# Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free, multilingual online encyclopedia created in 2001 by [[Jimmy Wales]] and [[Larry Sanger]]. It is collaboratively written and maintained by a community of volunteer editors using a wiki-based editing system (MediaWiki). As of 2025, the English edition alone contains over 6.8 million articles, making it the largest encyclopedia ever compiled. Wikipedia is one of the most prominent examples of [[Collective Intelligence]] and [[Crowdsourcing]] in action. Its model relies on open editing, community-enforced policies (neutral point of view, verifiability, no original research), and a self-correcting feedback loop where errors are progressively identified and fixed by the crowd. Despite early skepticism, studies have shown its accuracy rivals traditional encyclopedias for many topics. The project is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization. Wikipedia operates on [[Open Source]] software (MediaWiki) and publishes all content under [[Creative Commons (CC)]] and GFDL licenses. It has fundamentally changed how people access and share knowledge, serving as both a reference tool and a demonstration that decentralized, volunteer-driven knowledge production can work at scale. ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ## Related - [[Collective Intelligence]] - [[Crowdsourcing]] - [[Open Source]] - [[Creative Commons (CC)]] - [[Jimmy Wales]] - [[Larry Sanger]]