.}}

name	Wikipedia
logo
logocaption	The logo of Wikipedia, a globe featuring glyphs from many different writing systems
screenshot
collapsible	yes
url
type of organization	Nonprofit
location	Miami, Florida
type	Internet encyclopedia project
language	270 active editions (282 in total)
registration	Optional (required only for certain tasks such as editing protected pages, creating pages or uploading files)
owner	Wikimedia Foundation (non-profit)
author	Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger
launch date
commercial	No
alexa	7 ()
current status	Active
slogan	The Free Encyclopedia
content license	(most text also dual-licensed under GFDL)Media licensing varies }}

Wikipedia ( or ) is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 19 million articles (over |1}} million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site, and it has about 90,000 active contributors. As of July 2011, there were editions of Wikipedia in 282 languages. It has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, ranking around seventh among all websites on Alexa and having 365 million readers.

Wikipedia was launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Sanger coined the name ''Wikipedia'', which is a portmanteau of ''wiki'' (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word ''wiki'', meaning "quick") and ''encyclopedia''.

Wikipedia's departure from the expert-driven style of encyclopedia building and the large presence of unacademic content has often been noted. When ''Time'' magazine recognized You as its Person of the Year for 2006, acknowledging the accelerating success of online collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, it cited Wikipedia as one of several examples of Web 2.0 services, along with YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook. Some have noted the importance of Wikipedia not only as an encyclopedic reference but also as a frequently updated news resource because of how quickly articles about recent events appear. Students have been assigned to write Wikipedia articles as an exercise in clearly and succinctly explaining difficult concepts to an uninitiated audience.

Although the policies of Wikipedia strongly espouse and a , critics of Wikipedia accuse it of systemic bias and inconsistencies (including undue weight given to popular culture), and because it favors consensus over credentials in its editorial processes. Its reliability and accuracy are also targeted. Other criticisms center on its susceptibility to vandalism and the addition of spurious or unverified information; though some scholarly work suggests that vandalism is generally short-lived. A 2005 investigation in ''Nature'' showed that the science articles they compared came close to the level of accuracy of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and had a similar rate of "serious errors."

History

Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. Nupedia was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis, Inc, a web portal company. Its main figures were Jimmy Wales, Bomis CEO, and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. Nupedia was licensed initially under its own Nupedia Open Content License, switching to the GNU Free Documentation License before Wikipedia's founding at the urging of Richard Stallman. Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia. While Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, Sanger is usually credited with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal. On January 10, 2001, Larry Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia. Wikipedia was formally launched on January 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com, and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list. Wikipedia's policy of "neutral point-of-view" was codified in its initial months, and was similar to Nupedia's earlier "nonbiased" policy. Otherwise, there were relatively few rules initially and Wikipedia operated independently of Nupedia.

Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search engine indexing. It grew to approximately 20,000 articles and 18 language editions by the end of 2001. By late 2002, it had reached 26 language editions, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the final days of 2004. Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former's servers were taken down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. English Wikipedia passed the two million-article mark on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, eclipsing even the Yongle Encyclopedia (1407), which had held the record for exactly 600 years.

Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control in a perceived English-centric Wikipedia, users of the Spanish Wikipedia forked from Wikipedia to create the ''Enciclopedia Libre'' in February 2002. Later that year, Wales announced that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and its website was moved to wikipedia.org. Various other wiki-encyclopedia projects have been started, largely under a different philosophy from the open and NPOV editorial model of Wikipedia. Wikinfo does not require a neutral point of view and allows original research. New Wikipedia-inspired projects – such as Citizendium, Scholarpedia, Conservapedia, and Google's Knol where the articles are a little more essayistic – have been started to address perceived limitations of Wikipedia, such as its policies on peer review, original research, and commercial advertising.

Though the English Wikipedia reached three million articles in August 2009, the growth of the edition, in terms of the numbers of articles and of contributors, appeared to have flattened off around early 2007. In 2006, about 1,800 articles were added daily to the encyclopedia; by 2010 that average was roughly 1,000. A team at the Palo Alto Research Center speculated that this is due to the increasing exclusiveness of the project. New or occasional editors have significantly higher rates of their edits reverted (removed) than an elite group of regular editors, colloquially known as the "cabal." This could make it more difficult for the project to recruit and retain new contributors over the long term, resulting in stagnation in article creation. Others suggest that the growth is flattening naturally because the low-hanging fruit already exist.

In November 2009, a Ph.D thesis written by Felipe Ortega, a researcher at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, found that the English Wikipedia had lost 49,000 editors during the first three months of 2009; in comparison, the project lost only 4,900 editors during the same period in 2008. ''The Wall Street Journal'' reported that "unprecedented numbers of the millions of online volunteers who write, edit and police [Wikipedia] are quitting." The array of rules applied to editing and disputes related to such content are among the reasons for this trend that are cited in the article. These claims were disputed by Jimmy Wales, who denied the decline and questioned the methodology of the study.

In January 2007 Wikipedia initially entered the top ten list of the most popular websites in the United States, according to comScore Networks Inc. With 42.9 million unique visitors and rank #9, Wikipedia surpassed New York Times (#10) and Apple Inc. (#11). It is a significant increase as in January 2006 the rank was #33 with just 18.3 million unique visitors. In April 2011 it was listed as the fifth most popular website by Google Inc.

Nature of Wikipedia

Editing

In a departure from the style of traditional encyclopedias, Wikipedia employs an open, "wiki" editing model. Except for particularly vandalism-prone pages, every article may be edited anonymously or with a user account. Different language editions modify this policy: only registered users may create a new article in the English edition. No article is owned by its creator or any other editor, or is vetted by any recognized authority; rather, the articles are agreed on by .

By default, any edit to an article becomes available immediately, prior to any review. This means that an article may contain errors, misguided contributions, advocacy, or even patent nonsense, until another editor corrects the problem. Different language editions, each under separate administrative control, are free to modify this policy. For example the German Wikipedia maintains a system of "stable versions" of articles, to allow a reader to see versions of articles that have passed certain reviews. In June 2010, its administrators announced that the English Wikipedia would remove strict editing restrictions from "controversial" or vandalism-prone articles (such as George W. Bush, David Cameron or homework) by using reviews. In place of an editing prohibition for new or unregistered users, there would be a "new system, called 'pending changes'" which, as Jimmy Wales told the BBC, would enable the English Wikipedia "to open up articles for general editing that have been protected or semi-protected for years." The "pending changes" system was introduced on June 15, 2010, shortly after 11 pm GMT. Edits to specified articles are now "subject to review from an established Wikipedia editor before publication." Wales opted against the German Wikipedia model of requiring editor review before edits to ''any'' article, describing it as "neither necessary nor desirable." He added that the administrators of the German Wikipedia were "going to be closely watching the English system, and I'm sure they'll at least consider switching if the results are good."

Contributors, registered or not, can take advantage of features available in the software that powers Wikipedia. The "History" page attached to each article records every single past revision of the article, though a revision with libelous content, criminal threats or copyright infringements may be removed afterwards. This feature makes it easy to compare old and new versions, undo changes that an editor considers undesirable, or restore lost content. The "Discussion" pages associated with each article are used to coordinate work among multiple editors. Regular contributors often maintain a "watchlist" of articles of interest to them, so that they can easily keep tabs on all recent changes to those articles. Computer programs called Internet bots have been used widely to remove vandalism as soon as it was made, to correct common misspellings and stylistic issues, or to start articles such as geography entries in a standard format from statistical data.

Articles in Wikipedia are organized roughly in three ways according to: development status, subject matter and the access level required for editing. The most developed state of articles is called "featured article" status: articles labeled as such are the ones that will be featured in the main page of Wikipedia. Researcher Giacomo Poderi found that articles tend to reach the FA status via the intensive work of few editors. In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English-language Wikipedia introduced an assessment scale against which the quality of articles is judged.

A WikiProject is a place for a group of editors to coordinate work on a specific topic. The discussion pages attached to a project are often used to coordinate changes that take place across articles. Wikipedia also maintains a style guide called the Manual of Style or MoS for short, which stipulates, for example, that, in the first sentence of any given article, the title of the article and any alternative titles should appear in bold.

Rules and laws governing content

For legal reasons, content in Wikipedia is subject to the laws (in particular copyright law) of Florida, where Wikipedia servers are hosted. Beyond that, the Wikipedian editorial principles are embodied in the "", and numerous are intended to shape the content appropriately. Even these rules are stored in wiki form, and Wikipedia editors as a community write and revise those policies and guidelines and enforce them by deleting, annotating with tags, or modifying article materials failing to meet them. The rules on the non-English editions of Wikipedia branched off a translation of the rules on the English Wikipedia and have since diverged to some extent. While they still show broad-brush similarities, they differ in many details.

According to the rules on the English Wikipedia, each entry in Wikipedia to be worthy of inclusion must be about a topic that is encyclopedic and is not a dictionary entry or dictionary-like. A topic should also meet Wikipedia's standards of "notability", which usually means that it must have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources such as mainstream media or major academic journals that are independent of the subject of the topic. Further, Wikipedia must expose knowledge that is already established and recognized. In other words, it must not present, for instance, new information or original works. A claim that is likely to be challenged requires a reference to a reliable source. Among Wikipedia editors, this is often phrased as "verifiability, not truth" to express the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles and making their own interpretations. This can lead to the removal of information that is valid, thus hindering inclusion of knowledge and growth of the encyclopedia. Finally, Wikipedia must not take a side. All opinions and viewpoints, if attributable to external sources, must enjoy an appropriate share of coverage within an article. This is known as neutral point of view, or NPOV.

