Wikipedia does not need any introduction. We all know about it and use it to read its articles on different topics. Wikipedia is the primary source of knowledge on Internet. But there are few facts about Wikipedia which are not known for all. In this article, I am listing 10 less known facts about Wikipedia.
Facts About Wikipedia
1. Foundation
Wikipedia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001.
2. Name of Wikipedia
Wikipedia name is the combination of the words Wiki and Pedia. Wiki means “A shared website” and pedia is a the short word taken form of encyclopedia.
3. Wikipedia is 7th most popular website based on traffic
According to Alexa rank, Wikipedia is 7th most popular website of the world based on traffic. It may change any time. Initially, it was ranked higher but few websites increased their traffic to beat it. Check Wikipedia Alexa rank.
4. Articles
There are around 17 million articles on Wikipedia and this number is growing daily.
5. Top 5 languages on Wikipedia
There are currently 285 languages registered on Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles are in the all these languages to allow people to access content in local language.
These are the top 5 languages ruling the Wikipedia.
- English (3,924,043 articles)
- German (1.394.015 articles)
- French (1.238.363 articles)
- Dutch (1.038.017)
- Italian (910.922 articles)
6. Open Source
Wikipedia is an open source website. Any body can contribute on content or editing existing content. You can also become contributor and edit any article. Even the software that was developed for Wikipedia is now opensource and anyone can create a website similar to Wikipedia by using that software. You can download it here.
7. Wikipedia serves no ads and is funded on donations.
8. Wikipedians
Wikipedia has a community of authors which are called as ‘Wikipedians’. It has around 27 million registered users. Any body can edit or create new articles and any body can raise questions on wrong addition or update. Originally, any updates were instantly available but later restriction were added to reduce vandalism.
9. Google is the primary source of traffic
Around half of the traffic on Wikipedia comes from Google. For most of the terms, Wikipedia either ranks at top of on first page of Google.
10. The most edited Wikipedia article of all time is about George W. Bush. It has been changed 45,862 times.
These were the 10 Facts About Wikipedia, online encyclopedia. If you want to add something in this story, you can comment below.
