What is

collaborative educational effort ever seen. We believe

that every single person has the right to learn, but also

Wikipedia?
that everyone has something that they can (and should)
teach others.

Imagine a world in which every Who are the people in the Wikipedia community?
single person is given free access to On Wikipedia, anyone can create or modify an article
the sum of all human knowledge. instantly, so that no article has a single author. Instead,
That‘s what we‘re doing. tens and even hundreds of people work together, shar-
ing what they know to edit and improve the content.
Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia that can be The result is a never-ending “work in progress,” always
read and edited by anyone. getting more thorough and always getting better.
Contributors can create an account with a user name text, surround it with two apostrophes; use three for
and a password, but this is not required. Much of our bolded text, and enclose a word in two brackets ([[]])
An international project
best work comes from anonymous users, many of them to create a link.
Wikipedia began as an just passing through, who notice a little something that The software used by Wikipedia is known as Mediawiki,
English-language project they can tidy up. Many of them become hooked, and and was developed with the specific goal of creating
on January 15, 2001. It was are soon an integral part of the Wikipedia volunteer an encyclopedia in mind. Today, Mediwiki software is
soon joined by a German community. Our neutral point of view policy encourag- distributed under a General Public License (GPL). It is
edition, and in a short time es people from diverse backgrounds to work together. used by many other wikis, though Wikipedia is still the
by many other languages. When disputes arise, we have mechanisms in place to largest wiki in existence.
Enormous efforts are resolve them amicably.
underway to highlight the
How do I become a wikipedian?
international nature of
“You can edit this page right now!”
the project. While English, with more than 1.5 million Easy, all you have to do is go to Wikipedia and begin
articles is still the largest Wikipedia, there are well over The key to Wikipedia‘s success is innovative new soft- to edit. Add something you know, expand an article or
three million articles in more than 250 languages, some ware known as “wiki.” Created by Ward Cunningham simply improve its style. We‘re sure you‘ll be coming
quite large, and others just getting started. in 1995, this software makes it possible to create a back again and again to the fastest growing Internet
dynamic website, in which all users can edit a webpage phenomenon in the world!
quickly and easily, using their personal web browsers.
Nobody knows everything
It‘s easy. It‘s fast. It‘s a wiki!
but everybody knows something The GNU free documentation license
Wikiwiki –
Wikipedia was founded on the belief that virtually Text and most images contributed to Wikipedia is
“fast” in Hawaian
everybody has some knowledge that they can share considered to be free content under the GNU Free
with others. Our editors range in age from seven to The wiki language, known as wikitext, is much simpler Documentation License (GDFL). This means that con-
seventy and beyond, each of them contributing a little than HTML. It is practically intuitive, so that anyone can tent can be freely used, freely edited, freely copied, and
something to help make this the most well-rounded learn it in just a few minutes. For example, to italicize freely distributed.
Wikipedia’s Wikimedia,
sister projects the organisation
As Wikipedia grew, sister projects were founded to en- The Wikimedia Foundation, based
hance the content of the encyclopedia. Many of these in Florida, USA, is the parent or-
have taken on a life of their own, though they are all ganization of Wikipedia and its
part of the Wikimedia family, and there is constant co- sister projects. It is a non-profit
operation between them. Our sister projects include: organization with the goal of pro-
viding free knowledge to every
Wiktionary person in the world. Wikimedia
a free dictionary project 
provides the hardware equipment and covers the costs
in many languages of bandwidth and domains. As of 2007, Wikipedia was
http://www.wiktionary.org one of the 10 most popular websites on the Internet.

Wikibooks
How can I help?
a project to develop
free learning materials The Wikimedia Foundation relies on public donations
http://www.wikibooks.org to run its wiki-based projects. If you want to en-
sure that Wikipedia and all the other Wikimedia
Wikiquote projects continue to grow and flourish, donate on-
a free compendium of quotations line with PayPal or MoneyBookers. Our account
http://wikiquote.org name is donation@wikimedia.org. PayPal allows
for one time, monthly and yearly payment options.
Wikisource For more information, see our fundraising page at
a repository of source texts http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising.
http://www.wikisource.org
Donate via postal mail
Wikinews You can also send donations via snail-mail to
collaboratively written news Wikimedia‘s main office at the following address:
http://www.wikinews.org Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
200 2nd Ave South, #358

Wikimedia Commons
a repository for pictures and other
media files under free licenses
http://commons.wikimedia.org
Wikipedia
St. Petersburg, FL 33701-4313
If sending donations from outside the United States, please note
that an international money order or a check payable in a United
States bank would be appreciated, to avoid collection costs. Please
do not send currency by mail. http://www.wikipedia.org