Wikipedia has many methods of settling disputes. A "bold, revert, discuss" cycle sometimes occurs, in which a user makes an edit, another user reverts it, and the matter is discussed on the appropriate talk page. In order to gain a broader community consensus, issues can be raised at the Village Pump, or a Request for Comment can be made soliciting other users' input. "Wikiquette Assistance" is a non-binding noticeboard where users can report impolite, uncivil, or other difficult communications with other editors.

Specialized forums exist for centralizing discussion on specific decisions, such as whether or not an article should be deleted. Mediation is sometimes used, although it has been deemed by some Wikipedians to be unhelpful for resolving particularly contentious disputes. The Wikipedia Arbitration Committee settles disputes when other methods fail. The ArbCom generally does not rule on the factual correctness of article content, although it sometimes enforces the "Neutral Point of View" policy. Statistical analyses suggest that Wikipedia's dispute resolution ignores the content of user disputes and focuses on user conduct instead, functioning not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting users, but to weed out problematic users while weeding potentially productive users back in to participate. Its remedies include banning users from Wikipedia (used in 15.7% of cases), subject matter remedies (23.4%), article bans (43.3%) and cautions and probations (63.2%). Total bans from Wikipedia are largely limited to instances of impersonation and anti-social behavior. Warnings tend to be issued for editing conduct and conduct that is anti-consensus, rather than anti-social.

Content licensing

All text in Wikipedia was covered by GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), a copyleft license permitting the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work, up until June 2009, when the site switched to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-by-SA) 3.0. Wikipedia had been working on the switch to Creative Commons licenses because the GFDL, initially designed for software manuals, was not considered suitable for online reference works and because the two licenses were incompatible. In response to the Wikimedia Foundation's request, in November 2008, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) released a new version of GFDL designed specifically to allow Wikipedia to by August 1, 2009. Wikipedia and its sister projects held a community-wide referendum to decide whether or not to make the license switch. The referendum took place from April 9 to 30. The results were 75.8% "Yes," 10.5% "No," and 13.7% "No opinion." In consequence of the referendum, the Wikimedia Board of Trustees voted to change to the Creative Commons license, effective June 15, 2009. The position that Wikipedia is merely a hosting service has been successfully used as a defense in court.

The handling of media files (e.g., image files) varies across language editions. Some language editions, such as the English Wikipedia, include non-free image files under fair use doctrine, while the others have opted not to. This is in part because of the difference in copyright laws between countries; for example, the notion of fair use does not exist in Japanese copyright law. Media files covered by free content licenses (e.g., Creative Commons' cc-by-sa) are shared across language editions via Wikimedia Commons repository, a project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Accessing Wikipedia's content

Because Wikipedia content is distributed under an open license, anyone can reuse, or re-distribute it at no charge. The content of Wikipedia has been published in many forms, both online and offline, outside of the Wikipedia website.

Web sites - Thousands of "mirror sites" exist that republish content from Wikipedia; two prominent ones, that also include content from other reference sources, are Reference.com and Answers.com. Another example is Wapedia, which began to display Wikipedia content in a mobile-device-friendly format before Wikipedia itself did.

Mobile devices - A variety of mobile apps provide access to Wikipedia on hand-held devices. This can be via apps for the Android or the Apple iOS devices (see Wikipedia iOS apps), or via a mobile web browser that accesses specially formatted pages (see MediaWiki Mobile).

Search engines - Some web search engines also display content from Wikipedia on search results: examples include Bing (via technology gained from Powerset) and Duck Duck Go.

Other wikis - Some wikis, most notably Enciclopedia Libre and Citizendium, began as forks of Wikipedia content. For example, the website DBpedia, begun in 2007, is a project that extracts data from the infoboxes and category declarations of the English-language Wikipedia and makes it available in a queriable semantic format, RDF. The possibility has also been raised to have Wikipedia export its data directly in a semantic format, possibly by using the Semantic MediaWiki extension. Such an export of data could also help Wikipedia reuse its own data, both between articles on the same language Wikipedia and between different language Wikipedias.

Compact Discs, DVDs - Collections of Wikipedia articles have also been published on optical disks. An English version, 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection, contained about 2,000 articles. The Polish-language version contains nearly 240,000 articles. There are also German and Spanish-language versions. Also: "Wikipedia for Schools", the Wikipedia series of CDs/DVDs, produced by Wikipedians and SOS Children, is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia targeted around the UK National Curriculum and intended to be useful for much of the English-speaking world. The project is available online; an equivalent print encyclopedia would require roughly 20 volumes.

Books - There has also been an attempt to put a select subset of Wikipedia's articles into printed book form. Since 2009, tens of thousands of print on demand books which reproduced English, German, Russian and French Wikipedia articles have been produced by the American company Books LLC and by three Mauritian subsidiaries of the German publisher VDM.

Obtaining the full contents of Wikipedia for reuse presents challenges, since direct cloning via a web crawler is discouraged. Wikipedia publishes "dumps" of its contents, but these are text-only; as of 2007 there is no dump available of Wikipedia's images.

Defenses against undesirable edits

The open nature of the editing model has been central to most criticism of Wikipedia. For example, a reader of an article cannot be certain that it has not been compromised by the insertion of false information or the removal of essential information. Former ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' editor-in-chief Robert McHenry once described this by saying:

However, obvious vandalism is easy to remove from wiki articles, since the previous versions of each article are kept. In practice, the median time to detect and fix vandalisms is very low, usually a few minutes, but in one particularly well-publicized incident, false information was introduced into the biography of American political figure John Seigenthaler and remained undetected for four months. John Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of ''USA Today'' and founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, called Jimmy Wales and asked if Wales had any way of knowing who contributed the misinformation. Wales replied that he did not, but nevertheless the perpetrator was eventually traced. This incident led to policy changes on the site, specifically targeted at tightening up the verifiability of all .

Wikipedia's open structure inherently makes it an easy target for Internet trolls, spamming, and those with an agenda to push. The addition of political spin to articles by organizations including members of the U.S. House of Representatives and special interest groups has been noted, and organizations such as Microsoft have offered financial incentives to work on certain articles. These issues have been parodied, notably by Stephen Colbert in ''The Colbert Report''.

For example, in August 2007, the website WikiScanner began to trace the sources of changes made to Wikipedia by anonymous editors without Wikipedia accounts. The program revealed that many such edits were made by corporations or government agencies changing the content of articles related to them, their personnel or their work.

Wikipedia can be defended from attack by several systems and techniques. These include users checking pages and edits (e.g. 'watchlist's and 'recent changes'), computer programs ('bots') that are designed to try to detect attacks and fix them automatically (or semi-automatically), filters that warn users making "undesirable" edits, blocks on the creation of links to particular websites, blocks on edits from particular accounts, IP addresses or address ranges.

For heavily attacked pages, particular articles can be ''semi-protected'' so that only well established accounts can edit them, or for particularly contentious cases, locked so that only administrators are able to make changes. Such locking is allegedly applied sparingly and for only short periods of time while attacks may appear likely to continue.

Coverage of topics

Wikipedia seeks to create a summary of all human knowledge in the form of an online encyclopedia, with each topic of knowledge covered encyclopedically in one article. Since it has virtually unlimited disk space, it can have far more topics than can be covered by any conventional print encyclopedias. It also contains materials that some people may find objectionable, offensive, or pornographic. It was made clear that this policy is not up for debate, and the policy has sometimes proved controversial. For instance, in 2008, Wikipedia rejected an online petition against the inclusion of Muhammad's depictions in its English edition, citing this policy. The presence of politically sensitive materials in Wikipedia had also led the People's Republic of China to block access to parts of the site. (See also: IWF block of Wikipedia)

, Wikipedia articles cover about half a million places on Earth. However, research conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute has shown that the geographic distribution of articles is highly uneven. Most articles are written about North America, Europe, and East Asia, with very little coverage of large parts of the developing world, including most of Africa.

A 2008 study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Palo Alto Research Center gave a distribution of topics as well as growth (from July 2006 to January 2008) in each field:

Culture and the arts: 30% (210%)

Biographies and persons: 15% (97%)

Geography and places: 14% (52%)

Society and social sciences: 12% (83%)

History and events: 11% (143%)

Natural and the physical sciences: 9% (213%)

Technology and the applied science: 4% (−6%)

Religions and belief systems: 2% (38%)

Health: 2% (42%)

Mathematics and logic: 1% (146%)

Thought and philosophy: 1% (160%)

However, it must be considered that these numbers relate only to articles; it is possible that one topic contains a lot of short articles and another one quite large ones.

Furthermore, the exact coverage of Wikipedia is under constant review by the editors, and disagreements are not uncommon (see also deletionism and inclusionism).

Quality of writing

Because contributors usually rewrite small portions of an entry rather than making full-length revisions, high- and low-quality content may be intermingled within an entry. Critics sometimes argue that non-expert editing undermines quality. For example, Roy Rosenzweig had several criticisms of its prose and its failure to distinguish the genuinely important from the merely sensational. He said that Wikipedia is "surprisingly accurate in reporting names, dates, and events in U.S. history" (Rosenzweig's own field of study) and that most of the few factual errors that he found "were small and inconsequential" and that some of them "simply repeat widely held but inaccurate beliefs", which are also repeated in ''Encarta'' and the ''Britannica''. However, he made one major criticism.

