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With 42.9 million unique visitors, Wikipedia was ranked number 9, surpassing The New York Times (#10) and Apple (#11). | English |
This marked a significant increase over January 2006, when the rank was number 33, with Wikipedia receiving around 18.3 million unique visitors. | English |
[46] As of March 2020[update], Wikipedia has rank 13[3] among websites in terms of popularity according to Alexa Internet. | English |
In 2014, it received eight billion page views every month. | English |
[47] On February 9, 2014, The New York Times reported that Wikipedia has 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month, "according to the ratings firm comScore". | English |
[8] Loveland and Reagle argue that, in process, Wikipedia follows a long tradition of historical encyclopedias that accumulated improvements piecemeal through "stigmergic accumulation". | English |
[48][49] On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia participated in a series of coordinated protests against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)—by blacking out its pages for 24 hours. | English |
[50] More than 162 million people viewed the blackout explanation page that temporarily replaced Wikipedia content. | English |
[51][52] On January 20, 2014, Subodh Varma reporting for The Economic Times indicated that not only had Wikipedia's growth stalled, it "had lost nearly ten percent of its page views last year. | English |
There was a decline of about two billion between December 2012 and December 2013. | English |
Its most popular versions are leading the slide: page-views of the English Wikipedia declined by twelve percent, those of German version slid by 17 percent and the Japanese version lost nine percent. | English |
"[53] Varma added that "While Wikipedia's managers think that this could be due to errors in counting, other experts feel that Google's Knowledge Graphs project launched last year may be gobbling up Wikipedia users. | English |
"[53] When contacted on this matter, Clay Shirky, associate professor at New York University and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society indicated that he suspected much of the page view decline was due to Knowledge Graphs, stating, "If you can get your question answered from the search page, you don't need to click [any further]. | English |
"[53] By the end of December 2016, Wikipedia was ranked fifth in the most popular websites globally. | English |
[54] In January 2013, 274301 Wikipedia, an asteroid, was named after Wikipedia; in October 2014, Wikipedia was honored with the Wikipedia Monument; and, in July 2015, 106 of the 7,473 700-page volumes of Wikipedia became available as Print Wikipedia. | English |
In April 2019, an Israeli lunar lander, Beresheet, crash landed on the surface of the Moon carrying a copy of nearly all of the English Wikipedia engraved on thin nickel plates; experts say the plates likely survived the crash. | English |
[55][56] In June 2019, scientists reported that all 16 GB of article text from the English Wikipedia have been encoded into synthetic DNA. | English |
[57] Unlike traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia follows the procrastination principle[note 3] regarding the security of its content. | English |
[60] It started almost entirely open—anyone could create articles, and any Wikipedia article could be edited by any reader, even those who did not have a Wikipedia account. | English |
Modifications to all articles would be published immediately. | English |
As a result, any article could contain inaccuracies such as errors, ideological biases, and nonsensical or irrelevant text. | English |
Due to the increasing popularity of Wikipedia, some editions, including the English version, have introduced editing restrictions for certain cases. | English |
For instance, on the English Wikipedia and some other language editions, only registered users may create a new article. | English |
[61] On the English Wikipedia, among others, particularly controversial, sensitive or vandalism-prone pages have been protected to varying degrees. | English |
[62][63] A frequently vandalized article can be semi-protected or extended confirmed protected, meaning that only autoconfirmed or extended confirmed editors are able to modify it. | English |
[64] A particularly contentious article may be locked so that only administrators are able to make changes. | English |
[65] A 2021 article in the Columbia Journalism Review identified Wikipedia's page protection policies as "[p]erhaps the most important" means at Wikipedia's disposal to "regulate its market of ideas". | English |
[66] In certain cases, all editors are allowed to submit modifications, but review is required for some editors, depending on certain conditions. | English |
For example, the German Wikipedia maintains "stable versions" of articles,[67] which have passed certain reviews. | English |
Following protracted trials and community discussion, the English Wikipedia introduced the "pending changes" system in December 2012. | English |
