Wikipedia makes a global information phenomenon

Frieda Brioschi is an expert in computer programming in Arcore (Italy), but she still spends more than 25 hours a week editing content in this free online encyclopedia version.

Brioschi is one of thousands of enthusiastic people who want to join Wikipedia censorship such as comparing data, rewriting, correcting grammatical errors, spelling or tracking changes of a certain item. For her, Wikipedia is an evolutionary dictionary system of "Darwinism", gradually developing and improving after the error articles have been deleted or edited.

Volunteers like Brioschi contributed Wikipedia to a worldwide "information phenomenon". The site contains over 2.6 billion articles in 200 different languages ​​and attracts 2 billion visitors per month. Content is "composed" entirely by volunteers or anyone who wants to contribute to this huge information store. In December, readers added 45,000 entries in English only.

Wikipedia, one of the most popular brands online, was founded by Jimmy Wales, 39 years old. Although always in the "sights" of marketers, sites do not accept the advertising logo and Wales does not intend to do this business in the near future. "We are not sure how those ads will affect our image and brand," Wales said.

Recently, Wikipedia has a lot of trouble, as in November, a former John F. Kennedy assistant, a well-known American journalist, discovered that his biography on Wiki said he suffered suspicion of involvement in the assassination of presidential brothers. In addition, many critics are also concerned that as the brand gets more popular and reputable, the site will inevitably risk becoming a target in the campaigns. After a number of scandals, Wales has tightened control and limited dishonest information.

Since its founding in 2001, Wikipedia has become the largest source of search information in history. The English version currently contains about 800,000 entries, while the Britannica encyclopedia also has less than 120,000 entries. Although developed with a "free-to-edit" policy, Robert McHenry, a former Britannica editor, described Wikipedia as "a reliable dictionary". A study by the British journal Nature also confirms Wikipedia has almost the same accuracy as Britannica (123 errors in Britannica and 162 incorrect information in Wikipedia when comparing 50 articles on science topics).

The most important factor for Wikipedia's success is its inspiration and enthusiasm for its readers. Even Wales acts as a volunteer for the Wikipedia Foundation, a nonprofit organization in St. Petersburg. Petersburg, Florida (USA). The management of the organization consists of only 3 administrative salaries, 2 assistants and a software engineer. All content and editing stages are the efforts of a team of enthusiastic people all over the world. Some "Wiki residents" contributed software to Wikipedia, known as "bots". For example, Pfft Bot marked polynomial sentences, GrammarGremlin reported syntax errors and Kakashi Bot automatically changed the "Seychelles" error format to "the Seychelles".

In parallel with Wikipedia, Wales is building plans to go further. Many volunteers are collecting information for Wiktionary, a multilingual concept dictionary. People who love famous proverbs are helping to form the Wikiquote, a database of famous speeches in 30 languages. In the Wikibooks project, anyone can comment on or exchange textbooks. The organization is also taking the first steps for the Wikinews program, gathering and organizing news according to news agencies such as the British BBC, Chinese Xinhua . Wales wants to develop information resources " biased towards subjective assessment "but he also acknowledged that journalists (or Wikinewsie), sometimes revealed their subjective opinions, especially when writing about Israeli themes or US President George W. Bush.

To invest in these projects, Wales is seeking funding. Readers contributed $ 1 million last year. Major investors like Yahoo provided servers and $ 250,000 in April 2005. In 2004, Wales opened a Wikicities trading company, providing hosting services for websites with thematic content on coins and beer . Wikicities were also built by volunteers but it was allowed to advertise and sell. This independent company's revenue supports a large part of maintaining Wikipedia.

Wales has no intention of expanding its management to less than 10 people today or investing funds in operating the site. Instead, he wanted to use the funds available to publish Wiki DVDs for free in poor areas without access to the Internet.