Good historical writing requires not just factual accuracy but also a command of the scholarly literature, persuasive analysis and interpretations, and clear and engaging prose. By those measures, ''American National Biography Online'' easily outdistances Wikipedia.

Contrasting Wikipedia's treatment of Abraham Lincoln to that of Civil War historian James McPherson in ''American National Biography Online'', he said that both were essentially accurate and covered the major episodes in Lincoln's life, but praised "McPherson's richer contextualization... his artful use of quotations to capture Lincoln's voice ... and ... his ability to convey a profound message in a handful of words." By contrast, he gives an example of Wikipedia's prose that he finds "both verbose and dull." Rosenzweig made a further criticism, contrasting "the skill and confident judgment of a seasoned historian" displayed by McPherson and others to the "antiquarianism" of Wikipedia (which he compares in this respect to ''American Heritage'' magazine), and said that while Wikipedia often provides extensive references, they are not the best ones.

Rosenzweig also criticized the "waffling—encouraged by the npov policy—[which] means that it is hard to discern any overall interpretive stance in Wikipedia history." By example, he quoted the conclusion of Wikipedia's article on William Clarke Quantrill. While generally praising the article, he pointed out its "waffling" conclusion: "Some historians...remember him as an opportunistic, bloodthirsty outlaw, while others continue to view him as a daring soldier and local folk hero."

Other critics have made similar charges that, even if Wikipedia articles are factually accurate, they are often written in a poor, almost unreadable style. Frequent Wikipedia critic Andrew Orlowski commented: "Even when a Wikipedia entry is 100 per cent factually correct, and those facts have been carefully chosen, it all too often reads as if it has been translated from one language to another then into to a third, passing an illiterate translator at each stage." A study of cancer articles by Yaacov Lawrence of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University found that the entries were mostly accurate, but they were written at college reading level, as opposed to the ninth grade level seen in the Physician Data Query. He said that "Wikipedia's lack of readability may reflect its varied origins and haphazard editing." ''The Economist'' noted that the quality of writing of Wikipedia articles can be a guide to the reader: "inelegant or ranting prose usually reflects muddled thoughts and incomplete information." A 2005 study by the journal ''Nature'' compared Wikipedia's science content to that of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', stating that Wikipedia's accuracy was close to that of ''Britannica'', but that the structure of Wikipedia's articles was often poor."

Reliability

As a consequence of the open structure, Wikipedia "makes no guarantee of validity" of its content, since no one is ultimately responsible for any claims appearing in it. Concerns have been raised regarding the lack of accountability that results from users' anonymity, the insertion of spurious information, vandalism, and similar problems.

Wikipedia has often been accused of exhibiting systemic bias and inconsistency; additionally, critics argue that Wikipedia's open nature and a lack of proper sources for most of the information makes it unreliable. Some commentators suggest that Wikipedia may be reliable, but that the reliability of any given article is not clear. Editors of traditional reference works such as the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' have questioned the project's utility and status as an encyclopedia. Most university lecturers discourage students from citing any encyclopedia in academic work, preferring primary sources; some specifically prohibit Wikipedia citations. Co-founder Jimmy Wales stresses that encyclopedias of any type are not usually appropriate as primary sources, and should not be relied upon as authoritative.

A non-scientific report in the journal ''Nature'' in 2005 suggested that for some scientific articles Wikipedia came close to the level of accuracy of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and had a similar rate of "serious errors." These claims have been disputed by, among others, ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.

An economist, Tyler Cowen writes, "If I had to guess whether Wikipedia or the median refereed journal article on economics was more likely to be true, after a not so long think I would opt for Wikipedia." He comments that some traditional sources of non-fiction suffer from systemic biases and novel results, in his opinion, are over-reported in journal articles and relevant information is omitted from news reports. However, he also cautions that errors are frequently found on Internet sites, and that academics and experts must be vigilant in correcting them.

In February 2007 an article in ''The Harvard Crimson'' newspaper reported that a few of the professors at Harvard University include Wikipedia in their syllabi, but that there is a split in their perception of using Wikipedia. In June 2007 former president of the American Library Association Michael Gorman condemned Wikipedia, along with Google, stating that academics who endorse the use of Wikipedia are "the intellectual equivalent of a dietitian who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything." He also said that "a generation of intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the Internet" was being produced at universities. He complains that the web-based sources are discouraging students from learning from the more rare texts which are either found only on paper or are on subscription-only web sites. In the same article Jenny Fry (a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute) commented on academics who cite Wikipedia, saying that: "You cannot say children are intellectually lazy because they are using the Internet when academics are using search engines in their research. The difference is that they have more experience of being critical about what is retrieved and whether it is authoritative. Children need to be told how to use the Internet in a critical and appropriate way."

Plagiarism concerns

The Wikipedia Watch criticism website in 2006 has listed dozens of examples of plagiarism by Wikipedia editors on the English version. Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia co-founder, has said in this respect: "We need to deal with such activities with absolute harshness, no mercy, because this kind of plagiarism is 100% at odds with all of our core principles."

Sexual content

Wikipedia has been criticized for allowing graphic sexual content such as images and videos of masturbation and ejaculation as well as photos from hardcore pornographic films found on its articles. Child protection campaigners say graphic sexual content appears on many Wikipedia entries, displayed without any warning or age verification.

The Wikipedia article ''Virgin Killer'' – a 1976 album from German heavy metal band Scorpions – features a picture of the album's original cover, which depicts a naked prepubescent girl. The original release cover caused controversy and was replaced in some countries. In December 2008, access to the Wikipedia article ''Virgin Killer'' was blocked for four days by most Internet service providers in the United Kingdom, after it was reported by a member of the public as child pornography. The Internet Watch Foundation, a nonprofit, nongovernment-affiliated organization, criticized the inclusion of the picture as "distasteful."

In April 2010, Larry Sanger wrote a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, outlining his concerns that two categories of images on Wikimedia Commons contained child pornography, and were in violation of U.S. federal obscenity law. Sanger later clarified that the images, which were related to pedophilia and one about lolicon, were not of real children, but said that they constituted "obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children", under the PROTECT Act of 2003. That law bans photographic child pornography and cartoon images and drawings of children that are obscene under American law. Sanger also expressed concerns about access to the images on Wikipedia in schools. Wikipedia strongly rejected Sanger's accusation. Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh said that Wikipedia does not have "material we would deem to be illegal. If we did, we would remove it." Following the complaint by Larry Sanger, Wales deleted sexual images without consulting the community. After some editors who volunteer to maintain the site argued that the decision to delete had been made hastily, Wales voluntarily gave up some of the powers he had held up to that time as part of his co-founder status. He wrote in a message to the Wikimedia Foundation mailing list that this action was "in the interest of encouraging this discussion to be about real philosophical/content issues, rather than be about me and how quickly I acted."

Privacy

One privacy concern in the case of Wikipedia is the right of a private citizen to remain private; to remain a "private citizen" rather than a "public figure" in the eyes of the law. It is somewhat of a battle between the right to be anonymous in cyberspace and the right to be anonymous in real life ("meatspace"). Wikipedia Watch argues that "Wikipedia is a potential menace to anyone who values privacy" and that "a greater degree of accountability in the Wikipedia structure" would be "the very first step toward resolving the privacy problem." A particular problem occurs in the case of an individual who is relatively unimportant and for whom there exists a Wikipedia page against their wishes.

In 2005 Agence France-Presse quoted Daniel Brandt, the Wikipedia Watch owner, as saying that "the basic problem is that no one, neither the trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, nor the volunteers who are connected with Wikipedia, consider themselves responsible for the content."

In January 2006, a German court ordered the German Wikipedia shut down within Germany because it stated the full name of Boris Floricic, aka "Tron", a deceased hacker who was formerly with the Chaos Computer Club. More specifically, the court ordered that the URL within the German .de domain (http://www.wikipedia.de/) may no longer redirect to the encyclopedia's servers in Florida at http://de.wikipedia.org although German readers were still able to use the US-based URL directly, and there was virtually no loss of access on their part. The court order arose out of a lawsuit filed by Floricic's parents, demanding that their son's surname be removed from Wikipedia. On February 9, 2006, the injunction against Wikimedia Deutschland was overturned, with the court rejecting the notion that Tron's right to privacy or that of his parents were being violated. The plaintiffs appealed to the Berlin state court, but were refused relief in May 2006.

Community

Wikipedia's community has been described as "cult-like," although not always with entirely negative connotations, and criticized for failing to accommodate inexperienced users.

;Power structure The Wikipedia community has established "a bureaucracy of sorts", including "a clear power structure that gives volunteer administrators the authority to exercise editorial control." Editors in good standing in the community can run for one of many levels of volunteer stewardship; this begins with "administrator," a group of privileged users who have the ability to delete pages, lock articles from being changed in case of vandalism or editorial disputes, and block users from editing. Despite the name, administrators do not enjoy any special privilege in decision-making; instead they are mostly limited to making edits that have project-wide effects and thus are disallowed to ordinary editors, and to block users making disruptive edits (such as vandalism).

