Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free encyclopedia. It is a collaborative, cooperative effort by volunteer writers to provide up-to-date information on any subject imaginable.
Wikipedia is one of the most popular reference websites online, with millions of visitors every month. There are more than 19 million articles and 82,000 active contributors.
It is the #5 most popular website in the world coming after Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Baidu (Chinese search engine).
An encyclopedia is a reference tool. It may be general or subject-specific. The most important role is to provide an introduction to a subject. Encyclopedias are perfect for preliminary research. They may provide terms to help with further searching, names of people associated with the topic, and overview and context of the subject, or sometimes information about controversies.
Good encyclopedias are generally well-accepted information. They attempt to be neutral is how they present information. As such, they are good for report writing in elementary school. But for college-level research, more analytical or theoretical information is eventually required. An encyclopedia may lead you to that material, however.
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Wikipedia is guided by the following principles, referred to as the Five Pillars:
The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia
The Wikipedia wars: does it matter if our biggest source of knowledge is written by men?
Editors Are Trying To Fix Wikipedia’s Gender And Racial Bias Problem
Know It All Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? New Yorker
Wikipedia Users Report from the Pew Research Center
Does Wikipedia Have An Accuracy Problem? The Atlantic
How Today's College Students Use Wikipedia for Course-Related Research
The Wikipedia Revolution by
Details the site's inception in 2001, its evolution, and its remarkable growth, while also explaining its larger cultural repercussions.
How Wikipedia Works by
Learn the skills required to use and contribute to the world's largest reference work-like what constitutes good writing and research and how to work with images and templates.
Wikipedia U by
Wikipedia has come under particular scrutiny from publishers of print encyclopedias and college professors, who are skeptical about whether a crowd-sourced encyclopedia can ever truly be accurate or authoritative. Leitch argues that the assumptions these critics make about accuracy and authority are themselves open to debate.
Common Knowledge? An Ethnography of Wikipedia by
Dariusz Jemielniak draws on his academic expertise and years of active participation within the Wikipedia community to take readers inside the site, illuminating how it functions and deconstructing its distinctive organization.
Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia by
Examines Wikipedia's good-faith collaborative culture, as seen not only in the writing and editing of articles but also in their discussion pages and edit histories.
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