Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia (百科全书), is the largest encyclopedia ever. An encyclopedia is a collection of informative articles about various things. Encyclopedias used to be printed as books.
"Wiki" is an Internet term that means "a website that can be edited by the public". It comes from "wikiwiki", a Hawaiian word for "quick". Two Americans, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, created Wikipedia in 2001. It has about 6 million articles in 300 languages and is visited by billions of people each day, who want to find information about anything — science, math, languages, art, culture and company histories. There are articles on sports stars, too, and even long-forgotten soap operas from the 1970s.
Except for a small number of pages, anyone can edit articles and registered users can create their own articles. Editing is unpaid, although Wikipedia does employ a small staff. Wikipedia is freely available to anyone with an Internet connection. Its founders hoped that the model would make use of humanity's collective knowledge.
Many Wikipedia pages contain errors, although the organization has a content review system that works to fix this problem. Several studies have concluded that Wikipedia is as accurate as most print encyclopedias. Indeed, a 2005 report in the journal Nature found it to be only slightly less reliable than Encyclopedia Britannica.
Today Wikipedia faces many challenges. It does not rely on advertising. Perhaps more importantly, the number of its volunteer editors is shrinking.
Despite these difficulties, Jimmy Wales says he will still stick to his dream. He has big plans for the future. He wants Wikipedia available in all of the world's languages.
A. Most of its editors are volunteers.
B. Now, they are mostly found online.
C. Wikipedia employs an open editing model.
D. Instead, all of its funds come from donations.
E. It allows users to get information within seconds.
F. It is now the fifth-most visited website on the Internet.
G. However, some people doubt the accuracy of Wikipedia's content.