;Contributors Wikipedia does not require that its users provide identification. However, as Wikipedia grows with its unconventional model of encyclopedia building, "Who writes Wikipedia?" has become one of the questions frequently asked on the project, often with a reference to other Web 2.0 projects such as Digg. Jimmy Wales once argued that only "a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" makes the bulk of contributions to Wikipedia and that the project is therefore "much like any traditional organization." Wales performed a study finding that over 50% of all the edits are done by just 0.7% of the users (at the time: 524 people). This method of evaluating contributions was later disputed by Aaron Swartz, who noted that several articles he sampled had large portions of their content (measured by number of characters) contributed by users with low edit counts. A 2007 study by researchers from Dartmouth College found that "anonymous and infrequent contributors to Wikipedia ... are as reliable a source of knowledge as those contributors who register with the site." Although some contributors are authorities in their field, Wikipedia requires that even their contributions be supported by published and verifiable sources. The project's preference for over credentials has been labeled "anti-elitism."

In a 2003 study of Wikipedia as a community, economics Ph.D. student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in wiki software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation. In his 2008 book, ''The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It'', Jonathan Zittrain of the Oxford Internet Institute and Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society cites Wikipedia's success as a case study in how open collaboration has fostered innovation on the web. A 2008 study found that Wikipedia users were less agreeable and open, though more conscientious, than non-Wikipedia users. A 2009 study suggested there was "evidence of growing resistance from the Wikipedia community to new content."

At OOPSLA 2009, Wikimedia CTO and Senior Software Architect Brion Vibber gave a presentation entitled "Community Performance Optimization: Making Your People Run as Smoothly as Your Site" in which he discussed the challenges of handling the contributions from a large community and compared the process to that of software development.

;Interactions Members of the community predominantly interact with each other via 'talk' pages, which are wiki-edited pages which are associated with articles, as well as via talk pages that are specific to particular contributors, and talk pages that help run the site. These pages help the contributors reach consensus about what the contents of the articles should be, how the site's rules may change, and to take actions with respect to any problems within the community.

''The Wikipedia Signpost'' is the community newspaper on the English Wikipedia, and was founded by Michael Snow, an administrator and the former chair of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. It covers news and events from the site, as well as major events from sister projects, such as Wikimedia Commons.

;Positive re-inforcement Wikipedians sometimes award one another barnstars for good work. These personalized tokens of appreciation reveal a wide range of valued work extending far beyond simple editing to include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. The barnstar phenomenon has been analyzed by researchers seeking to determine what implications it might have for other communities engaged in large-scale collaborations.

;New users 60% of registered users never make another edit after their first 24 hours. Possible explanations are that such users only register for a single purpose, or are scared away by their experiences. Goldman writes that editors who fail to comply with Wikipedia cultural rituals, such as signing talk pages, implicitly signal that they are Wikipedia outsiders, increasing the odds that Wikipedia insiders will target their contributions as a threat. Becoming a Wikipedia insider involves non-trivial costs; the contributor is expected to build a user page, learn Wikipedia-specific technological codes, submit to an arcane dispute resolution process, and learn a "baffling culture rich with in-jokes and insider references." Non-logged-in users are in some sense second-class citizens on Wikipedia, as "participants are accredited by members of the wiki community, who have a vested interest in preserving the quality of the work product, on the basis of their ongoing participation," but the contribution histories of IP addresses cannot necessarily with any certainty be credited to, or blamed upon, a particular user.

A 2009 study by Henry Blodget showed that in a random sample of articles most content in Wikipedia (measured by the amount of contributed text which survives to the latest sampled edit) is created by "outsiders" (users with low edit counts), whilst most editing and formatting is done by "insiders" (a select group of established users).

;Demographics ''The New York Times'' ran a column about a Wikipedia survey at the time of Wikipedia's 10th anniversary. Quoting from it, "Wikimedia Foundation...collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University" and also notes that "surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of its hundreds of thousands of contributors are women." A goal set by Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director, is to see female editing contributions increase to 25 percent by 2015. Linda Basch, President of the National Council for Research on Women notes the contrast in these Wikipedia editors' statistics with the majority percentage which women are currently filling in enrollment in BA, Masters and PhD programs in nations such as the US.

Language editions

There are currently 282 language editions (or language versions) of Wikipedia; of these, 3 have over 1 million articles each (English, German, and French), 4 more have over 700,000 articles (Italian, Polish, Spanish, Japanese), 32 more have over 100,000 articles and 99 have over 1,000 articles. The largest, the English Wikipedia, has over |1}} million articles. According to Alexa, the English subdomain (en.wikipedia.org; English Wikipedia) receives approximately 54% of Wikipedia's cumulative traffic, with the remaining split among the other languages (Japanese: 10%, German: 8%, Spanish: 5%, Russian: 4%, French: 4%, Italian: 3%). As of July 2008, the five largest language editions are (in order of article count) English, German, French, Polish, and Japanese Wikipedias.

Since Wikipedia is web-based and therefore worldwide, contributors of a same language edition may use different dialects or may come from different countries (as is the case for the English edition). These differences may lead to some conflicts over spelling differences, (e.g. ''color'' vs. ''colour'') or points of view. Though the various language editions are held to global policies such as "neutral point of view," they diverge on some points of policy and practice, most notably on whether images that are not licensed freely may be used under a claim of fair use.

Jimmy Wales has described Wikipedia as "an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language." Though each language edition functions more or less independently, some efforts are made to supervise them all. They are coordinated in part by Meta-Wiki, the Wikimedia Foundation's wiki devoted to maintaining all of its projects (Wikipedia and others). For instance, Meta-Wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of Wikipedia, and it maintains a list of articles every Wikipedia should have. The list concerns basic content by subject: biography, history, geography, society, culture, science, technology, foodstuffs, and mathematics. As for the rest, it is not rare for articles strongly related to a particular language not to have counterparts in another edition. For example, articles about small towns in the United States might only be available in English.

Translated articles represent only a small portion of articles in most editions, in part because fully automated translation of articles is disallowed. Articles available in more than one language may offer "Interwiki links", which link to the counterpart articles in other editions.

Operation

Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia chapters

Wikipedia is hosted and funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization which also operates Wikipedia-related projects such as Wiktionary and Wikibooks. The Wikimedia chapters, local associations of users and supporters of the Wikimedia projects, also participate in the promotion, the development, and the funding of the project.

Software and hardware

The operation of Wikipedia depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MySQL database. The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language, variables, a transclusion system for templates, and URL redirection. MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License and it is used by all Wikimedia projects, as well as many other wiki projects. Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker. Several MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005 a Lucene extension was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to Lucene for searching. Currently Lucene Search 2.1, which is written in Java and based on Lucene library 2.3, is used.

Wikipedia currently runs on dedicated clusters of Linux servers (mainly Ubuntu), with a few OpenSolaris machines for ZFS. As of December 2009, there were 300 in Florida and 44 in Amsterdam. Wikipedia employed a single server until 2004, when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier architecture. In January 2005, the project ran on 39 dedicated servers in Florida. This configuration included a single master database server running MySQL, multiple slave database servers, 21 web servers running the Apache HTTP Server, and seven Squid cache servers.

Wikipedia receives between 25,000 and 60,000 page requests per second, depending on time of day. Page requests are first passed to a front-end layer of Squid caching servers. Further statistics are available based on a publicly available 3-months Wikipedia access trace. Requests that cannot be served from the Squid cache are sent to load-balancing servers running the Linux Virtual Server software, which in turn pass the request to one of the Apache web servers for page rendering from the database. The web servers deliver pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the language editions of Wikipedia. To increase speed further, rendered pages are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. Two larger clusters in the Netherlands and Korea now handle much of Wikipedia's traffic load.

Mobile access

Wikipedia's original medium was for users to read and edit content using any standard web browser through a fixed internet connection. However, Wikipedia content is now also accessible through the mobile web.

Access to Wikipedia from mobile phones was possible as early as 2004, through the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), via the Wapedia service. In June 2007 Wikipedia launched en.mobile.wikipedia.org, an official website for wireless devices. In 2009 a newer mobile service was officially released, located at en.m.wikipedia.org, which caters to more advanced mobile devices such as the iPhone, Android-based devices, or the Palm Pre. Several other methods of mobile access to Wikipedia have emerged (See ). Several devices and applications optimise or enhance the display of Wikipedia content for mobile devices, while some also incorporate additional features such as use of Wikipedia metadata (See ), such as geoinformation.

Impact

Impact on publishing

Some observers claim that Wikipedia is undesirable, because it is an economic threat to publishers of traditional encyclopedias, many of whom may be unable to compete with a product that is essentially free. Nicholas Carr writes in the essay "The amorality of Web 2.0", speaking of the so-called Web 2.0 as a whole: "Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening." Others dispute the notion that Wikipedia, or similar efforts, will entirely displace traditional publications. For instance, Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of ''Wired Magazine'', wrote in ''Nature'' that the "wisdom of the crowds" approach of Wikipedia will not displace top scientific journals with their rigorous peer review process.

Cultural significance

In addition to logistic growth in the number of its articles, Wikipedia has steadily gained status as a general reference website since its inception in 2001. According to Alexa and comScore, Wikipedia is among the ten most visited websites worldwide. The growth of Wikipedia has been fueled by its dominant position in Google search results; about 50% of search engine traffic to Wikipedia comes from Google, a good portion of which is related to academic research. The number of readers of Wikipedia worldwide reached 365 million at the end of 2009. The Pew Internet and American Life project found that one third of US Internet users consulted Wikipedia. In October 2006, the site was estimated to have a hypothetical market value of $580 million if it ran advertisements.

