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[citation needed] Wikipedia currently runs on dedicated clusters of Linux servers (mainly Ubuntu). | English |
[253][254][needs update] As of December 2009[update], there were 300 in Florida and 44 in Amsterdam. | English |
[255] By January 22, 2013, Wikipedia had migrated its primary data center to an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia. | English |
[256][257] in 2017, Wikipedia had installed a caching cluster in an Equinix facility in Singapore, the first of its kind in Asia. | English |
[258] Following growing amounts of incoming donations exceeding seven digits in 2013 as recently reported,[43] the Foundation has reached a threshold of assets which qualify its consideration under the principles of industrial organization economics to indicate the need for the re-investment of donations into the internal research and development of the Foundation. | English |
[259] Two of the recent projects of such internal research and development have been the creation of a Visual Editor and a largely under-utilized "Thank" tab which were developed to ameliorate issues of editor attrition, which have met with limited success. | English |
[43][241] The estimates for reinvestment by industrial organizations into internal research and development was studied by Adam Jaffe, who recorded that the range of 4% to 25% annually was to be recommended, with high-end technology requiring the higher level of support for internal reinvestment. | English |
[260] At the 2013 level of contributions for Wikimedia presently documented as 45 million dollars, the computed budget level recommended by Jaffe and Caballero for reinvestment into internal research and development is between 1.8 million and 11.3 million dollars annually. | English |
[260] In 2016, the level of contributions were reported by Bloomberg News as being at $77 million annually, updating the Jaffe estimates for the higher level of support to between $3.08 million and $19.2 million annually. | English |
[260] Community-produced news publications include the English Wikipedia's The Signpost, founded in 2005 by Michael Snow, an attorney, Wikipedia administrator, and former chair of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. | English |
[261] It covers news and events from the site, as well as major events from other Wikimedia projects, such as Wikimedia Commons. | English |
Similar publications are the German-language Kurier, and the Portuguese-language Correio da Wikipédia. | English |
Other past and present community news publications on English Wikipedia include the Wikiworld webcomic, the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, and newsletters of specific WikiProjects like The Bugle from WikiProject Military History and the monthly newsletter from The Guild of Copy Editors. | English |
There are also several publications from the Wikimedia Foundation and multilingual publications such as Wikimedia Diff and This Month in Education. | English |
When the project was started in 2001, all text in Wikipedia was covered by the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), a copyleft license permitting the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work. | English |
[262] The GFDL was created for software manuals that come with free software programs licensed under the GPL. | English |
This made it a poor choice for a general reference work: for example, the GFDL requires the reprints of materials from Wikipedia to come with a full copy of the GFDL text. | English |
In December 2002, the Creative Commons license was released: it was specifically designed for creative works in general, not just for software manuals. | English |
The license gained popularity among bloggers and others distributing creative works on the Web. | English |
The Wikipedia project sought the switch to the Creative Commons. | English |
[263] Because the two licenses, GFDL and Creative Commons, were incompatible, in November 2008, following the request of the project, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) released a new version of the GFDL designed specifically to allow Wikipedia to relicense its content to CC BY-SA by August 1, 2009. | English |
(A new version of the GFDL automatically covers Wikipedia contents.) | English |
In April 2009, Wikipedia and its sister projects held a community-wide referendum which decided the switch in June 2009. | English |
[264][265][266][267] The handling of media files (e.g. | English |
image files) varies across language editions. | English |
Some language editions, such as the English Wikipedia, include non-free image files under fair use doctrine, while the others have opted not to, in part because of the lack of fair use doctrines in their home countries (e.g. | English |
in Japanese copyright law). | English |
Media files covered by free content licenses (e.g. | English |
Creative Commons' CC BY-SA) are shared across language editions via Wikimedia Commons repository, a project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. | English |
Wikipedia's accommodation of varying international copyright laws regarding images has led some to observe that its photographic coverage of topics lags behind the quality of the encyclopedic text. | English |
[268] The Wikimedia Foundation is not a licensor of content, but merely a hosting service for the contributors (and licensors) of the Wikipedia. | English |
This position has been successfully defended in court. | English |
[269][270] Because Wikipedia content is distributed under an open license, anyone can reuse or re-distribute it at no charge. | English |
The content of Wikipedia has been published in many forms, both online and offline, outside the Wikipedia website. | English |
Obtaining the full contents of Wikipedia for reuse presents challenges, since direct cloning via a web crawler is discouraged. | English |
[281] Wikipedia publishes "dumps" of its contents, but these are text-only; as of 2007[update] there was no dump available of Wikipedia's images. | English |
