Wikipedia

• 1. The First Edit

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  On the 15th of January 2001, the domain name www.wikipedia.com went live for the first time. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger had launched a project to complement Nupedia, an earlier encyclopedia effort that relied on expert writers and formal peer review. The new site used wiki software to allow anyone to edit articles immediately. This simple mechanism changed how knowledge could be assembled online. Before this moment, encyclopedias required years of work by paid professionals. Now, a single volunteer could add or change content within seconds.

  Sanger proposed the idea in December 2000 as a way to feed articles into Nupedia's slow approval process. He called it a "feeder" project. The name combined the words wiki and encyclopedia. Early contributors came from Nupedia itself and from Slashdot postings. By March 2001, language editions began appearing beyond English. Within three years, the project had grown so large that Nupedia was shut down entirely. Its text was merged into Wikipedia. The original goal of creating a free online encyclopedia had become reality.

• 2. Growth And Scale

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  By the 9th of September 2007, the English Wikipedia passed two million articles. It became the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, surpassing the Yongle Encyclopedia created in China during the Ming dynasty in 1408. That Chinese work held the record for nearly six hundred years. In January 2007, Wikipedia ranked ninth among US websites with 42.9 million unique visitors. It had moved up from thirty-third place just one year earlier.

  Traffic continued to climb through the following decade. By February 2014, the site received 18 billion page views monthly according to comScore data. Over 500 million unique users visited each month. The top ten language editions accounted for roughly 85% of all traffic. The English version alone drew 48% of cumulative visits. Other major languages included Spanish, German, Japanese, and French. Some smaller editions relied heavily on automated bots to generate content. One bot named Lsjbot created about half the articles on the Swedish Wikipedia and most entries in Cebuano and Waray versions. These Philippine languages grew rapidly due to algorithmic expansion rather than human editing.

• 3. Rules And Disputes

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  Editors developed a system called the Five Pillars to guide community behavior. These principles stated that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written from a neutral point of view using free content. Participants must treat each other with respect while maintaining no firm rules beyond consensus. Policies evolved over time as the project expanded. In 2008 there were only 44 policy pages and 248 guidelines. By 2013 scholars counted 383 policies and 449 guidelines.

  Disagreements often led to edit warring where opposing editors repeatedly reverted changes. Taha Yasseri studied these conflicts at Oxford University in 2013. He found that mutual reverts were not always the biggest problem. Instead, he focused on pairs of edits where one editor undid another who then reversed back. The English Wikipedia had high conflict rates on articles about George W. Bush, anarchism, and Muhammad. German Wikipedia saw similar patterns around Croatia, Scientology, and 9/11 conspiracy theories. An Arbitration Committee handled serious disputes by banning problematic editors or issuing warnings. They rarely decided which viewpoint was correct but instead regulated how arguments were conducted.

• 4. Who Writes It

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  A 2008 Wikimedia Foundation survey revealed that only 13% of editors identified as female. Universities across the United States tried to encourage women to contribute. Yale and Brown offered college credit for editing articles about women in science or technology. Andrew Lih suggested that identifying as a woman might expose someone to intimidating behavior online. Studies showed that women reported less confidence in their expertise and greater discomfort with editing processes involving conflict.

  Geographic distribution also skewed heavily toward developed nations. A 2009 study by Mark Graham indicated Africa remained the most underrepresented region globally. Editors from North America made up 51% of contributions to the English Wikipedia. Males dominated topics like geography and science while females concentrated more on people and arts categories. This demographic imbalance created systemic biases affecting coverage quality. Articles about famous women through history often lacked detail compared to male counterparts. Issues surrounding early childcare received less attention than technical subjects. The average contributor tended to be an educated white male aged between fifteen and forty-nine years old.

• 5. Software And Servers

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  Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki software written in PHP using MySQL databases originally. Phase I used UseModWiki created by Clifford Adams requiring CamelCase links. Phase II started in January 2002 with custom PHP engines built by Magnus Manske. Phase III arrived in July 2002 introducing MediaWiki designed by Lee Daniel Crocker. Extensions added search capabilities via Lucene then CirrusSearch based on Elasticsearch.

  Hardware operations rely on Linux servers running Debian operating systems. Primary data centers moved to Ashburn Virginia by January 2013. A second facility opened in Carrollton Texas during 2014 for redundancy. Caching clusters exist in Amsterdam San Francisco Singapore Marseille and São Paulo. Requests pass through Varnish caching layers before reaching Apache web servers. Automated bots perform routine tasks such as correcting misspellings or creating standard article formats from statistical data. One controversial bot named Lsjbot generated up to ten thousand articles daily on the Swedish Wikipedia.

• 6. Criticism And Trust

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  In 2005 a peer review published in Nature compared forty-two scientific entries across Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica. Results showed few differences in accuracy though Wikipedia contained around four errors per entry while Britannica had three. Critics argued the sample size was too small to draw broad conclusions. Some researchers claimed flawed study design undermined findings. Others noted absence of statistical analysis regarding confidence intervals.

  Political bias became a major concern starting in 2010 when Fox News accused Wikipedia of whitewashing communism and socialism. Larry Sanger left the project in 2002 to create competing websites claiming it had become propaganda for left-leaning establishments. Libertarian John Stossel observed gradual shifts toward political leftism on contentious topics. Academic studies confirmed Western cultural biases existed within content selection. Articles about Indigenous oral knowledge often lacked representation since print sources remained primary references. Privacy concerns emerged after German courts ordered shutdowns over hacker identities listed online. The site faced challenges balancing openness with accountability requirements imposed by governments worldwide.