The history of Wikipedia formally began with the launch of Wikipedia on 15 January 2001 two days

after registering the domain[2] by Jimmy Wales andLarry Sanger. Its technological and conceptual
underpinnings predate this; the earliest known proposal for an online encyclopedia was made
by Rick Gates in 1993,[3] but the concept of a free-as-in-freedom online encyclopedia (as distinctfrom
mere open source)[4] was proposed by Richard Stallman in December 2000.[5]
Crucially, Stallman's concept specifically included the idea that no central organization should control
editing. This characteristic was in stark contrast to contemporary digital encyclopedias such
as Microsoft Encarta, Encyclopdia Britannica, and even Bomis's Nupedia, which was Wikipedia's
direct predecessor. In 2001, the license for Nupedia was changed to GFDL, and Wales and Sanger
launched Wikipedia using the concept and technology of awiki pioneered in 1995 by Ward
Cunningham.[6] Initially, Wikipedia was intended to complement Nupedia, an online encyclopedia
project edited solely by experts, by providing additional draft articles and ideas for it. In practice,
Wikipedia quickly overtook Nupedia, becoming a global project in multiple languages and inspiring a
wide range of other online reference projects.
According to Alexa Internet, Wikipedia is the world's sixth-most-popular website in terms of overall
visitor traffic.[7] Wikipedia's total worldwide monthly readership is approximately 495 million.
[8]

Worldwide in August 2015, WMF Labs tallied 18 billion page views for the month.[9] According

to comScore, Wikipedia receives over 117 million monthly unique visitors from the United States
alone.