7 Years, 253 Languages and 9 Million Articles later…

Happy Birthday Wikipedia. One of the college student’s best friends, and one of many college professors’ worst irritations, the world’s online “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” started this day (January 15) in 2001.

“Who cares,” a colleague mentioned to me earlier today. Like it or hate it, Wikipedia is part of mainstream life. It was the first Web site listed by Time Magazine in 2006 when “you” was accounted as “Person of the Year.” (Granted, Time seems to have reversed that opinion with the article “The Year of Them”.

It’s largest criticism is that it lacks legitimate references. Therefore, it is deemed by many as unreliable. There is no denying that because anyone can edit it anonymously, there can be issues with the content presented. But with its media attention over the past several years, Wikipedia is encouraging more citations and references from its content providers. One look at Wikipedia’s own entry lists 125 different references alone.

In research of any kind, you should not rely solely on one source. However weak or strong, Wikipedia is still a source none-the-less. Lately, it has become a great resource to locate more “legitimate” sources for which to research.

After seven years, Wikipedia claims over 9.25 million articles in 253 languages. Over 2.1 million of those articles are in the English version.  Wikipedia still holds the #9 spot on Alexa’s Top-500 most trafficked Web sites, ranking well above giants like eBay, Amazon, Blogger, Flickr and PhotoBucket and CraigsList.  In the online world, I’d call that a hit.

Hear hear, Wikipedia. And many happy returns.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 10:46 am and is filed under Misc Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.