Archive:Press releases/Wikipedia Celebrates its Seventh Birthday: Difference between revisions
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= Wikipedia Celebrates its Seventh Birthday = |
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'''San Francisco, January 15''' |
'''San Francisco, January 15''' — Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia anyone can edit, celebrates its seventh birthday today. Founded on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has become one of the world's ten most visited websites, and the fastest growing, most current, and largest encyclopedia ever created. Currently, the website has nine million articles in over two hundred and fifty languages. It is collaboratively written by volunteers from around the world. |
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"In a relatively short time, Wikipedia has become one of the world's most successful collaboratively written websites. We have struck a chord with tens of thousands of volunteers worldwide, all of whom share our dream of empowering citizens worldwide to share in the sum of all human knowledge. Now with a strong international volunteer base, we would like to focus more energy on improving the quality of Wikipedia and its sister projects. The next five years are going to bring many never-seen-before web based initiatives geared towards this goal," stated Florence Devouard, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. |
"In a relatively short time, Wikipedia has become one of the world's most successful collaboratively written websites. We have struck a chord with tens of thousands of volunteers worldwide, all of whom share our dream of empowering citizens worldwide to share in the sum of all human knowledge. Now with a strong international volunteer base, we would like to focus more energy on improving the quality of Wikipedia and its sister projects. The next five years are going to bring many never-seen-before web based initiatives geared towards this goal," stated Florence Devouard, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. |
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The content on Wikipedia and its sister projects are under a free license. Content can be modified rapidly and repeatedly, and individuals can build on the material submitted by other editors. As a result, this ensures that the content will never be lost to humankind, and that information remains free and accessible to all. |
The content on Wikipedia and its sister projects are under a free license. Content can be modified rapidly and repeatedly, and individuals can build on the material submitted by other editors. As a result, this ensures that the content will never be lost to humankind, and that information remains free and accessible to all. |
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===About us=== |
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{| |
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The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit, charitable organization dedicated to |
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'''About Wikipedia''' |
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encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual |
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content, and to providing the full content of its wiki-based projects to the |
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public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited |
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reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 |
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most-visited websites. |
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For a full list of projects, visit [[Our projects]]. |
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All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by |
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Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers more than eight million articles in 250 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than two million articles; it's followed by the German and French editions, each of which contain more than half a million articles. Nine other language editions contain 100,000+ articles, and more than 100 other languages contain 1,000+ articles. Every month, new language editions launch. |
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volunteers using the MediaWiki software. Their content may be freely used, freely |
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edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that |
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license. |
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|style="width: 4%; vertical-aling: top;" | |
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|style="width: 48%; vertical-align: top;" | |
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;<span class="plainlinks">About [//wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia]</span> |
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The goal of Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in history, is to create free |
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Wikipedia is entirely created and maintained by a community of active volunteers. In 2004, Wikipedia won the Webby Award for "Community" and the Prix Ars Electronica's Golden Nica for "Digital Communities." Since the start of the project, more than 100,000 registered users have made at least ten edits each, and more than 3.4 million people have created accounts on the English Wikipedia alone. |
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to contribute by writing new articles and editing existing articles. Wikipedia was |
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ranked the fourth most visited website on the internet in November 2008 according to comScore. |
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Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers over eleven million articles |
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in over 260 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than 2.6 |
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million articles; followed by the German and French editions, each of which |
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contain more than six hundred thousand articles. Nine other language editions |
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contain 200,000+ articles, and more than 150 other languages contain 1,000+ |
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articles. Wikipedia is entirely created and maintained by a community of active |
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volunteers. |
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|} |
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| ⚫ | |||
<!-- {{About_us}} --> |
