Wikipedia together with What makes It all Exceptional.

[Jhon Dolton]

Wikipedia defies logic. Quite simply, it shouldn't exist.

Starting a web site is easy. All you need is just a computer with a modem and a web connection. But, running a sizable website is just a whole different ball game. Even minor websites require thousands of dollars every year, just to help keep them online. Most websites earn money by showing ads. However, Wikipedia is non-profit. It does not show ads. Instead, it runs on donations. Google has near to a million servers and Yahoo has almost 17,000 staff. Wikipedia may be the sixth most visited website on the web, but it only has 5,000 servers and significantly less than 200 staff. The reason why Wikipedia still exists is because every year, just enough people decide to give just enough.

What makes Wikipedia unique may be the manner in which it is run. All the info on Wikipedia is user submitted and user edited. Basically, Wikipedia supplies a platform because of its users to share information with each other. When Wikipedia first came online, plenty of people thought it would not work. All things considered, just how can a web site hope to maintain quality standards when literally every user on the web is free to make changes?

Yet Wikipedia works. Not just can it be still online, it is the sixth most visited website on the web and the greatest and most popular general reference work on the internet bio. It is also considered an excellent source of news because articles linked to new events are produced so quickly.

With that said, Wikipedia isn't perfect. Since the articles on Wikipedia are creating by ordinary users and not experts, their accuracy is occasionally questionable. Furthermore, Wikipedia has often been criticized because of its systematic bias and inconsistencies.

Underneath line is, Wikipedia has over a thousand times more info than a typical encyclopedia but is no more than 90% as accurate. That doesn't sound like a bad tradeoff to me as long as you keep in mind that Wikipedia has its fallacies.