[282] Several languages of Wikipedia also maintain a reference desk, where volunteers answer questions from the general public. | English |
According to a study by Pnina Shachaf in the Journal of Documentation, the quality of the Wikipedia reference desk is comparable to a standard library reference desk, with an accuracy of 55 percent. | English |
[283] Wikipedia's original medium was for users to read and edit content using any standard web browser through a fixed Internet connection. | English |
Although Wikipedia content has been accessible through the mobile web since July 2013, The New York Times on February 9, 2014, quoted Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, stating that the transition of internet traffic from desktops to mobile devices was significant and a cause for concern and worry. | English |
[8] The article in The New York Times reported the comparison statistics for mobile edits stating that, "Only 20 percent of the readership of the English-language Wikipedia comes via mobile devices, a figure substantially lower than the percentage of mobile traffic for other media sites, many of which approach 50 percent. | English |
And the shift to mobile editing has lagged even more. | English |
"[8] The New York Times reports that Möller has assigned "a team of 10 software developers focused on mobile", out of a total of approximately 200 employees working at the Wikimedia Foundation. | English |
One principal concern cited by The New York Times for the "worry" is for Wikipedia to effectively address attrition issues with the number of editors which the online encyclopedia attracts to edit and maintain its content in a mobile access environment. | English |
[8] Bloomberg Businessweek reported in July 2014 that Google's Android mobile apps have dominated the largest share of global smartphone shipments for 2013 with 78.6% of market share over their next closest competitor in iOS with 15.2% of the market. | English |
[284] At the time of the Tretikov appointment and her posted web interview with Sue Gardner in May 2014, Wikimedia representatives made a technical announcement concerning the number of mobile access systems in the market seeking access to Wikipedia. | English |
Directly after the posted web interview, the representatives stated that Wikimedia would be applying an all-inclusive approach to accommodate as many mobile access systems as possible in its efforts for expanding general mobile access, including BlackBerry and the Windows Phone system, making market share a secondary issue. | English |
[228] The latest version of the Android app for Wikipedia was released on July 23, 2014, to generally positive reviews, scoring over four of a possible five in a poll of approximately 200,000 users downloading from Google. | English |
[285] The latest version for iOS was released on April 3, 2013, to similar reviews. | English |
[286] Access to Wikipedia from mobile phones was possible as early as 2004, through the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), via the Wapedia service. | English |
In June 2007 Wikipedia launched en.mobile.wikipedia.org, an official website for wireless devices. | English |
In 2009 a newer mobile service was officially released,[287] located at en.m.wikipedia.org, which caters to more advanced mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android-based devices or WebOS-based devices. | English |
Several other methods of mobile access to Wikipedia have emerged. | English |
Many devices and applications optimize or enhance the display of Wikipedia content for mobile devices, while some also incorporate additional features such as use of Wikipedia metadata (see Wikipedia:Metadata), such as geoinformation. | English |
[288][289] Wikipedia Zero was an initiative of the Wikimedia Foundation to expand the reach of the encyclopedia to the developing countries. | English |
[290] It was discontinued in February 2018. | English |
[291] Andrew Lih and Andrew Brown both maintain editing Wikipedia with smartphones is difficult and this discourages new potential contributors. | English |
The number of Wikipedia editors has been declining after several years and Tom Simonite of MIT Technology Review claims the bureaucratic structure and rules are a factor in this. | English |
Simonite alleges some Wikipedians use the labyrinthine rules and guidelines to dominate others and those editors have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. | English |
[43] Lih alleges there is a serious disagreement among existing contributors on how to resolve this. | English |
Lih fears for Wikipedia's long-term future while Brown fears problems with Wikipedia will remain and rival encyclopedias will not replace it. | English |
[292][293] In 2017–18, after a barrage of false news reports, both Facebook and YouTube announced they would rely on Wikipedia to help their users evaluate reports and reject false news. | English |
Noam Cohen, writing in The Washington Post states, "YouTube's reliance on Wikipedia to set the record straight builds on the thinking of another fact-challenged platform, the Facebook social network, which announced last year that Wikipedia would help its users root out 'fake news'. | English |
"[12] As of November 2020, Alexa records the daily pageviews per visitor as 3.03 and the average daily time on site as 3:46 minutes. | English |
[3] In February 2014, The New York Times reported that Wikipedia was ranked fifth globally among all websites, stating "With 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month [...] Wikipedia trails just Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, the largest with 1.2 billion unique visitors. | English |
"[8] However, its ranking dropped to 13th globally by June 2020 due mostly to a rise in popularity of Chinese websites for online shopping. | English |
[294] In addition to logistic growth in the number of its articles,[295] Wikipedia has steadily gained status as a general reference website since its inception in 2001. | English |
[296] About 50 percent of search engine traffic to Wikipedia comes from Google,[297] a good portion of which is related to academic research. | English |