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The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites. The Foundation was created in 2003 by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia. |
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===Press inquiries=== |
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{| |
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Today, the Wikimedia Foundation operates the following projects: |
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|style="width: 48%; vertical-align: top;" | |
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;Head of Communications |
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Wikipedia, a project to build free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Wiktionary, a project to create free content dictionaries and thesauri in every language. Wikiquote, a repository of quotations taken from famous people, books, speeches, films or any intellectually interesting materials. Wikibooks, which aims to build a collection of free e-book resources, including textbooks, language courses, manuals, and annotated public domain books. Wikisource, a collection of classic books, laws, and other free works. Wikispecies , a central, extensive species database for taxonomy. Wikinews, with the mission to report the news on a wide variety of subjects. Wikiversity, a project dedicated to learning materials and learning communities. Wikimedia Commons, a central repository for free video, images, music, spoken texts, and other free media that can be easily reused by all Wikimedia projects. |
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:Jay Walsh |
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:WikimediaFoundation.org |
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All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. All contributions are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (except in Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5). This means their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license. |
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:blog.wikimedia.org |
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:+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609 |
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[[Category:English|{{PAGENAME}}]] |
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:jwalsh<span class="nowrap">[[File:At sign.svg|15px|@|link=]]</span>wikimedia.org |
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|style="width: 4%; vertical-aling: top;" | |
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|style="width: 48%; vertical-align: top;" | |
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;Regional press contacts |
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:(by language and by country) |
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:[[Press room#Regional contacts|Regional contacts]] |
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|}<!-- {{Press_inquiries}} --> |
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[[Category:Archival content to be exported to Meta-Wiki]] |
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Latest revision as of 04:41, 26 March 2024
Wikipedia Celebrates its Seventh Birthday
San Francisco, January 15 — Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia anyone can edit, celebrates its seventh birthday today. Founded on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has become one of the world's ten most visited websites, and the fastest growing, most current, and largest encyclopedia ever created. Currently, the website has nine million articles in over two hundred and fifty languages. It is collaboratively written by volunteers from around the world.
"In a relatively short time, Wikipedia has become one of the world's most successful collaboratively written websites. We have struck a chord with tens of thousands of volunteers worldwide, all of whom share our dream of empowering citizens worldwide to share in the sum of all human knowledge. Now with a strong international volunteer base, we would like to focus more energy on improving the quality of Wikipedia and its sister projects. The next five years are going to bring many never-seen-before web based initiatives geared towards this goal," stated Florence Devouard, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.
The Wikipedia experiment has repeatedly been acclaimed as a resounding success. Most recently a 2007 study from the Hewlett Packard Information Dynamics Laboratory found that Wikipedia's best quality articles are those that have been edited often and by many different people. The report also validated Wikipedia as a "successful collaborative effort".
Wikipedia and its sister projects have become a virtual library that spans all languages and continents, attracts millions of visitors, and collects information from all corners of the world. The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit foundation behind the project, has begun developing programs and tools that will extend learning and knowledge gathering in the developing world and disadvantaged communities. In Fall 2007 the Foundation held several Wikipedia Academies in South Africa, with the goal of increasing the number of Wikipedias in African languages.
The Wikimedia Foundation has chapters throughout the world, responsible for promoting the projects locally. Currently, chapters are present in Argentina, France, Israel, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.
The content on Wikipedia and its sister projects are under a free license. Content can be modified rapidly and repeatedly, and individuals can build on the material submitted by other editors. As a result, this ensures that the content will never be lost to humankind, and that information remains free and accessible to all.
About us
The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit, charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of its wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites. For a full list of projects, visit Our projects. All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. Their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license. |
The goal of Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in history, is to create free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Anyone with Internet access is free to contribute by writing new articles and editing existing articles. Wikipedia was ranked the fourth most visited website on the internet in November 2008 according to comScore. Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers over eleven million articles in over 260 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than 2.6 million articles; followed by the German and French editions, each of which contain more than six hundred thousand articles. Nine other language editions contain 200,000+ articles, and more than 150 other languages contain 1,000+ articles. Wikipedia is entirely created and maintained by a community of active volunteers. |
Press inquiries
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