What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a website which any visitor can edit, with changes showing up immediately. Ward Cunningham invented the concept and software. You could even edit this page by clicking the "edit this page" link on the third tab above! To try out editing, please visit the Wikipedia:Sandbox. See also: Wikipedia:Editing FAQ.

What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia's is to create a new kind of encyclopedia that is comprehensive and free for anyone to consult. See Wikipedia:About and the Wikipedia article for more information about this incredible concept.

Why is it called Wikipedia?

The name 'Wikipedia' is a portmanteau (a word formed by combining two or more words) of "wiki" and "encyclopedia".

What is the goal of Wikipedia?

Wikipedia's goal is to create a free, democratic, reliable encyclopedia—actually, the largest encyclopedia in history, in terms of both breadth and depth.

Who is responsible for the articles on Wikipedia?

You are! Actually, you can even edit this FAQ! As are more than six hundred thousand (600,000) other Wikipedians. This is a collaborative endeavor. Thousands of people have contributed information to different parts of this project, and anyone can do so, including you. All you need is to know how to edit a page, and have some encyclopedic knowledge you want to share. The encyclopedia provides users with a certain amount of freedom.

You can learn who is responsible for the most recent versions of any given page by clicking on the "Page history" link. Nevertheless, if you spot an error in the latest revision of an article, you are highly encouraged to be bold and correct it. This practice is one of the basic review mechanisms that maintains the reliability of the encyclopedia. As a result, Wikipedia has become one of the most extensive information libraries available on the internet.

If you are uncertain or find the wording confusing, quote the material on the associated talk page and leave a question for the next person. This helps eliminate errors, inaccuracies, or misleading wording more quickly and is highly appreciated by the community.

How can I contact the project?

Given the massively collaborative nature of the project, there is no single point of contact. There are many mailing lists, which you can contact for project-specific questions. See the list at meta:mailing lists. There is also a Wikimedia Foundation mailing listand our Meta-Wiki for cross-project matters. If you do not want to communicate publicly, you can contact the directors of the Foundation at board@wikimedia.org. If you want to communicate with a specific user, leave a message on his or her personal talk page; you can find a list of personal pages (and link to your own) at the Wikipedian list. Many Wikipedians have also registered their email addresses, which you can use by clicking the "Email this user" link from the personal pages. In addition, each user and each article has a talk page. This gives you the opportunity to leave that user a message or to make comments about a particular article. Use the discussion link in any article to get to the talk page.

What is Nupedia?

Nupedia was a more formal encyclopedia project that spawned Wikipedia. It is now defunct; see Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia.

Should I create an account? Can I not just edit articles anonymously?

See Wikipedia:Accountability. Editors with account names enjoy several benefits: among them is the positive reputation that goes with quality work. Wikipedians with an established history are respected especially with regard to neutralizing article disputes. In addition, Wikipedians sometimes find collaborating with anonymous users frustrating, because it is more difficult to contact them with questions, concerns, or suggestions. This is not to say there is a Wikipedia hierarchy per se - though there are editors with administrative abilities (see Wikipedia:Administrators), these are approved by the community, and the goal of most Wikipedians is to ensure that democracy, (albeit leavened with a little anarchy), remains the supreme power on Wikipedia.

Wikipedians with user names are, in a sense, more anonymous than contributors that do not log in: that is, while anyone can see the IP address of a user who did not log in when he/she edited, only server administrators can find the IP of a logged-in user. Therefore, if you are concerned about privacy and anonymity, you may prefer to create a username for yourself in order to hide your IP.

However, if you would like to stay in the dark, it is fine to edit without a login. Many valuable contributors have made this choice.

How do you know if the information is correct?

As anyone can edit any article, it is of course possible for biased, out of date, or incorrect information to be posted. However, because there are so many other people reading the articles and monitoring contributions using the Recent Changes page, incorrect information is usually corrected quickly. Thus, the overall accuracy of the encyclopedia is improving all the time as it attracts more and more contributors. You are encouraged to help by correcting articles and passing on your own point of view.

See Wikipedia:Replies to common objections for a longer discussion of this point.

Site X seems to be violating Wikipedia's copyright. Do you guys know about this?

It's reasonably likely they are within their rights. Anybody may mirror or fork Wikipedia as long as they comply with the GNU Free Documentation License. Over 100 sites using Wikipedia for content have been identified, and categorized by their degree of compliance, at Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks.

Which wiki software does Wikipedia run on?

See: Wikipedia:MediaWiki.

How big is Wikipedia?

An up to date article count is available on the main page. A fairly recent comparison between Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft's Encarta showed that Wikipedia had about 715,000 articles with 224 million words. The Britannica has about 85,000 articles with 55 million words. Encarta has about 63,000 articles and 40 million words to date. See: Wikipedia:Size Comparison.

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