Wikipedia:About

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"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." — Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit in good faith, and tens of millions already have!

Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by containing information on all branches of knowledge. Hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia consists of freely editable content, whose articles also have numerous links to guide readers to more information.

vandalism). Since its creation on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia has grown into the world's largest reference website, attracting over a billion visitors monthly. It currently has more than sixty million articles in more than 300 languages, including 6,635,356 articles in English

with 129,868 active contributors in the past month.

The fundamental principles of Wikipedia are summarized in its five pillars. The Wikipedia community has developed many policies and guidelines, but you do not need to be familiar with every one of them before contributing.

watch and patrol

bad edits.

Wikipedia differs from printed references in important ways. It is continually created and updated, and encyclopedic articles on new events appear within minutes rather than months or years. Because anyone can improve Wikipedia, it has become more comprehensive, clear, and balanced than any other encyclopedia. Its contributors improve the quality and quantity of the articles as well as remove misinformation, errors, and vandalism. Any reader can fix a mistake or add more information to articles (see Researching with Wikipedia).

Begin by simply clicking the [edit] or [edit source] buttons or the pencil icon
at the top of any non-protected page or section.

Wikipedia has tested the wisdom of the crowd since 2001 and found that it succeeds.