[298] The number of readers of Wikipedia worldwide reached 365 million at the end of 2009. | English |
[299] The Pew Internet and American Life project found that one third of US Internet users consulted Wikipedia. | English |
[300] In 2011 Business Insider gave Wikipedia a valuation of $4 billion if it ran advertisements. | English |
[301] According to "Wikipedia Readership Survey 2011", the average age of Wikipedia readers is 36, with a rough parity between genders. | English |
Almost half of Wikipedia readers visit the site more than five times a month, and a similar number of readers specifically look for Wikipedia in search engine results. | English |
About 47 percent of Wikipedia readers do not realize that Wikipedia is a non-profit organization. | English |
[302] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Wikipedia's coverage of the pandemic received international media attention, and brought an increase in Wikipedia readership overall. | English |
[303] Wikipedia's content has also been used in academic studies, books, conferences, and court cases. | English |
[304][305][306] The Parliament of Canada's website refers to Wikipedia's article on same-sex marriage in the "related links" section of its "further reading" list for the Civil Marriage Act. | English |
[307] The encyclopedia's assertions are increasingly used as a source by organizations such as the US federal courts and the World Intellectual Property Organization[308]—though mainly for supporting information rather than information decisive to a case. | English |
[309] Content appearing on Wikipedia has also been cited as a source and referenced in some US intelligence agency reports. | English |
[310] In December 2008, the scientific journal RNA Biology launched a new section for descriptions of families of RNA molecules and requires authors who contribute to the section to also submit a draft article on the RNA family for publication in Wikipedia. | English |
[311] Wikipedia has also been used as a source in journalism,[312][313] often without attribution, and several reporters have been dismissed for plagiarizing from Wikipedia. | English |
[314][315][316] In 2006, Time magazine recognized Wikipedia's participation (along with YouTube, Reddit, MySpace, and Facebook)[317] in the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction by millions of people worldwide. | English |
In July 2007, Wikipedia was the focus of a 30-minute documentary on BBC Radio 4[318] which argued that, with increased usage and awareness, the number of references to Wikipedia in popular culture is such that the word is one of a select group of 21st-century nouns that are so familiar (Google, Facebook, YouTube) that they no longer need explanation. | English |
On September 28, 2007, Italian politician Franco Grillini raised a parliamentary question with the minister of cultural resources and activities about the necessity of freedom of panorama. | English |
He said that the lack of such freedom forced Wikipedia, "the seventh most consulted website", to forbid all images of modern Italian buildings and art, and claimed this was hugely damaging to tourist revenues. | English |
[319] On September 16, 2007, The Washington Post reported that Wikipedia had become a focal point in the 2008 US election campaign, saying: "Type a candidate's name into Google, and among the first results is a Wikipedia page, making those entries arguably as important as any ad in defining a candidate. | English |
Already, the presidential entries are being edited, dissected and debated countless times each day. | English |
"[320] An October 2007 Reuters article, titled "Wikipedia page the latest status symbol", reported the recent phenomenon of how having a Wikipedia article vindicates one's notability. | English |
[321] Active participation also has an impact. | English |
Law students have been assigned to write Wikipedia articles as an exercise in clear and succinct writing for an uninitiated audience. | English |
[322] A working group led by Peter Stone (formed as a part of the Stanford-based project One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence) in its report called Wikipedia "the best-known example of crowdsourcing ... that far exceeds traditionally-compiled information sources, such as encyclopedias and dictionaries, in scale and depth. | English |
"[323] In a 2017 opinion piece for Wired, Hossein Derakhshan describes Wikipedia as "one of the last remaining pillars of the open and decentralized web" and contrasted its existence as a text-based source of knowledge with social media and social networking services, the latter having "since colonized the web for television's values". | English |
For Derakhshan, Wikipedia's goal as an encyclopedia represents the Age of Enlightenment tradition of rationality triumphing over emotions, a trend which he considers "endangered" due to the "gradual shift from a typographic culture to a photographic one, which in turn mean[s] a shift from rationality to emotions, exposition to entertainment". | English |
Rather than "sapere aude" (lit. | English |
''dare to know''), social networks have led to a culture of "[d]are not to care to know". | English |
This is while Wikipedia faces "a more concerning problem" than funding, namely "a flattening growth rate in the number of contributors to the website". | English |
Consequently, the challenge for Wikipedia and those who use it is to "save Wikipedia and its promise of a free and open collection of all human knowledge amid the conquest of new and old television—how to collect and preserve knowledge when nobody cares to know. | English |
"[324] Wikipedia won two major awards in May 2004. | English |
[325] The first was a Golden Nica for Digital Communities of the annual Prix Ars Electronica contest; this came with a €10,000 (£6,588; $12,700) grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival in Austria later that year. | English |
The second was a Judges' Webby Award for the "community" category. | English |
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