This page is used for a university presentation.
Intro edit
History edit
- Launched on January 15, 2001
- Reached 2 million articles on English Wikipedia on September 9, 2007
- Attracts 683 million visitors annually reading over 10 million articles in 253 languages
Who can edit? edit
- Everyone (minus those who come here just to cause trouble)
- Every article is written and maintained entirely by volunteers
Why (some) professors hate this site? edit
- Not all articles on this site are trustworthy
- Ideally, articles should have reliable references from credible sources
- Examples of questionable articles: Alexander I of Russia, Economy of Algeria, 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill
- Examples of well-written articles: DNA, Mozilla Firefox, List of acquisitions by AOL
- Ideally, articles should have reliable references from credible sources
- Sometimes users add misleading or prank information
- Credentials are discouraged, meaning a PhD professor specialized in black holes may have to argue with a high school student who didn't take physics course
- If you find a bad article, you are welcome to improve it, either directly or via a comment on the talk page, and encouraged (if not obliged) to register
Other features edit
Talk page edit
- The backstage of Wikipedia
- Just about every article has its own talk page
- Discussion and, often, more information can be found here
Edit history edit
- Some students said they went to a page and read something useful but didn't write or copy it down
- Few days later, they came back to that page and it's gone!
- Uh oh, they are doomed (or so it seems)!
Beyond Wikipedia edit
- Wiktionary (dictionary)
- Wikispecies (species directory)
- Commons (free media repository)
- ... and others