Wikipedia's content has also been used in academic studies, books, conferences, and court cases. The Parliament of Canada's website refers to Wikipedia's article on same-sex marriage in the "related links" section of its "further reading" list for the Civil Marriage Act. The encyclopedia's assertions are increasingly used as a source by organizations such as the U.S. Federal Courts and the World Intellectual Property Organization – though mainly for ''supporting information'' rather than information decisive to a case. Content appearing on Wikipedia has also been cited as a source and referenced in some U.S. intelligence agency reports. In December 2008, the scientific journal RNA Biology launched a new section for descriptions of families of RNA molecules and requires authors who contribute to the section to also submit a draft article on the RNA family for publication in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has also been used as a source in journalism, often without attribution, and several reporters have been dismissed for plagiarizing from Wikipedia. In July 2007 Wikipedia was the focus of a 30-minute documentary on BBC Radio 4 which argued that, with increased usage and awareness, the number of references to Wikipedia in popular culture is such that the term is one of a select band of 21st-century nouns that are so familiar (Google, Facebook, YouTube) that they no longer need explanation and are on a par with such 20th-century terms as Hoovering or Coca-Cola.

On September 28, 2007 Italian politician Franco Grillini raised a parliamentary question with the Minister of Cultural Resources and Activities about the necessity of freedom of panorama. He said that the lack of such freedom forced Wikipedia, "the seventh most consulted website" to forbid all images of modern Italian buildings and art, and claimed this was hugely damaging to tourist revenues.

On September 16, 2007 ''The Washington Post'' reported that Wikipedia had become a focal point in the 2008 U.S. election campaign, saying, "Type a candidate's name into Google, and among the first results is a Wikipedia page, making those entries arguably as important as any ad in defining a candidate. Already, the presidential entries are being edited, dissected and debated countless times each day." An October 2007 Reuters article, titled "Wikipedia page the latest status symbol," reported the recent phenomenon of how having a Wikipedia article vindicates one's notability.

Awards

Wikipedia won two major awards in May 2004. The first was a Golden Nica for Digital Communities of the annual Prix Ars Electronica contest; this came with a €10,000 (£6,588; $12,700) grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival in Austria later that year. The second was a Judges' Webby Award for the "community" category. Wikipedia was also nominated for a "Best Practices" Webby. On January 26, 2007 Wikipedia was also awarded the fourth highest brand ranking by the readers of brandchannel.com, receiving 15% of the votes in answer to the question "Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?"

In September 2008, Wikipedia received Quadriga ''A Mission of Enlightenment'' award of Werkstatt Deutschland along with Boris Tadić, Eckart Höfling, and Peter Gabriel. The award was presented to Jimmy Wales by David Weinberger.

Satire

Many parody Wikipedia's openness and susceptibility to inserted inaccuracies, with characters vandalizing or modifying the online encyclopedia project's articles.

Comedian Stephen Colbert has parodied or referenced Wikipedia on numerous episodes of his show ''The Colbert Report'' and coined the related term ''wikiality'', meaning "together we can create a reality that we all agree on—the reality we just agreed on." Another example can be found in a front-page article in ''The Onion'' in July 2006, with the title "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence." Others draw upon Wikipedia's motto, such as in "The Negotiation," an episode of ''The Office'', where character Michael Scott says "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information." "My Number One Doctor", a 2007 episode of the TV show ''Scrubs'', also lampooned Wikipedia's reliance on editors who edit both scholarly and pop culture articles with a scene in which Dr. Perry Cox reacts to a patient who says that a Wikipedia article indicates that the raw food diet reverses the effects of bone cancer by retorting that the same editor who wrote that article also wrote the ''Battlestar Galactica'' episode guide. In one episode of ''30 Rock'', Pete and Frank add nonsensical information to the Janis Joplin Wikipedia page after telling Jenna that she should look it up to learn more about her, as, since Wikipedia could be edited by anybody, it was the most informative research because they find out more every day.

In July 2009, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a comedy series called ''Bigipedia'', which was set on a website which was a parody of Wikipedia. Some of the sketches were directly inspired by Wikipedia and its articles.

The comedic website CollegeHumor produced a video sketch named "Professor Wikipedia," in which the fictitious Professor Wikipedia instructs a class with a medley of unverifiable and occasionally absurd statements.

Related projects

A number of interactive multimedia encyclopedias incorporating entries written by the public existed long before Wikipedia was founded. The first of these was the 1986 BBC Domesday Project, which included text (entered on BBC Micro computers) and photographs from over 1 million contributors in the UK, and covering the geography, art, and culture of the UK. This was the first interactive multimedia encyclopedia (and was also the first major multimedia document connected through internal links), with the majority of articles being accessible through an interactive map of the UK. The user-interface and part of the content of the Domesday Project were emulated on a website until 2008. One of the most successful early online encyclopedias incorporating entries by the public was h2g2, which was created by Douglas Adams and is run by the BBC. The h2g2 encyclopedia was relatively light-hearted, focusing on articles which were both witty and informative. Both of these projects had similarities with Wikipedia, but neither gave full editorial privileges to public users. A similar non-wiki project, the GNUPedia project, co-existed with Nupedia early in its history; however, it has been retired and its creator, free software figure Richard Stallman, has lent his support to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has also spawned several sister projects, which are also run by the Wikimedia Foundation. The first, "In Memoriam: September 11 Wiki," created in October 2002, detailed the September 11 attacks; this project was closed in October 2006. Wiktionary, a dictionary project, was launched in December 2002; Wikiquote, a collection of quotations, a week after Wikimedia launched, and Wikibooks, a collection of collaboratively written free textbooks and annotated texts. Wikimedia has since started a number of other projects, including Wikimedia Commons, a site devoted to free-knowledge multimedia; Wikinews, for citizen journalism; and Wikiversity, a project for the creation of free learning materials and the provision of online learning activities. Of these, only Commons has had success comparable to that of Wikipedia.

Several languages of Wikipedia also maintain a reference desk, where volunteers answer questions from the general public. According to a study by Pnina Shachaf in the Journal of Documentation, the quality of the Wikipedia reference desk is comparable to a standard library reference desk, with an accuracy of 55%.

Other websites centered on collaborative knowledge base development have drawn inspiration from or inspired Wikipedia. Some, such as Susning.nu, Enciclopedia Libre, Hudong, Baidu Baike, and WikiZnanie likewise employ no formal review process, whereas others use more traditional peer review, such as Encyclopedia of Life, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Scholarpedia, h2g2, and Everything2. The online wiki-based encyclopedia Citizendium was started by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger in an attempt to create an "expert-friendly" Wikipedia.

See also

Democratization of knowledge

Interpedia, an early proposal for a collaborative Internet encyclopedia

List of online encyclopedias

List of wikis

Network effect

US Congressional staff edits to Wikipedia

User-generated content

Wikipedia in culture

Wikipedia Review

QRpedia - multilingual, mobile interface to Wikipedia

Notes

Further reading

Academic studies

Priedhorsky, Reid, Jilin Chen, Shyong (Tony) K. Lam, Katherine Panciera, Loren Terveen, and John Riedl. "Creating, Destroying, and Restoring Value in Wikipedia". Proc. GROUP 2007, doi: 1316624.131663.

(a blog post by the autor)

Books

(See book rev. by Baker, as listed below.) (substantial criticisms of Wikipedia and other web 2.0 projects). Listen to: the NPR interview with A. Keen, Weekend Edition Saturday, June 16, 2007. Sheizaf Rafaeli & Yaron Ariel (2008). "Online motivational factors: Incentives for participation and contribution in Wikipedia." In

Book reviews and other articles

Crovitz, L. Gordon. "Wikipedia's Old-Fashioned Revolution: The online encyclopedia is fast becoming the best." (Originally published in ''Wall Street Journal'' online – 2009-04-06)

Baker, Nicholson. "The Charms of Wikipedia". ''The New York Review of Books'', 2008-03-20. Accessed 2008-12-17. (Book rev. of ''The Missing Manual'', by John Broughton, as listed above.)

Rosenzweig, Roy. Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past. (Originally published in ''Journal of American History'' 93.1 (June 2006): 117–46.)

Learning resources

Wikiversity list of learning resources. (Includes related courses, Web-based seminars, slides, lecture notes, text books, quizzes, glossaries, etc.)

