After all, the cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.  --Umberto Eco and Linda Secondari, Serendipities : Language and Lunacy (Columbia University Press, 1998), Ch. 1, "The Force of Falsity", p. 21.

Influenced by and complimentary to Nupedia, an online English-language encyclopedia with voluntary contributors and expert editors, Wikipedia began on January 15th, 2001 with its first edit; it was designed using a wiki to facilitate ease and speed of content submission also done by by volunteers from around the world. Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts numerous other projects, and the English version was created by entrepreneurs Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Known for its democratization of knowledge, extensive coverage, uniqueness, culture, and lack of advertising, it also has been prone to questions about its reliability, bias, and fact checking, with standards getting tighter over time to ensure scholarship and accuracy of information. Since its launch 23 years ago, it has added featured articles and pictures, news items, and an "On this Day" section.  Highly popular, the English version alone has over 6,768,000 articles, with exponential growth in readership and use by libraries and many other organizations.

The following articles are drawn from Proquest Historical Newspapers, which informs and inspires classroom teaching and learning.

• Meyers, P. (2001, Sep 20). Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You. New York Times (1923-) 
• Hammersley, B. (2003, Jan 30). Common Knowledge: Wikipedia Is the Web's Encylopaedia. You Should Be Editing It Yourself. The Guardian (1959-2003) 
• Web Generosity Lives On in World of 'Wikipedia'. (2003, Feb 07). The Irish Times (1921-) 
• Boxer, S. (2004, Nov 10). Mudslinging Weasels Into Online History. New York Times (1923-) 
• Colgan, J. (2005, Jan 21). Wikipedia Expanding Despite Debate on Reliability: Online Encyclopaedia Praised As a Model of Democratised Knowledge, Writes Jim Colgan. The Irish Times (1921-) 
• Vara, V. (2005, Mar 28). From Wikipedia's Creator, a New Site for Anyone, Anything. Wall Street Journal (1923-) 
• Wikipedia Tightens Submission Rules. (2005, Dec 07). The Times of India (1861-2010) 
• In the Know What's Wikipedia? (2005, Dec 10). The Irish Times (1921-) 
• Schofield, J. (2006, Sep 24). Wikipedia Heads For a Serious Fork: Man Who Founded the Online Encyclopaedia Anyone Can Edit Now Wants to Rewrite It. The Hindustan Times (1924-) 
• Levine, R. (2006, Sep 04). New Web Sites Seeking Profit in Wiki Model. New York Times (1923-)

Tips:

• Jemielniak, Dariusz. Common Knowledge? : An Ethnography of Wikipedia. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2014. e-book
• Leitch, Thomas M. Wikipedia U : Knowledge, Authority, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. e-book
• Reagle, Joseph and Jackie Koerner. Wikipedia @ 20 : Stories of an Incomplete Revolution. 1st ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2020. e-book
• Tereszkiewicz, Anna. Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias : The Case of Wikipedia. First edition. Krakow: Jagiellonian University Press, 2010. e-book
• Van Dijck, Jose. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.  e-book

Images:

• Wikipedia Community Cartoon, by Giulia Forsythe, redrawn by Asiyeh Ghayour, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
• Poster Image: Wikimedia Logo, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

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