[68] Under this system, new and unregistered users' edits to certain controversial or vandalism-prone articles are reviewed by established users before they are published. | English |
[69] Although changes are not systematically reviewed, the software that powers Wikipedia provides tools allowing anyone to review changes made by others. | English |
The "History" page of each article links to each revision. | English |
[note 4][70] On most articles, anyone can undo others' changes by clicking a link on the article's history page. | English |
Anyone can view the latest changes to articles, and anyone may maintain a "watchlist" of articles that interest them so they can be notified of any changes. | English |
"New pages patrol" is a process whereby newly created articles are checked for obvious problems. | English |
[71] In 2003, economics Ph.D. student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in a wiki create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that features such as allowing easy access to past versions of a page favor "creative construction" over "creative destruction". | English |
[72] Any change or edit that manipulates content in a way that purposefully compromises the integrity of Wikipedia is considered vandalism. | English |
The most common and obvious types of vandalism include additions of obscenities and crude humor. | English |
Vandalism can also include advertising and other types of spam. | English |
[73] Sometimes editors commit vandalism by removing content or entirely blanking a given page. | English |
Less common types of vandalism, such as the deliberate addition of plausible but false information to an article can be more difficult to detect. | English |
Vandals can introduce irrelevant formatting, modify page semantics such as the page's title or categorization, manipulate the underlying code of an article, or use images disruptively. | English |
[74] Obvious vandalism is generally easy to remove from Wikipedia articles; the median time to detect and fix vandalism is a few minutes. | English |
[75][76] However, some vandalism takes much longer to repair. | English |
[77] In the Seigenthaler biography incident, an anonymous editor introduced false information into the biography of American political figure John Seigenthaler in May 2005. | English |
Seigenthaler was falsely presented as a suspect in the assassination of John F. | English |
Kennedy. | English |
[77] The article remained uncorrected for four months. | English |
[77] Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of USA Today and founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, called Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and asked whether he had any way of knowing who contributed the misinformation. | English |
Wales replied that he did not, although the perpetrator was eventually traced. | English |
[78][79] After the incident, Seigenthaler described Wikipedia as "a flawed and irresponsible research tool". | English |
[77] This incident led to policy changes at Wikipedia, specifically targeted at tightening up the verifiability of biographical articles of living people. | English |
[80] In 2010, Daniel Tosh encouraged viewers of his show, Tosh.0, to visit the show's Wikipedia article and edit it at will. | English |
On a later episode, he commented on the edits to the article, most of them offensive, which had been made by the audience and had prompted the article to be locked from editing. | English |
[81][82] Wikipedians often have disputes regarding content, which may result in repeatedly making opposite changes to an article, known as "edit warring". | English |
[83][84] The process is widely seen as a resource-consuming scenario where no useful knowledge is added. | English |
[85] This practice is also criticized as creating a competitive,[86] conflict based[87] editing culture associated with traditional masculine gender roles,[88] which contributes to the gender bias on Wikipedia. | English |
Special interest groups have engaged in edit wars to advance their own political interests. | English |
Content in Wikipedia is subject to the laws (in particular, copyright laws) of the United States and of the US state of Virginia, where the majority of Wikipedia's servers are located. | English |
Beyond legal matters, the editorial principles of Wikipedia are embodied in the "five pillars" and in numerous policies and guidelines intended to appropriately shape content. | English |
Even these rules are stored in wiki form, and Wikipedia editors write and revise the website's policies and guidelines. | English |
[89] Editors can enforce these rules by deleting or modifying non-compliant material. | English |
Originally, rules on the non-English editions of Wikipedia were based on a translation of the rules for the English Wikipedia. | English |
They have since diverged to some extent. | English |
[67] According to the rules on the English Wikipedia, each entry in Wikipedia must be about a topic that is encyclopedic and is not a dictionary entry or dictionary-style. | English |
[90] A topic should also meet Wikipedia's standards of "notability",[91] which generally means that the topic must have been covered in mainstream media or major academic journal sources that are independent of the article's subject. | English |