Other media coverage

Is Wikipedia Cracking Up?, The Independent, February 3, 2009

External links

Wikipedia – multilingual portal (contains links to all language editions of the project)

Wikipedia mobile phone portal

Wikipedia topic page at ''The New York Times''

Video of TED Talk by Jimmy Wales on the birth of Wikipedia

Audio of interview with Jimmy Wales about Wikipedia in general on the EconTalk podcast

Wikipedia and why it matters – Larry Sanger's 2002 talk at Stanford University about Wikipedia. video archive and transcript of the talk

10 Wikipedia

, describing an intelligence project utilizing Wikipedia, and how Wikipedia articles could be auto-generated from web content

Category:Collaborative projects Category:Creative Commons-licensed websites Category:Free encyclopedias Category:General encyclopedias Category:Human–computer interaction Category:Hypertext Category:Internet properties established in 2001 Category:Multilingual websites Category:Online encyclopedias Category:Open content projects Category:Scientific revolution Category:Social information processing Category:Virtual communities Category:Web 2.0 Category:Wikimedia projects Category:Wikis

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Name	Jimmy Wales
Birth name	Jimmy Donal Wales
Birth date	August 07, 1966
Birth place	Huntsville, Alabama,U.S.
Other names	Jimbo
Alma mater	Auburn UniversityUniversity of AlabamaIndiana University Bloomington
Occupation	Financial trader (former)Internet entrepreneur
Boards	Wikimedia FoundationCreative CommonsSocialtextSunlight Foundation (advisory board)MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (advisory board)CiviliNation
Title	President of Wikia, Inc. (2004–present)Chairman of Wikimedia Foundation (June 2003 – October 2006)Chairman Emeritus, Wikimedia Foundation (October 2006–present)
Successor	Florence Devouard
Residence	St. Petersburg, Florida,U.S.
Awards	see below
Website	JimmyWales.com }}

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales (; born August 7, 1966) is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company. and according to ''The Atlantic Monthly'' it "found itself positioned as the ''Playboy'' of the Internet". The Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful, however.

Nupedia and the origins of Wikipedia

Though Bomis had struggled to make money, it provided Wales with the funding to pursue his greater passion, an online encyclopedia. While moderating an online discussion group devoted to the philosophy of Objectivism in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered Larry Sanger, a skeptic of the philosophy. The two had engaged in detailed debate on the subject on Wales' list and then on Sanger's, eventually meeting offline to continue the debate and becoming friends. Years later, after deciding to pursue his encyclopedia project and seeking a credentialed academic to lead it, Wales hired Sanger—who at that time was a doctoral student in philosophy at Ohio State University—to be its editor-in-chief, and in March 2000, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, was launched. The intent behind Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a variety of topics, and to sell advertising alongside the entries in order to make profit. The project was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.

In an October 2009 speech, Wales recollects attempting to write a Nupedia article on Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert C. Merton, but being too intimidated to submit his first draft to the prestigious finance professors who were to peer review it, even though he had published a paper on Option Pricing Theory and was comfortable with the subject matter. Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work.

In January 2001, Sanger was introduced to the concept of a wiki by extreme programming enthusiast Ben Kovitz after explaining to Kovitz the slow pace of growth Nupedia endured as a result of its onerous submission process. Kovitz suggested that adopting the wiki model would allow editors to contribute simultaneously and incrementally throughout the project, thus breaking Nupedia's bottleneck. Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001. The wiki was initially intended as a collaborative project for the public to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia's expert volunteers. The majority of Nupedia’s experts, however, wanted nothing to do with this project, fearing that mixing amateur content with professionally researched and edited material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia’s information and damage the credibility of the encyclopedia. Thus the wiki project, dubbed "Wikipedia" by Sanger, went live at a separate domain five days after its creation.

Wikipedia

While Sanger saw Wikipedia primarily as a tool to aid Nupedia development, Wales felt that Wikipedia might have the potential to become the truly collaborative, open effort of knowledge building he dreamed of. Initially, neither Sanger nor Wales knew what to expect from the Wikipedia initiative. Wales feared that at worst, it might produce "complete rubbish". To the surprise of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launching the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a small collective of editors had formed. Many of the early contributors to the site were familiar with the model of the free culture movement, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the open-source movement. Wales has said that he was initially so worried with the concept of open editing, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awake during the night and monitor what was being added. Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project.

Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project. The broader idea he ascribes to Wales, remarking in a 2005 memoir for Slashdot that "the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis", adding, "the actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on." Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002; Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia on March 1 of that year. In the early years, Wales had supplied the financial backing for the project, and entertained the notion of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger's departure and plans for a nonprofit foundation were advanced instead.

Controversy

Wales has asserted that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia, and has publicly disputed Sanger’s designation as a co-founder. Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders at least as early as September 2001 by ''The New York Times'' and as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in January 2002. In August of that year, Wales identified himself as "co-founder" of Wikipedia.

Thought and influences

Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core", referring to the philosophy developed by writer Ayn Rand in the mid-20th century emphasizing reason, individualism, and capitalism. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel ''The Fountainhead'' while an undergraduate, and in 1992 founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy". Though he has stated that the philosophy "colours everything I do and think", he has said "I think I do a better job—than a lot of people who self-identify as Objectivists—of not pushing my point of view on other people." When asked by Brian Lamb about Rand’s influence on him in his appearance on C-SPAN's ''Q&A;'' in September 2005, Wales cited integrity and "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to having a political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles. An interview with Wales served as the cover feature of the June 2007 issue of the libertarian magazine ''Reason''. In that profile, he described his political views as "center-right".

The January/February 2006 issue of ''Maximum PC'' reported that Wales had refused to comply with a request from the People's Republic of China to censor "politically sensitive" articles in Wikipedia. Other big business Internet companies such as Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft had already yielded to Chinese government pressure. Wales let it be known that he would rather see companies such as Google follow suit on Wikipedia's policy of freedom of information. In 2010, he criticized whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its editor in chief Julian Assange, saying that their publication of Afghan war documents "could be enough to get someone killed," and he expressed irritation at their use of the name "wiki": "What they're doing is not really a wiki. The essence of wiki is a collaborative editing...".

Wales cites Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek’s essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society”, which he read as an undergraduate, as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project". Hayek argued that information is decentralised – that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively – and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge rather than by a central authority. Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source movement (which advocated that software be free and distributed). He was moved in particular by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", an essay and later book by one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond, which "opened [his] eyes to the possibilities of mass collaboration." From his background in finance and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in game theory and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity, a fascination to which he credits enabling much of his effort with Wikipedia. He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating "[t]hat participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".

Personal life

Wales has been married twice, and has a daughter. At the age of 20, Wales married Pam, a co-worker at a grocery-store in Alabama. He met his second wife, Christine Rohan, through a friend in Chicago while she was working as a steel trader for Mitsubishi. The couple were married in Monroe County, Florida in March 1997, and had a daughter before separating. Wales moved to San Diego in 1998, and after being dissuaded by the housing market there, relocated in 2002 to St. Petersburg, Florida, where he lived .

Wales had a brief relationship with Canadian conservative columnist Rachel Marsden in 2008 that began after Marsden contacted Wales about her Wikipedia biography. After accusations that Wales' relationship constituted a conflict of interest, Wales stated that there had been a relationship but that it was over and claimed that it had not influenced any matters on Wikipedia, a claim which was disputed by Marsden.

In February 2011, Wales was reported by ''The Guardian'' to have been engaged to Kate Garvey, Tony Blair's former diary secretary, whom he met in Davos, Switzerland.

Honors, awards and positions

Wales is a member of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, the Board of Directors at Creative Commons, Socialtext, and Hunch.com, and former co-chair of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East 2008.

Wales was listed in the "Scientists & Thinkers" section of the Time 100 in 2006 and number 12 in ''Forbes'' "The Web Celebs 25". Wales has also given a lecture in the Stuart Regen Visionary series at New Museum which "honors special individuals who have made major contributions to art and culture, and are actively imagining a better future" and by the World Economic Forum as one of the "Young Global Leaders" of 2007. In April 2011, Wales served on the jury of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Wales has received a Pioneer Award, the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize in 2011, the Monaco Media Prize, the 2009 Nokia Foundation annual award, the Business Process Award at the 7th Annual Innovation Awards and Summit by ''The Economist'', the 2008 Global Brand Icon of the Year Award, and on behalf of the Wikimedia project the Quadriga award of Werkstatt Deutschland for ''A Mission of Enlightenment''.

Wales has also received honorary degrees from Knox College, Amherst College, Stevenson University, Argentina's Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21, and Russia's MIREA University.

Published work

References

External links

Jimmy Wales, Wales' official blog

' Wikipedia userpage , Wales' role in the English Wikipedia as described by its editors ;Videos

Audio of interview with Wales about Wikipedia on EconTalk podcast, March 2009

, April 9, 2009 Jimmy Wales interviewed by Raju Narisetti for ''The Washington Post'' On Leadership series, December 1, 2009

Atlantic Community: The Wiki Way to Create Change in Global Politics Jimmy Wales is interviewed by Joerg Wolf (Atlantic Community). He advocates for the importance of think-tanks in finding solutions to global problems, February 23, 2010

Category:1966 births Category:Living people Category:American bloggers Category:American businesspeople Category:American libertarians Category:Ashoka USA Fellows-2010 Category:Auburn University alumni Category:Berkman Fellows Category:History of Wikipedia Category:Indiana University alumni Category:Objectivists Category:People from Huntsville, Alabama Category:People from St. Petersburg, Florida Category:Recipients of the Gottlieb Duttweiler Prize Category:University of Alabama alumni Category:WEF YGL honorees Category:Wikia Category:Wikimedia Foundation Category:Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees members

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name	Eddie Izzard
birth name	Edward John Izzard
birth date	February 07, 1962
birth place	Colony of Aden, Aden Protectorate (now Aden, Yemen)
medium	Stand-up, Television, Film, Stage
nationality	British
active	1987–present
genre	Improvisational comedy,Observational comedy
subject	World history, Celebrities, Religion, Language, Sex
influences	Monty Python, Billy Connolly, Lenny Bruce, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Spike Milligan
influenced	Harry Hill, Dara Ó Briain, Demetri Martin, Hal Sparks
notable work	''Live at the Ambassadors'' ''Definite Article'' ''Dress to Kill'' ''Glorious'' ''Circle'' ''Lenny Bruce'' in ''Lenny'' ''Wayne Malloy/Doug Rich'' in ''The Riches'' ''Roman Nagel'' in ''Ocean's Thirteen'' ''Erich Fellgiebel'' in ''Valkyrie'' ''Mr. Kite'' in ''Across the Universe''
website	eddieizzard.com

}}

Edward John "Eddie" Izzard (born 7 February 1962) is an English stand-up comedian and actor. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime.

