Wikipedia Facts For Kids

Wikipedia began on January 15, 2001. The name mixes wiki—a type of website that anyone can edit—and the word encyclopedia. At first it was only in English, and a related project called Nupedia helped start it. More languages were added that spring, and by the end of 2004 there were editions in many tongues.

In 2002, some Spanish users made a separate site, Enciclopedia Libre, because they wanted a different plan about ads. Wikipedia chose not to show ads and later moved to the quieter web name wikipedia.org. The English site grew fast and reached two million articles in 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia people had ever built.

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can read. It is written and fixed by volunteers called Wikipedians, who add facts, pictures, and sources so articles can help people learn. Two people, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, started it in 2001. Since 2003 the site has been run by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit group that keeps the site online.

Today it is the biggest reference work ever, with tens of millions of articles in hundreds of languages. Many people like that it lets lots of people share knowledge, but others say it can miss things or show some ideas more than others. What would you look up first?

Wikipedia is run by a large group of volunteers who edit and improve pages. Some experienced editors can become administrators through a selection process. Administrators can do special technical tasks: they can delete pages, protect or block edits when pages are vandalized or when people disagree. They do not have extra power to change rules for everyone, but they can carry out site-wide actions that regular users cannot.

Over time the way people become admins grew stricter, so fewer editors gained that role. Research shows a small share of users do many edits (for example, a 2009 study found about 0.7% of users made over half the edits). Other studies say new contributors create lots of text while regular editors tidy and format it. Sometimes choices about admins cause arguments in the community because people care about fairness.

Wikipedia has rules so articles stay useful and fair. Entries must be encyclopedic, not short dictionary lines or personal opinions. A subject needs to be notable, which means reliable, independent sources—like books or news—have written about it.

No one may add original research, so articles should report what sources say, not new ideas made up by editors. Pages must be written neutrally, showing different views without taking sides. Facts should be verifiable and have citations; if something has no source it can be removed. Over the years the site’s rules and guidelines grew a lot to help people follow these ideas.

Wikipedia is not just one website in one language. It exists in more than 340 different languages, and each language edition works like its own library of articles written by people who speak that language. Altogether, across all those editions, there are over 65 million articles. The English edition is the biggest, with more than 7 million articles.

Language editions began in 2001 and grew quickly—by the end of 2004 there were around 161 editions. Today Wikipedia gets huge use: over 1.5 billion unique device visits and about 13 million edits each month (April 2024). Long ago it reached the top ten U.S. websites, showing how many people turn to it to learn in their own language.

Asteroid, monuments, and space trips show how Wikipedia became part of world culture. In 2012 the English site took part in a 24-hour blackout to explain laws people were worried about, and the explanation page was seen by about 162 million people. Later, a public monument to Wikipedia was installed, and special printed volumes were made as art and memory projects.

People have also honored Wikipedia in science and exploration. An asteroid was named after the site in 2013, and in 2019 a copy of the English articles went to the Moon on a lander; some of the text was even stored in tiny chemical code like DNA. If you could send one fact into space, what would you choose?

Anyone can edit most Wikipedia pages. Each article keeps a simple record called the History page that shows every change. If someone makes a bad change, others can undo it. People who make accounts can use a watchlist to follow pages and get updates when those pages change.

New articles are looked at by volunteers in the New pages patrol to check for problems. Some edits are clearly wrong or rude; that is called vandalism. Vandalism can be words that don't belong, fake facts, or removed information. Most obvious vandalism is fixed in minutes, but some mistakes take longer to spot. In 2005 a serious false claim stayed too long and led to stronger rules for living people.