Wikipedia is 20 years old. Here are 8 interesting facts about her
Wikipedia is 20 years old. Here are 8 interesting facts about her
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About the creation, title, competitors and veracity of articles that are not always to be trusted.

Wikipedia is 20 years old. Here are 8 interesting facts about her
Wikipedia is 20 years old. Here are 8 interesting facts about her

The online encyclopedia "Wikipedia" is one of the most significant sites on the modern Internet. Millions of people use it as a source of reliable, truthful, impartial information. In addition, Wikipedia has become the most successful example of how a non-profit organization, funded and supported by volunteers, can do great things. On January 15, Wikipedia celebrates its 20th anniversary, so today's collection of facts is dedicated to her.

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The founder and permanent head of Wikipedia is (Jimmy Donal Wales). However, before starting work on the encyclopedia, Jimmy tried his hand at a completely different project. In 1996, Wales, along with Tim Shell, founded Bomis, which promoted the "for men" search engine Bomis.com. The paid section of this resource contained pornographic content.

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Wikipedia was based on "", an encyclopedic project founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in March 2000. Unlike Wikipedia, articles here were written and edited by professional scientists. Over the three years of its existence, this encyclopedia has appeared 25 completed articles and another 74 articles that were in the process of improving and reviewing. Despite this, in June 2008, CNET Networks named Nupedia as one of the greatest now-defunct sites in history.

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The technology for editing sites by users (wiki) appeared long before the creation of "Wikipedia". The term was first used to describe a website in 1995 by Ward G. Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb. For the name, he borrowed a Hawaiian word for "fast." Cunningham himself explained this choice by the fact that he simply remembered an employee at Honolulu International Airport, who advised him to use the fast wiki-wiki shuttle - a small bus that ply between terminals. Later, the word wiki was coined with the English backronym What I Know Is … ("What I know is …").

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Currently, Wikipedia is created by volunteers from all over the world in more than 300 languages. It contains over 55 million articles. The Wikipedia website is one of the most visited sites in the world. Wikipedia today is the largest and most popular reference book on Earth. Some scientists call Wikipedia the most significant object created in the entire history of mankind.

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Many people use facts from Wikipedia as their final and indisputable argument. However, even in the encyclopedia itself about the inadmissibility of such an approach.

Wikipedia does not guarantee the truth

Wikipedia, an open-content online encyclopedia, is a voluntary community of individuals and groups who create a common repository of human knowledge. Its structure allows anyone with Internet access and a browser to change its content. Therefore, all information is provided without warranty of usefulness for any purpose or suitability for any use.

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Before the appearance of Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia was considered to be created by order of the Chinese emperor Yongle, containing knowledge from all the books of the imperial library, including canonical, historical, philosophical and artistic works. It was created in 1407 and held the record for about 600 years.

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The open nature of Wikipedia's editing serves as a fertile ground for various pranks and hoaxes. For example, in October 2006, a section on the non-existent "" appeared in the encyclopedia, which is a funny mixture of old regional dialects and quite modern mat. In a short time, this section was replenished with six and a half thousand articles, ahead of many real languages: Afrikaans, Uzbek, Belarusian and so on. The deception was only recognized a year later, and on November 5, 2007, this section was removed.

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On October 22, 2014, the world's first Wikipedia monument was unveiled in the Polish city of Slubice. It is the official website logo, held by two men and two women standing on stacks of books. It is dedicated to the authors of Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

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