Today, January 15th, is the twentieth birthday of Wikipedia, an open, multilingual, and collaborative encyclopedia developed and maintained by largely anonymous volunteer contributors and editors! Founded as part of Nupedia, a defunct, selective encyclopedia project that required high quality scholarship and peer review, Wikipedia was conceived by American-British entrepreneur Jimmy Donal Wales and American developer Lawrence Mark Sanger, and is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, host to numerous other free content projects, including Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikiversity, Wikidata, Wikinews, and much more. Despite controversy over serious use in education and even censorship of content, its highly appealing democratic nature, and scope and depth of coverage, have helped Wikipedia grow into the world's largest reference website, with more than 1.7 billion unique visitors per month and over 55 billion articles published in over 300 languages. Happy Birthday and many happy returns!
The following articles are drawn from Proquest Historical Newspapers, which informs and inspires classroom teaching and learning.
- Walker, L. (2004, Sep 09). Spreading Knowledge, the Wiki Way. The Washington Post (1974-Current File)
- Duffy, J. (2005, Dec 10). Just the Facts (And a Little Fiction) In the Free-For-All Encyclopedia. The Irish Times (1921-Current File)
- Lamb, G.M., (2006, Jan 05). Online Wikipedia Is Not Britannica--But It's Close. The Christian Science Monitor (1908-Current File)
- Regan, T. (2006, Aug 09). New Software May Lick the Sticky 'Wiki". The Christian Science Monitor (1908-Current File)
- Helft, M. (2008, Jan 08). Wiki Citizens Take On a New Area: Searching. The Times of India (1861-Current)
- Cohen, N. (2008, Mar 18). The Growing Pains Of an Online Encyclopaedia. The Times of India (1861-Current)
- UK Schools Swap History For Blogging, Wikipedia. (2009, Mar 26). The Times of India (1861-Current)
- Cohen, N. (2009, Jun 08). The Wars Of Words On Wikipedia's Outskirts. New York Times (1923-Current File)
- Decade's Top 10 Net Moments. (2009, Nov 21). The Times of India (1861-Current)
- 'I Wasn't Sure If Anyone Would Use It': Jimmy Wales Founded Wikipedia As a Side-Project. (2009, Nov 27). The Irish Times (1921-Current File)
Tips:
- Jemieliak, Dariusz. Common Knowledge: An Ethnography of Wikipedia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. e-book
- Leitch, Thomas. Wikipedia U: Knowledge, Authority, and Liberal Education in the Digital Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, c2014. e-book
- Reagle, Joseph Michael. Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, c2010. e-book
- Tereszkiewicz, Anna. Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias: The Case of Wikipedia. Kraków: Wydawn. Uniwersytetu Jagielońskiego, 2010. e-book
Images:
- Wikipedia Logo, Courtesy of Wikimedia
- Special News Slide, Courtesy of the Gottesman Libraries
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