User:Hemanshu/poster

www.wikipedia.org

Wikipedia is the world's largest encyclopedia with over 300,000 articles in the English language version and over 400,000 articles in other languages (Wikipedia is currently available in 186 languages and aims to cover all the languages of the world). It is an open-content free encyclopedia meaning that anyone including you can edit it. All original material contributed to Wikipedia is deemed to be free content under the GNU Free Documentation License, meaning that it may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed.

Wikipedia is managed and operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikipedia's content is created by its users.

Wikipedia began as an English language project on January 15, 2001, and soon gained its first other language, French, on March 23, 2001. There has since been a great deal of effort devoted to making it multilingual, and it currently contains over 300,000 articles in English and over 400,000 in other languages (as of June 2004 [1]).

At this point, you may ask yourself: "Just why is Wikipedia so great? What accounts for its overwhelming splendidness?" Here are some reasons why we think so:

• Wikipedia articles are extremely easy to edit. Anyone can click the "edit" link and edit an article.

• Wikipedia has almost no bureaucracy; one might say it has none at all. But it isn't just the "Wild West." There are social pressures and community norms, but perhaps that by itself doesn't constitute bureaucracy, because anybody can just go in and make any changes they feel like making. And other people generally like it when they do. So there aren't bottlenecks; anyone can come in and make progress on the project at any time. The project is self-policing. Editorial oversight is more or less continuous with writing, which seems, again, very efficient.  :-)

• Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy makes it an excellent place to gain a quick understanding of controversial topics. Want a good overview of the Arab-Israeli conflict but only got 10 minutes to spare? Wondering what all the fuss is about in Kashmir or what the pro/con arguments are about stem cell research? Wikipedia is a great place to start.

• While traditional encyclopedias might be revised annually, Wikipedia is revised hundreds of times an hour. That's a big deal if your interest is in current affairs, recent science, pop culture, or any other field that changes rapidly.

• On Wikipedia, there are no required topics and no one is making assignments. That means that anyone can find part of the encyclopedia they're interested in, and add to it immediately (if they can do better than what's already there). This increases motivation and keeps things fun.

• Wikipedia is open content, released under the GNU Free Documentation License. Knowing this encourages people to contribute; they know it's a public project that everyone can use.

• Articles seem to be getting steadily more polished. Articles seem to have a tendency to get gradually better and better, particularly if there is one person working on an article with reasonable regularity (in that case, others have a tendency to help). There are some articles we can all point to that started out life mediocre at best and are now at least somewhat better than mediocre. Now suppose this project lasts for many years and attracts many more people, as seems perfectly reasonable to assume. Then how could articles not be burnished to a scintillating luster?

• Wikipedia seems to attract highly intelligent, articulate people (with the exception of repeat vandals) with a little (or a lot of) time on their hands. Moreover, there are some experts at work here. Over time, the huge amount of solid work done by hobbyists and dilettantes can (and no doubt will) be hugely improved upon by experts. This both makes Wikipedia a pleasant intellectual community (or so it seems to some) and gives us some confidence that the quality of Wikipedia articles will, in time, if not yet, be high.

• Furthermore, because these highly intelligent, and may I say undoubtedly attractive people, come from all over the world, Wikipedia can give the reader a genuinely "world view".

• Wikipedia is growing at a dizzying rate. This rate of growth has been progressively increasing: as of July 2004, the average growth rate now exceeds 400 articles per day in the English version alone, and over 2,000 articles per day across the entire project. And the word is only slowly getting out about Wikipedia.

• To use an extended metaphor, Wikipedia is very fertile soil for knowledge. As encyclopedia articles grow, they can attract gardeners who will weed and edit them, while the discussion between community members provides light to help their growth. By consistent effort and nourishment, Wikipedia articles can become beautiful and informative.

• Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, repeatedly mentions in his book "Weaving the Web" that the web has grown into a medium that is much easier to read than to edit. He envisaged the web would be much more of a collaborative medium than it currently is, and that the browser should also function as an editor. Wiki-based sites are closer to his vision.