Izzard's works include stand-up sets ''Unrepeatable'', ''Definite Article'', ''Glorious'', ''Dress to Kill'', ''Circle'', ''Sexie'' and ''Stripped''. He had a starring role in the television series ''The Riches'' as Wayne Malloy and has appeared in many motion pictures such as ''Ocean's Twelve'', ''Ocean's Thirteen'', ''Mystery Men'', ''The Cat's Meow'', ''Across the Universe'', The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, and ''Valkyrie''.

He has cited his main comedy role model as Monty Python, and John Cleese once referred to him as the "Lost Python". In 2009, he completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief in spite of having no prior history of long distance running.

He is also known for his transvestism.

Early life

Izzard was born in Aden, Yemen, then the Colony of Aden in the Aden Protectorate. He was the younger son of British parents Dorothy Ella, a midwife and nurse, and Harold John Izzard, an accountant who was working in Aden with British Petroleum. A year after his birth, the family moved to Bangor in Northern Ireland and lived there until he was five. The family then moved to Skewen in South Wales where his mother died of cancer when Izzard was six and his brother Mark was eight. Following his mother's death, Izzard attended boarding schools: St John's School in Porthcawl, St. Bede's Preparatory School, and Eastbourne College.

Career

Early career

Izzard began to toy with comedy at the University of Sheffield with partner and student friend Rob Ballard. After leaving his accountancy degree course, he and Ballard took their act to the streets, often in Covent Garden. After his split with Ballard, Izzard spent a great deal of the early 1980s working as a street performer in Europe and the United States. He then moved his act into the stand-up comedy venues of Britain. His first gig was at the Banana Cabaret in Balham, London. In 1987, he made his first stage appearance at The Comedy Store, London. In 1989, he met actress Sarah Townsend who was running a Fringe venue at the Edinburgh Festival. He refined his material throughout the 1980s, and in the early 1990s he finally began earning some measure of recognition through his improvisation, in part at his own club "Raging Bull" in Soho.

Success as a comedian

In 1991, Izzard got a spot on the Fry and Laurie produced AIDS benefit ''Hysteria 3,'' where he did his "Wolves" sketch, which broke him into the mainstream comedy circuit and television. His resultant stand-up work brought him British Comedy Awards in 1993 (for ''Live at the Ambassadors''), a part in "Filth" which was a stand up presentation by left-wing sympathetic comedians in aid of raising money for the Terence Higgins Trust in 1994, and 1996 (for ''Definite Article'').

In 1996, he got a part in his first United States-produced film, ''The Secret Agent,'' where he met and befriended Robin Williams. Williams already knew of Izzard's act, and discussed bringing his act to the United States. As a result, Izzard took ''Definite Article'' on a successful stint in New York City in the same year, and as a support act to Williams took ''Dress to Kill'' to San Francisco in 1998. His U.S. breakthrough came in 1999, when ''Dress to Kill'' was shown on the American television channel HBO, about a year or so after he performed the show on tour in the USA, UK and France. Suddenly, America was aware of Izzard, and the show went on to earn him two Emmy Awards in 2000 (for performance and writing).

In 1999, after complaints that his act recycled jokes appearing on his DVDs, the BBC's consumer programme ''Watchdog'' investigated Izzard's live act. Izzard explained that like most comedy performers, he used some of his most successful routines in each show. Nonetheless, Izzard was issued a warning by the Department of Trade and Industry. Since then, Izzard has rarely performed his stand-up act on television, saying that it uses up material at too high a rate, whereas stage material can be continually re-used in front of different audiences for several months.

In 2005, Izzard used his rambling style to provide the voice-over for the British government's television advertisements promoting recycling. The tagline of the ads was "Recycle. The possibilities are endless!" Izzard also performed on stage with Scottish musician Midge Ure at Live8 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He played the piano on the song "Vienna".

In January 2006, the U.S. television network FX announced the production of a new drama series called ''The Riches'' (formerly ''Low Life''). Izzard and British actress Minnie Driver star as a married couple, Wayne and Dahlia Malloy, who have been part of a caravan of con-artist Irish travellers swindling their way across the U.S. with their children. After finding another family killed in a car accident, the Malloys assume their identities and start a new life as law-abiding suburbanites in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The youngest son has shown a preference for wearing girls' clothing, leading to some speculation that the role was based upon Izzard's experiences. Izzard has stated in several interviews that the character of Sam had been given transvestite tendencies long before he was cast as Wayne Malloy, but he has contributed his perspective to keep the character believable.

Theatrical, TV and film appearances

In 1994, Izzard made his West End drama debut as the lead in the world premiere of David Mamet's ''The Cryptogram'' with Lindsay Duncan, in the production at London's Comedy Theatre. The success of that role led to his second starring role in David Beaird's black comedy ''900 Oneonta''. In 1995, he portrayed the title character in Christopher Marlowe's ''Edward II''.

In 1998 Izzard appeared briefly on stage with the Monty Python team in ''The American Film Institute's Tribute to Monty Python'' (also referred to as ''Monty Python Live at Aspen''). He walked on stage with the five surviving Pythons and he was summarily escorted off by Eric Idle and Michael Palin as he attempted to participate in a discussion about how the group got together.

Izzard portrayed comedian Lenny Bruce in the 1999 production of Julian Barry's 1971 play ''Lenny''. In 2001, he replaced Clive Owen in Peter Nichols' 1967 play ''A Day in the Death of Joe Egg'' at the Comedy Theatre. Izzard and Victoria Hamilton then repeated their lead roles when the show was brought to Broadway in 2003, with The Roundabout Theatre Company production. The revival received four Tony Award nominations including Best Revival of a Play, Best Leading Actor and Actress for its stars Izzard and Hamilton in their Broadway debuts, and Best Direction for Laurence Boswell. In June 2010, Izzard replaced James Spader in the role of Jack Lawson in David Mamet's play ''Race'' on Broadway.

Izzard has appeared in numerous films, starting with 1996's ''The Secret Agent''. He has appeared as several real-life individuals, including Charlie Chaplin in ''The Cat's Meow'', actor Gustav von Wangenheim in ''Shadow of the Vampire'' and General Erich Fellgiebel in ''Valkyrie''. Other roles have included Mr. Kite in ''Across the Universe'', Lussurioso in ''Revengers Tragedy'' and criminal expert Roman Nagel in ''Ocean's Twelve'' and ''Ocean's Thirteen''. Voice work has included the titular It in ''Five Children and It'', Nigel in ''The Wild'' and the mouse warrior Reepicheep in ''The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian.'' He said in 2009 that he would not be reprising his role as Reepicheep and the role was ultimately played by Simon Pegg in ''The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader''.

Izzard appeared in the BBC science fiction miniseries ''The Day of the Triffids'' based on the 1951 novel, alongside Jason Priestley, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Dougray Scott and Brian Cox. He played Dr. Hatteras, a skeptical psychology professor, in the Showtime series ''United States of Tara''.

Comic style

Izzard's style is heavily influenced by Monty Python, especially in his use of a stream-of-consciousness delivery that jumps between topics as he free associates on stage. He does not generally work from a script, owing to his dyslexia. Instead, he interrupts himself with new joke ideas, the characters he portrays turn into other characters, and he nonchalantly leaps from topic to topic. This often results in brief pauses in the routine which he fills with 'so, yeah', and other verbal tics that have become his trademarks. Thinking aloud is also part of Izzard's ongoing attempt to make the process of writing the show itself part of the humour. As he put it in a 2004 interview with ''The Guardian'', "It's the oral tradition. Human beings have been doing it for thousands of years". He frequently notes the reaction to a joke midstream by pretending to write on his hand ("Should be funnier"; "Lost them there"; "They didn't believe me"; "They didn't follow, never do that again", "never link those two[references] together ever again.") He asks the audience questions and verbally engages with hecklers.

Among Izzard's comic talents are mimicry and mime. He portrays God as an authority figure using the voice of James Mason and casts Sean Connery as Noah; these impersonations appear in many of his performances. Izzard also imitates activities such as sawing wood, vacuum cleaning, and mowing the lawn, anthropomorphising the machines with accents and personalities. Successful impressions, such as his Scottish clarinet teacher, Mrs. Badcrumble, become running gags which recur in different shows. He tackles topics both contemporary and historic, including frequent re-imaginings of historical events which result in scenes like 'Cake or Death: Church of England runs the Inquisition', or 'Jesus Ministers to the Dinosaurs'.

When asked about his comedy style by George Stroumboulopoulos, host of CBC Television's talk show, ''The Hour'', Izzard described his use of history by saying,

"I just talk complete bullshit. The history, the politics, I noticed that no one was using history, so there's a lot of history lying about the place, and it's all free, and it's on Wikipedia! You know, I use Wikipedia like a crazy idiot, now. Then I take all this stuff, and I regurgitate it into a weird angle".

