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Wikipedia began with its first edit on 15 January 2001, two days after the domain was registered[2] by
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Its technological and conceptual underpinnings predate this; the earliest
known proposal for an online encyclopedia was made by Rick Gates in 1993,[3] and the concept of a
free-as-in-freedom online encyclopedia (as distinct from mere open source)[4] was proposed by Richard
Stallman in December 2000.[5]

The English edition of Wikipedia has grown to 6,177,194 articles, equivalent to around 2,800 print
volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Including all language editions, Wikipedia has 54,934,003
articles, equivalent to around 20,600 print volumes.[1]

Wikipedia's Main Page as it appeared on 20 December 2001

Crucially, Stallman's concept specifically included the idea that no central organization should control
editing. This characteristic greatly contrasted with contemporary digital encyclopedias such as Microsoft
Encarta, Encyclopædia Britannica, and even Bomis's Nupedia, which was Wikipedia's direct predecessor.
In 2001, the license for Nupedia was changed to GFDL, and Wales and Sanger launched Wikipedia using
the concept and technology of a wiki pioneered in 1995 by Ward Cunningham.[6] Initially, Wikipedia was
intended to complement Nupedia, an online encyclopedia project edited solely by experts, by providing
additional draft articles and ideas for it. In practice, Wikipedia quickly overtook Nupedia, becoming a
global project in multiple languages and inspiring a wide range of other online reference projects.
According to Alexa Internet, as of December 2019, Wikipedia is the world's ninth most popular website
in terms of global internet engagement.[7] Wikipedia's worldwide monthly readership is approximately
495 million.[8] Worldwide in September 2018, WMF Labs tallied 15.5 billion page views for the month.
[9] According to comScore, Wikipedia receives over 117 million monthly unique visitors from the United
States alone.[10]

Historical overview

Timeline

History by subject area

See also

References

External links

Last edited 6 days ago by Iridescent

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