User:JaylesHowler/Wikipedia

This is a proposed new version for the article Wikipedia/

The multilingual Wikipedia home page

Wikipedia is an online wiki-based encyclopedia hosted and owned by the non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation and financially supported by a $20 million annual online fundraising drive^[1], as well as other grants. Most of Wikipedia's articles can be edited publically by both registered and anonymous editors^[2], mostly consisting of teenagers and the unemployed.^[3]

Wikipedia was co-founded by atheist libertarian objectivist Jimbo Wales, and atheist philosophy professor Larry Sanger. The website was originally created to complement the now defunct peer-reviewed online encyclopedia Nupedia as a way for collaboration on articles. However, Wikipedia overtook Nupedia and became an independent project hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, which also hosts various "sister projects", such as Wikinews and Wikibooks.

Critics of Wikipedia state that Wikipedia's articles contain systemic bias^[4], and that the information included within its articles are a mixture of truths, half-truths, and falsehoods. ^[5] The nature of Wikipedia also makes it subject to spin and bias, examples of which include paid public relations advocacy and inserting libellious content into the biographies of politicians for a political purpose. ^[5] Wikipedia was also criticized for having a liberal bias in its articles about politics, despite of Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" policy. ^[4]

Wikipedia originated as a website intended to complement the now-defunct peer-reviewed online encyclopedia Nupedia. The encyclopedia was intended as a "feeder" website: the user created articles would be introduced into Nupedia after passing a peer-review process. ^[6] Wikipedia later overtook Nupedia and became an independent project. In 2007, Wikipedia became the largest encyclopedia in the world by article count, surpassing the 1408 Yongle encyclopedia.

Initially, Wikipedia was hosted on servers operated by Bomis, Inc., a company co-founded by Jimmy Wales, which also sold pornographic pictures and other forms of adult entertainment.^[7] In 2003, Jimbo Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation to oversee the day-to-day operations of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides support for Wikipedia and other similar projects,^[8] and also the free MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia and Conservapedia.^[9]

Wikipedia relies on anonymous "editors" to write and maintain its articles, with no preference given for scholars in the fields about which they are writing ^[10]. Theoretically, Wikipedia is supposed to compensate for this weakness by requiring references to reputable secondary sources. However, editors can delete or change content—even if it is from a reliable source—from Wikipedia articles due to personal biases.