Further, Wikipedia intends to convey only knowledge that is already established and recognized. | English |
[92] It must not present original research. | English |
A claim that is likely to be challenged requires a reference to a reliable source. | English |
Among Wikipedia editors, this is often phrased as "verifiability, not truth" to express the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles and making their own interpretations. | English |
[93] This can at times lead to the removal of information that, though valid, is not properly sourced. | English |
[94] Finally, Wikipedia must not take sides. | English |
[95] All opinions and viewpoints, if attributable to external sources, must enjoy an appropriate share of coverage within an article. | English |
This is known as a neutral point of view (NPOV). | English |
Wikipedia's initial anarchy integrated democratic and hierarchical elements over time. | English |
[96][97] An article is not considered to be owned by its creator or any other editor, nor by the subject of the article. | English |
[98] Editors in good standing in the community can run for one of many levels of volunteer stewardship: this begins with "administrator",[99][100] privileged users who can delete pages, prevent articles from being changed in case of vandalism or editorial disputes (setting protective measures on articles), and try to prevent certain people from editing. | English |
Despite the name, administrators are not supposed to enjoy any special privilege in decision-making; instead, their powers are mostly limited to making edits that have project-wide effects and thus are disallowed to ordinary editors, and to implement restrictions intended to prevent certain persons from making disruptive edits (such as vandalism). | English |
[101][102] Fewer editors become administrators than in years past, in part because the process of vetting potential Wikipedia administrators has become more rigorous. | English |
[103] Bureaucrats name new administrators solely upon the recommendations from the community. | English |
Over time, Wikipedia has developed a semi-formal dispute resolution process to assist in such circumstances. | English |
To determine community consensus, editors can raise issues at appropriate community forums,[note 5] or seek outside input through third opinion requests or by initiating a more general community discussion known as a "request for comment". | English |
The Arbitration Committee presides over the ultimate dispute resolution process. | English |
Although disputes usually arise from a disagreement between two opposing views on how an article should read, the Arbitration Committee explicitly refuses to directly rule on the specific view that should be adopted. | English |
Statistical analyses suggest that the committee ignores the content of disputes and rather focuses on the way disputes are conducted,[104] functioning not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting editors, but to weed out problematic editors while allowing potentially productive editors back in to participate. | English |
Therefore, the committee does not dictate the content of articles, although it sometimes condemns content changes when it deems the new content violates Wikipedia policies (for example, if the new content is considered biased). | English |
Its remedies include cautions and probations (used in 63% of cases) and banning editors from articles (43%), subject matters (23%), or Wikipedia (16%). | English |
Complete bans from Wikipedia are generally limited to instances of impersonation and anti-social behavior. | English |
When conduct is not impersonation or anti-social, but rather anti-consensus or in violation of editing policies, remedies tend to be limited to warnings. | English |
[105] Each article and each user of Wikipedia has an associated "Talk" page. | English |
These form the primary communication channel for editors to discuss, coordinate and debate. | English |
[106] Wikipedia's community has been described as cultlike,[107] although not always with entirely negative connotations. | English |
[108] The project's preference for cohesiveness, even if it requires compromise that includes disregard of credentials, has been referred to as "anti-elitism". | English |
[109] Wikipedians sometimes award one another virtual barnstars for good work. | English |
These personalized tokens of appreciation reveal a wide range of valued work extending far beyond simple editing to include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. | English |
[110] Wikipedia does not require that its editors and contributors provide identification. | English |
[111] As Wikipedia grew, "Who writes Wikipedia?" | English |
became one of the questions frequently asked on the project. | English |
[112] Jimmy Wales once argued that only "a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" makes the bulk of contributions to Wikipedia and that the project is therefore "much like any traditional organization". | English |
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