The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
Wikipedia[a] is a free content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history,[1][2] and is consistently ranked among the ten most visited websites; as of August 2024[update], it was ranked fourth by Semrush,[3] and seventh by Similarweb.[4] Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has been hosted since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization funded mainly by donations from readers.[5]
Initially only available in English, editions of Wikipedia in more than 300 other languages have been developed. The English Wikipedia, with its over 6.9 million articles, is the largest of the editions, which together comprise more than 63 million articles and attract more than 1.5 billion unique device visits and 13 million edits per month (about 5 edits per second on average) as of April 2024[update].[6] In July 2024, over 25% of Wikipedia's traffic was from the United States, followed by Japan at 6.2%, the United Kingdom at 5.8%, Russia at 5.2%, Germany at 5%, and the remaining 51% split among other countries.[7]
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- ^ "Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher". The Economist. January 9, 2021. Archived from the original on January 7, 2021. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
- ^ Anderson, Chris (May 8, 2006). "Jimmy Wales – The 2006 Time 100". Time. Archived from the original on October 12, 2022. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
- ^ "Most Visited Websites in Worldwide 2024". Semrush. August 2024. Retrieved September 14, 2024.
- ^ "Most viewed website". Similarweb. Retrieved September 14, 2024.
- ^ Seitz-Gruwell, Lisa (October 23, 2023). "7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on December 27, 2023. Retrieved December 27, 2023.
- ^ "Wikistats – Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved August 8, 2023.
- ^ "wikipedia.org". similarweb.com. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved November 8, 2023.