Wikimedia Foundation

For a guide to help pages in Wikipedia, see Help:About help pages . This is a general introduction for visitors to Wikipedia. The project also has an encyclopedia article about itself , an introduction , and a tutorial for aspiring contributors. Wikipedia is an online free-content encyclopedia project helping to create a world in which everyone can... freely share in the sum of all knowledge. It is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of freely editable content. The name "Wikipedia" is a blending of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites , from the Hawaiian word wiki , meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links designed to guide the user to related pages with additional information. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous volunteers who write without pay. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism. Since its creation on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has grown into the world's largest reference website , attracting 1.7 billion unique visitors monthly as of November 2020 [update] . It currently has more than 55 million articles in more than 300 languages , including 6,240,285 articles in English with 144,356 active contributors in the past month. The fundamental principles by which Wikipedia operates are the five pillars . The Wikipedia community has developed many policies and guidelines to improve the encyclopedia; however, it is not a formal requirement to be familiar with them before contributing. Anyone is allowed to add or edit words, references, images, and other media here. What is contributed is more important than who contributes it. To remain, the content must be free of copyright restrictions and contentious material about living people . It must fit within Wikipedia's policies , including being verifiable against a published reliable source . Editors' opinions and beliefs and unreviewed ...Read More