Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a social networking site

Wikipedia, from an editors and administrators perspective, may meet the functional definition of a Social Media Site in that Social networking sites are places where people meet and converse with each other online. A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors.

Wikipedia missions itself an online encyclopedia and, as a means to that end, an online community of people interested in building a high-quality encyclopedia in a spirit of mutual respect. Users of Wikipedia are encouraged to make personal connections with other users for the purpose of developing the encyclopedia, and indeed, Wikipedia is the world's only practical platform for facilitating collaboration among people who have highly specialized interests and a strong desire to share the encyclopedic information which promotes those interests with the world. It is only natural that readers would want to contact the authors of Wikipedia articles and that editors of a given article might want to meet other editors who volunteered their time to develop that same article, especially when the article is on a topic represented by scarce expertise in the world. Wikipedia is a social networking site which unites people who have the goal of making the sum of all human knowledge available to every single person on the planet, and many Wikipedians feel strongly about the value of the shared mission and the community.