Wikipedia

( wiki = Hawaiian word for "quick" and
pedia = last part of the English word "encyclopedia")

Wikipedia is a reference work whose entries cover all areas of knowledge are provided in the form of personal articles and are accessible via the Internet. The basic idea of ​​Wikipedia is for everyone to use the Internet and active expansion of his knowledge free of charge.

Unlike conventional dictionaries or encyclopedias, Wikipedia is free for the user. This means that everyone is allowed to use the content of Wikipedia, provided that the source is mentioned and the author`s can be freely copied and used (GNU/GPL license). There are different licenses for images.

The Authors
All articles and contributions in Wikipedia are by volunteer authors and authors written. Each user can add to existing articles, change or with maintenance notices (e.g. as obsolete, biased or difficult to understand). The principles for this are: verifiability, neutral point of view and no publication of research papers. A systematic processing The data entered is not checked and coordinated. However, users with extended access rights (administrators) have after a discussion in Wikipedia the opportunity to add articles to block controversial topics for editing, delete articles or exclude certain users from active participation.

Wikipedia is currently available in more than 250 language editions. The German version of Wikipedia started in March 2001. More than 7,000 authors regularly work on the German-language edition.

Quality
Wikipedia compares favorably with several commercial digital encyclopedias equal in the categories "Completeness" and "Currentness". However, the testers often found the Wikipedia articles to be "too long".

Founder and operator
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (born 1966 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA). the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and was chairman from 2003 to 2006 the Wikimedia Foundation.

Financing
The Wikimedia Foundation is an international non-governmental, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting free knowledge. So far, it has been financed almost exclusively by donations. It was mostly including smaller individual donations from private individuals. Wikimedia receives further support in the form of cash and in-kind donations from other foundations and companies, including since spring 2005 the search engine and Internet portal operator Yahoo.