Happy Birthday Wikipedia
Wikipedia, the world’s free encyclopedia, is celebrating its seventh birthday today. Even though it existed a little before Jan 15, 2001, it was formally launched only on that day. Wikipedia is a multilingual project with currently over 12 million articles. All articles can be viewed and edited by anyone who have access to the website.
I use Wikipedia as much as I use Google, and often visit the site directly for certain kinds of information, before searching it elsewhere. Even though it is constantly criticized for articles especially about various historical events and personalities, it is resourceful in succinctly providing valuable information about a multitude of concepts.
Not just Wikipedia, but many other sites that came after it, all under the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Check out the Wikimedia Projects page to discover them.
Alexa, the website ranking site, ranks Wikipedia at 8. That is very encouraging for the only non-profit advertisement-free website among the top 10 websites of the world. However, it only gets around 8% of the Internet global traffic, compared to around 30% that sites like Google and Yahoo! get. It deserves more.
More people should benefit from this wonderful source. Start becoming a regular user yourself and tell about it to all your friends who are not about it.
Image Source: Wikipedia.
