Resource:Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, online, open-content, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project.
Use Wikipedia
Start Wikipedia
Wikipedia is online, or Internet-based. It can be accessed using a web browser and an Internet connection.
Main website: http://www.wikipedia.org
Some major language websites:
- English: http://en.wikipedia.org
- French: http://fr.wikipedia.org
- German: http://de.wikipedia.org
- Polish: http://pl.wikipedia.org
A complete list of language Wikipedias is available at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
Search Wikipedia
- http://www.wikipedia.org allows search in any of the language Wikipedias
- In any of the language Wikipedias, there is a search box in the left column that allows any search
- http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Search is Wikipedia's internal site search
Wikipedia as a free resource
Free access
All content on Wikipedia can be accessed for free (i.e., without any access or subscription fees).
Copyright and reuse
Any contributions made to Wikipedia are automatically considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), version 1.2. The GFDL is a copyleft, open-content license, whose key feature is that it allows reuse without permission from the original author, as long as such reuse is also licensed under a similar license.
Main reference pages:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights explains Wikipedia's copyright policy
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License is the full text of the license used by Wikipedia
Management and organization
Parent organization
Wikipedia is managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. The Wikimedia Foundation is responsible both for the servers that host Wikipedia content, and for maintaining and improving MediaWiki, the underlying software for Wikipedia.
Main reference pages:
- http://www.wikimedia.org is the Wikimedia Foundation's central page
- http://meta.wikimedia.org is a wiki run by the Wikimedia Foundation to coordinate the Wikimedia Foundation's projects
Software tools
Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki, a software designed for web-base collaborative authoring of articles. MediaWiki is free software, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 2.0.
MediaWiki was originally written by Magnus Manske, specifically for Wikipedia. Its development is handled by software professionals working for the Wikimedia Foundation. However, MediaWiki is free software and can be both used and modified by anybody. A number of extensions to MediaWiki have been developed by people outside the Wikimedia Foundation.
MediaWiki is also used as a software in a number of other collaborative software-based tools, such as the Subject Wikis Reference Guide.
- http://www.mediawiki.org is the MediaWiki website. It has the MediaWiki manual, links for downloading the software, as well as a listing of extensions developed for MediaWiki
- http://www.wikiindex.org gives a list of wikis (not comprehensive)