User:Jonbender

Everyone who uses the internet has accessed this site at least once. Most have probably done so on a regular basis. It has attracted world-wide fame, infamy, and controversy. It is never the same for more than an instant, adapting to how people view its contents. Feared by academics, adored by students, manipulated by politicians, and abused by jokers the world over. It is, of course, Wikipedia.

Wikipedia was founded as a feeder project for another encyclopedia, Nupedia, but soon surpassed its parent to take the spotlight as the premiere internet encyclopedia. Since its founding in January 10, 2001, Wikipedia’s validity as an accurate source for information has been questioned. Nupedia’s format was that of rigorous peer-review, which caused a very slow process for releasing articles. To try to speed up the development of the project, and make it as “open” as possible the idea of a community built site was developed. The site was nearly an instant success, with hundreds of visitors coming through Google, Slashdot, and Kuro5hin. By the time New York Times covered the emerging information source in September of 2001, it contained 10,000 articles. Early on, Wikipedia realized the possibilities of its expansion, and reserved ways to do so in foreign languages. It reserved subdomains for German, Spanish, French, and Russian to name a few. In January 2002, 90% of all Wikipedia articles were in English. By January 2004 less than 50% were English, and internationalization has continued to grow, so that as of 2007 around 75% of all Wikipedia articles are contained within non-English Wikipedia versions.

With its great success, Wikipedia has attracted a lot of attention, and its “openness” abused. Users have committed electronic vandalism, defacing articles about anything from political figures, to sports, to countries. As a result of these "attacks," some articles have had to have been put behind a guard so that all edits must be approved by an administrator.