The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to Wikipedia:
Wikipedia[a] is a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history,[1][2] and is consistently ranked among the ten most visited websites; as of December 2024[update], it was ranked fifth by Semrush,[3] and seventh by Similarweb.[4] Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has been hosted since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization funded mainly by donations from readers.[5]
Initially only available in English, Wikipedia now exists in more than 300 languages. The English Wikipedia, with over 6.9 million articles, remains the largest of the editions, which together comprise more than 64 million articles and attract more than 1.5 billion unique device visits and 13 million edits per month (about 5 edits per second on average) as of April 2024[update].[6] As of November 2024[update], over 25% of Wikipedia's traffic was from the United States, followed by Japan at 6.2%, the United Kingdom at 5.6%, Russia at 5.0%, Germany at 4.8%, and the remaining 53.3% split among other countries.[7]
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- ^ "Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher". The Economist. January 9, 2021. Archived from the original on January 7, 2021. Retrieved February 25, 2021.
- ^ Anderson, Chris (May 8, 2006). "Jimmy Wales – The 2006 Time 100". Time. Archived from the original on October 12, 2022. Retrieved November 11, 2017.
- ^ "Most Visited Websites in Worldwide 2024". Semrush. December 2024. Retrieved January 15, 2025.
- ^ "Most viewed website". Similarweb. Retrieved January 15, 2025.
- ^ Seitz-Gruwell, Lisa (October 23, 2023). "7 reasons you should donate to Wikipedia". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on December 27, 2023. Retrieved December 27, 2023.
- ^ "Wikistats – Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on July 11, 2020. Retrieved August 8, 2023.
- ^ "wikipedia.org". similarweb.com. Retrieved November 14, 2024.