Browse Definitions :
Definition

Wikipedia

TechTarget Contributor
By

Wikipedia is a free, open content online encyclopedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of users known as Wikipedians. Anyone registered on the site can create an article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles. The site's name comes from wiki, a server program that enables anyone to edit Web site content through their Web browser.

Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger co-founded Wikipedia as an offshoot of an earlier encyclopedia project, Nupedia, in January 2001. Originally, Wikipedia was created to provide content for Nupedia. However, as the wiki site became established it soon grew beyond the scope of the earlier project. As of January 2015, the website provided well over five million articles in English and more than that number in all other languages combined. At that same time, Alexa ranked Wikipedia as the seventh-most popular site on the Internet. Wikipedia was the only non-commercial site of the top ten.

Criticisms of Wikipedia include assertions that its openness makes it unreliable and unauthorative. Because articles don't include bylines, authors aren't publicly accountable for what they write. Similarly, because anyone can edit any article, the site's entries are vulnerable to unscrupulous edits. In August 2007, Virgil Griffiths created a site, WikiScanner, where users could track the sources of edits to Wikipedia entries. Griffiths reported that self-serving edits typically involved whitewashing or removal of criticism of a person or organization or, conversely, insertion of negative comments into the entry about a competitor. Wikipedia depends upon the vigilance of editors to find and reverse such changes to content.

In addition to the encyclopedia, the non-profit Wikipedia foundation oversees several other open-content projects, including:

  • Wiktionary, a dictionary and thesaurus
  • Wikibooks, a collection of free texts and other books
  • Wikiquote, a collection of quotations
  • Wikisource, a collection of free source documents
  • Wikiversity, a collection of free learning materials
  • Wikispecies, a directory of species
  • Meta-Wiki, which coordinates all the other projects.

Wikipedia was one of the first social media websites.

This was last updated in January 2016

Continue Reading About Wikipedia

Networking
  • local area network (LAN)

    A local area network (LAN) is a group of computers and peripheral devices that are connected together within a distinct ...

  • TCP/IP

    TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol and is a suite of communication protocols used to interconnect ...

  • firewall as a service (FWaaS)

    Firewall as a service (FWaaS), also known as a cloud firewall, is a service that provides cloud-based network traffic analysis ...

Security
  • identity management (ID management)

    Identity management (ID management) is the organizational process for ensuring individuals have the appropriate access to ...

  • fraud detection

    Fraud detection is a set of activities undertaken to prevent money or property from being obtained through false pretenses.

  • single sign-on (SSO)

    Single sign-on (SSO) is a session and user authentication service that permits a user to use one set of login credentials -- for ...

CIO
  • IT budget

    IT budget is the amount of money spent on an organization's information technology systems and services. It includes compensation...

  • project scope

    Project scope is the part of project planning that involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals, ...

  • core competencies

    For any organization, its core competencies refer to the capabilities, knowledge, skills and resources that constitute its '...

HRSoftware
  • recruitment management system (RMS)

    A recruitment management system (RMS) is a set of tools designed to manage the employee recruiting and hiring process. It might ...

  • core HR (core human resources)

    Core HR (core human resources) is an umbrella term that refers to the basic tasks and functions of an HR department as it manages...

  • HR service delivery

    HR service delivery is a term used to explain how an organization's human resources department offers services to and interacts ...

Customer Experience
  • martech (marketing technology)

    Martech (marketing technology) refers to the integration of software tools, platforms, and applications designed to streamline ...

  • transactional marketing

    Transactional marketing is a business strategy that focuses on single, point-of-sale transactions.

  • customer profiling

    Customer profiling is the detailed and systematic process of constructing a clear portrait of a company's ideal customer by ...

Close