Wikipedia

Wikipedia ( [Listen] i/ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə/ or  [Listen] i/ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ wik-i-pee-dee-ə) is a free-access, free content Internet encyclopedia, supported and hosted by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Anyone who can access the site can edit almost any of its articles, as long as they follow the rules.[6] Wikipedia is the seventh-most popular website[5] and constitutes theInternet's largest and most popular general reference work.[7][8][9]

Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia on January 15, 2001. Sanger[10] coined its name,[11] aportmanteau of wiki (from the Hawaiian word for "quick")[12] and encyclopedia. Initially only in English, Wikipedia quickly developed similar multilingual versions, differing in content and in editing practices. The English Wikipedia is now one of more than 200 Wikipedias and is the largest with over 4.7 million articles. As of February 2014, it had 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month.[13] Globally, Wikipedia had more than 22 million accounts[citation needed], out of which there were over 73,000 active editors as of May 2014.[2]