- Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger as an online encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone. It grew rapidly as more people contributed articles.
- By August 2013, the 250 language editions of Wikipedia contained over 7.5 million articles totaling 1.74 billion words. On average it receives around 10 billion page views per month from nearly 500 million unique visitors.
- Issues around editing and censorship have occurred over time as Wikipedia grew in popularity and scope. It remains one of the largest and most popular general knowledge websites globally.
1. FLORIDA STATE COLLEGE Of JACKSONVILLE
ISM 3013INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MANAGEMENT
Professor: Rosalyn Amaro
By: Aurdry Johnson
November 21, 2014
2. . Nupedia was founded by Jimmy Wales, with
Larry Sanger as editor-in-chief, and funded by
the web-advertising company Bomis
3. In December 2008, Wales stated that he made
Wikipedia's first edit, a test edit with the text
"Hello, World!".
4. The existence of the project was formally
announced and an appeal for volunteers to
engage in content creation was made to the
Nupedia mailing list on 17 January
5. The project received many new participants after
being mentioned on the Slashdot website in July
2001, having already earned two minor mentions in
March 2001
6. Between these relatively rapid influxes of
traffic, there had been a steady stream of
traffic from other sources, especially Google,
which alone sent hundreds of new visitors to
the site every day
7. Its first major mainstream media coverage was in
the New York Times on Thursday 20 September 2001.
The project gained its 1,000th article around Monday
12 February 2001, and reached 10,000 articles
around 7 September..
8. In the first year of its existence, over 20,000
encyclopedia entries were created – a rate of over
1,500 articles per month. On Friday 30 August 2002,
the article count reached 40,000.
9. The Wikipedia project has grown rapidly in the
course of its life, at several levels. Content has
grown organically through the addition of new
articles, new wikis have been added in English and
non-English languages.
10. Wikipedia itself has grown, with the creation of
the Wikimedia Foundation to act as an umbrella body
and the growth of software and policies to address
the needs of the editorial community
12. The 250 language editions of Wikipedia contained a
combined total of 7.5 million articles, totaling
1.74 billion words in approximately 250 languages, by
13 August
13. The Arbitration Committee of the English
Wikipedia decided in May 2009 to restrict access to its
site from Church of Scientology IP addresses, to
prevent self-serving edits by
Scientologists. Wikipedia content became licensed
under Creative Commons in 2009.
14. On 24 March, the European Wikipedia servers
went offline due to an overheating problem.
15. The problem was resolved quickly, but due to DNS
caching effects, some areas were slower to regain
access to Wikipedia than others.
16. Wikipedia and its users held hundreds
of celebrations worldwide to
commemorate the site's 10th
anniversary on 15 January.
17. Also in October 2011, Wikimedia announced the launch
of Wikipedia Zero, an initiative to enable free mobile
access to Wikipedia in developing countries through
partnerships with mobile operators
18. On 13 July 2012, the English Wikipedia gained its 4-
millionth article, Izbat al-Burj. In October 2012,
historian and Wikipedia editor Richard Jensen stated
that the English Wikipedia was "nearing completion.”
19. In April 2013, the French secret service was
accused of attempting to censor Wikipedia by
threatening a Wikipedia volunteer with arrest
unless "classified information" about a military
radio station was deleted.
20. As of November 2014, Wikipedia is the world's
sixth-most-popular website according to Alexa
Internet, and is the largest general-knowledge
encyclopedia online.
21. On average, Wikipedia receives a total of
10 billion global page views from around
495 million unique visitors every
month, including 85 million visitors from
the United States alone.
22. On average, the Main Page of the English
Wikipedia alone receives approximately
8 million global page views every day
23. On October 22, 2014, the first monument to Wikipedia will be
unveiled in the Polish town of Slubice
24. Edward Joseph "Ed" Snowden is an American computer
professional who leaked classified information from the
National Security Agency, starting in June 2013
25. On June 14 the U.S. Department of
Justice charged him with two counts of
violating the Espionage Act and theft of
government property, punishable by up
to 30 years in prison
26. "Everybody Knows Everything", Jeremy Philips, The Wall
Street Journal, March 18, 2009
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward Snowden
"Wikipedia: Exploring Fact City", Noam Cohen, New York
Times, March 28, 2009
