Wikipedia is a
multilingual free
online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of
volunteers, known as
Wikipedians, through
open collaboration
Open collaboration is any "system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which is made available to contributors and noncontribu ...
and using a
wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read
reference work in history.
It is consistently one of the 10
most popular websites ranked by
Similarweb
SimilarWeb Ltd. is an Israeli web analytics company specializing in web traffic and performance. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, the company has 12 offices worldwide. Similarweb went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2021.
History
The c ...
and formerly
Alexa; Wikipedia was ranked the 5th most popular site in the world. It is hosted by the
Wikimedia Foundation, an
American non-profit organization funded mainly through donations.
Wikipedia was launched by
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedi ...
and
Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001. Sanger coined its name as a
blend of ''wiki'' and ''
encyclopedia
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a r