentage split among the other languages. 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.
A notable discussion within the English Wikipedia community concerns the preference for national variety of the English language, particularly American English and British English. Conflicts of interest arising from corporate campaigns to influence content have also been highlighted. Concerns have also been raised about systemic bias along gender, racial, political, corporate, institutional, and national lines. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias. It was created by Jimmy Wales on 4 December 2003 as an extension of the decision-making power he had formerly held as owner of the site.
