www.Wiki.com

Wikipedia.com: Your Free Online Encyclopedia

Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based encyclopedia website. The main attraction is that the entire content is free for all. In short, anyone with an internet connection can refer to Wikipedia, if they have doubts or need to gather additional information. The name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia.

Founded in 2001, Wikipedia has ever since become a viable resource for all seeking additional information on any topic they require. Volunteers from all around the world contribute their knowledge about a particular topic in creating a Wikipedia article. Today, it is one of the largest reference websites on the Internet. An excerpt from the website - "There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on some 9,000,000 articles in more than 250 languages. As of today, there are 2,273,205 articles in English; every day hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to enhance the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia."

Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge. This actually means that people of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write Wikipedia articles. With rare exceptions, articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the ‘edit this page link'. In other words anyone can add information, cross-references or citations, as long as they do so within Wikipedia's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. For example, if you add information to an article, be sure to include your references, as Wikipedia may remove unreferenced facts.

However, Wikipedia can't be completely trusted as normal visitors input their knowledge base into each article. Hence, some may be true to the core, but others might be just a misconception that the writer has. I do refer Wikipedia, when I have collect info about certain things or places; however, I always do take additional reference from other websites as well, where the articles might be justifiable, as it is usually written by scholars in that particular area.