Wikipedia’s millionth article
p2pnet.net News:- "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing. And we need your help."
No chance, not with Corporate Greed in full bloom. But it’s a noble ambition and it’s expressed by the Wiki Foundation which yesterday announced the creation of the one millionth article in Wikipedia, its free, open-content, online encyclopedia project.
Started in January 2001, Wikipedia is both the world’s largest encyclopedia and the fastest-growing, with articles under active development in over 100 languages, says the foundation which is now on a fund-raising drive for $50,000.
Nearly 2,500 new articles are added to Wikipedia each day, along with ten times as many updates to existing articles.
"Wikipedia runs on a wiki software platform called MediaWiki, which allows anyone to edit a page at any time and have one’s changes visible instantly (wiki means ‘quick’ in Hawaiian)," it says. "Visitors can also examine older versions of pages to see how an article has developed.
"In addition, static versions of Wikipedia are being prepared for release on CD or DVD. Soon to be available is a German language version distributed by Directmedia Publishing, and a bilingual French and English version will be included as part of a Mandrakesoft Linux distribution.
"All Wikipedia text is published under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), which lets contributors enhance and modify each other’s work based on a principle known as ‘copyleft’. This means the license allows third parties the right to reuse Wikipedia articles as long as they pass on that right to others. The MediaWiki software is available under a similar license designed for software."
Other Wiki projects include: Wikibooks, Free textbooks and manuals; Wikiquote, a collection of quotations; and, Wikisource, free source documents.
What will the $50K be used for?
"All of our sites are free from advertisements. Visitors are not charged to edit, read or use our content. We rely entirely on donations to fund our projects. Our unprecedented growth in traffic and content requires regular hardware updates to prevent outages without sacrificing functionality. Other outgoings include bandwidth costs, rackspace within a colocation center, purchase of Wikimedia’s domain names, sponsorship of specific software development tasks, and, occasionally, travel expenses."
As of today, there was $46,430.11 USD to go.
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See:-
noble ambition – Wikimedia press releases/One million Wikipedia articles (US), September 20, 2004