In 2008, in his ''Stripped'' tour, Izzard began using Wikipedia itself as part of his stand-up act, reading from a live copy of an article and mocking Wikipedia's self-referential editorial style.

Traditionally, Izzard has focused on the creative possibilities of thinking through absurd situations in real time. He also turns much of the attention on himself and his personality, including his cross-dressing ("It is my manifest destiny to wear a dress on all seven continents"). Contemporary pop culture (Harry Potter, ''Star Wars'', etc.) is also a frequent subject, brought up both to critique its weaknesses and to enhance his anecdotes.

His bent towards the surreal even went so far as to produce a sitcom called Cows in 1997 for Channel 4, a live action comedy with actors dressed in cowsuits.

Transvestism

Izzard started to freely talk about his transvestism in venues like Edinburgh Festival as early as 1992. In his show, ''Dress to Kill'', Izzard describes himself as an "executive", "action" and "professional" transvestite, as "a male tomboy" rather than a drag queen or a "weirdo" transvestite (he cites J. Edgar Hoover and Hermann Göring as examples of the latter). He regularly cross-dresses both on and off stage and makes it clear that cross-dressing is, for him, neither a part of his performance nor a sexual fetish. He remarks in his show ''Unrepeatable'', "Women wear what they want and so do I". According to Izzard, "Most transvestites fancy women". He dismisses claims that he is a male homosexual, saying he is "a straight transvestite or a male lesbian". He has also described himself as "a lesbian trapped in a man's body", transgender, and "a complete boy plus half a girl".

Activism

Izzard has engaged in campaigning work. He is especially well-known as a pro-European Union campaigner supporting the further integration of the UK into the EU. In May 2005 he appeared on the BBC's political debate show ''Question Time'', describing himself as a 'British-European', comparing this with other cultural identities such as 'African-American'. As part of his integration campaigning, he was one of the first people to spend a euro in London. This pan-European approach has influenced his work: he regularly performs in French, in which he is fluent, and occasionally in German, in addition to English. In July 2003, Izzard received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England for "pro-Europe campaigning", "his contribution to promoting modern languages and tolerance of other cultures and lifestyles" and for having "transcended national barriers" with his humour.

He has also campaigned unsuccessfully against the closure of the departments of Drama and Languages, Linguistics and Translation at the University of East Anglia, although the department of Drama was later reprieved. In 1998, Izzard was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the Labour Party. He appeared in a party political broadcast for the Labour Party in the run up to the 2005 general election. He donated nearly £10,000 to the party in 2008, appeared again in a party political broadcast for the 2009 European election and again in a 2010 election video entitled 'Brilliant Britain'. Izzard appeared in literature to support changing the British electoral system from first-past-the-post to alternative vote for electing Members of Parliament to the House of Commons in the Alternative Vote referendum in 2011.

On 20 July 2006, he received an honorary doctorate in Letters from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sheffield, where he spent one year on an Accounting and Financial Management course in the early 80s. During his time at the University he established the now-defunct Alternative Productions Society in the Union of Students with the aim of promoting fringe-based arts. On 4 March 2010 he was elected as the Honorary President of the University of Sheffield Union of Students.

On 7 July 2007, Izzard was one of the presenters from the London leg of Live Earth. During an interview for the 2008 Stripped tour, Izzard spoke about becoming more active in European politics as well as running for political office in Europe within the next decade. Izzard added a stop in New Orleans during his 2008 ''Stripped'' tour. All proceeds from the performance of 23 June 2008 were donated to Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans.

Marathons

On 27 July 2009, with only 5 weeks' training and no significant prior history of running, Izzard began seven weeks of back-to-back marathon runs (with Sundays off) across the UK to raise money for Sport Relief. He ran from London to Cardiff, to Belfast, to Edinburgh, and back to London carrying flags of England, Scotland or Wales depending on which country he was in, and carried a self-designed green flag bearing a white dove when in Northern Ireland. The blog Eddie Iz Running was a document of his road running marathon, in which he ran 43 marathons in 51 days. He completed the run on 15 September 2009, after having run at least 27 miles each day, 6 days a week for 7 weeks straight, covering more than 1,100 miles across the UK.Izzard received a special award at BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2009 for his achievements.

Izzard ran his final marathon in five hours and 30 seconds, narrowly outside his projected time. However, had he not stopped and waited 20 minutes for his film crew to catch up with him he could have finished well under his target time. In March 2010, Izzard took part in the Sport Relief Mile event.

Following the completion of the marathon runs, Izzard has started training to take part in an Ironman Triathlon, saying he has become fascinated with fitness "because there's no point in throwing away all that training".

Personal life

During his ''Stripped'' tour, Izzard said he realised he was an atheist. "I was warming the material up in New York, where one night, literally on stage, I realised I didn’t believe in God at all. I just didn’t think there was anyone upstairs."

He keeps his romantic life private, saying one of the reasons is due to the wishes of his companions not wanting to become content for his show. Izzard dated Sarah Townsend, the director of the documentary ''Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story'', whom he first met while she was running a Fringe venue at the Edinburgh Festival in 1989.

Izzard speaks French and has performed stand up in French during his shows. He also speaks German and used it in the 2001 film ''All the Queen's Men''.

Critical reception

On 18 March 2007, Izzard was listed as number 3 of the 100 Greatest British National Comedians (just behind Peter Kay at number 2 and Billy Connolly at number 1) as part of British television station Channel 4's ongoing ''100 Greatest...'', series. However in the 2010 updated version of the list he was ranked 5th In a 2005 poll to find ''The Comedian's Comedian'', Izzard was voted amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. He was number 75 in Comedy Central's ''100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time''.

During the 1999 television special ''It's... the Monty Python Story'', which Izzard hosted, John Cleese said Izzard was the "Lost Python"; Izzard furthered that idea via his substitution for Graham Chapman in public performance of Python material with the rest of the original members of the troupe. He also made a cameo appearance in the Python reunion interview ''Monty Python Live At Aspen''.

In 2008, Izzard received the James Joyce Award of the Literary and Historical Society of UCD, Dublin, Ireland. In March 2010, the Students Union of the University of Sheffield overwhelmingly elected him their honorary President.

Discography and appearances

Stand-up

''Live at the Ambassadors'' (15 November 1993)

''Unrepeatable'' (14 March 1994)

''Definite Article'' (21 October 1996)

''Glorious'' (17 November 1997)

''Dress to Kill'' (9 November 1998)

''Circle'' (18 November 2002)

''Sexie'' (26 November 2003)

''Stripped'' (23 November 2009)

Stage

''900 Oneonta'' (1994)

''The Cryptogram'' (1994)

''Edward II'' (1995)

''Lenny'' (1999)

''A Day in the Death of Joe Egg'' (2001–2002, 2003)

''Trumbo'' (2003)

''Race'' (2010)

Filmography

''The Oncoming Storm'' (1995) as Luthor Keeton

''The Secret Agent'' (1996) as Vladimir

''Velvet Goldmine'' (1998) as Jerry Devine

''The Avengers'' (1998) as Bailey

''Mystery Men'' (1999) as Tony P

''The Criminal'' (1999) as Peter Hume

''Circus'' (2000) as Troy

''Shadow of the Vampire'' (2000) as Gustav von Wangenheim

''The Cat's Meow'' (2001) as Charlie Chaplin

''All the Queen's Men'' (2001) as Tony Parker

''Revengers Tragedy'' (2002) as Lussurioso

''Alien Invasion'' (2003) as Brik

''Blueberry'' aka ''Renegade'' (2004) as Prosit

''Five Children and It'' (2004) as It (voice)

''Romance & Cigarettes'' (2004) as Gene Vincent

''Ocean's Twelve'' (2004) as Roman Nagel

''The Aristocrats'' (2005) as Himself

''The Wild'' (2006) as Nigel (voice)

''My Super Ex-Girlfriend'' (2006) as Professor Bedlam

''Ocean's Thirteen'' (2007) as Roman Nagel

''Across the Universe'' (2007) as Mr. Kite

''The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian'' (2008) as Reepicheep (voice)

''Igor'' (2008) as Dr. Schadenfreude (voice)

''Valkyrie'' (2008) as Erich Fellgiebel

''Rage'' (2009) as Tiny Diamonds

''Every Day'' (2009) as Garrett

''The Other Side'' (2009) as Dean Bellamy

''Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story'' (2009) as Himself

''Cars 2'' (2011) as Miles Axelrod

''Snow White and the Huntsman'' (2012) as Tiberius

TV appearances

''Barf Bites Back (Amnesty International Gala)'' (1991) – ITV

''Open Fire'' (1994)

''Have I Got News for You'' (1994, 1995 and 1996) – BBC Two

''Aristophanes: The Gods are Laughing'' (1995)

''Whose Line Is It Anyway?'' (1995)

''Tales from the Crypt'' (1996) – HBO

''Clive Anderson Talks Back'' (1996)

''Inspector Derrick'' (1997)

''Channel Izzard'' (1997)

''The Roseanne Show'' (1998)

''Rex the Runt'' (1998) – BBC

''Shooting Stars'' (1998) – BBC

''Parkinson'' (3 times)

''Dennis Miller Live'' (1999) – HBO

''Python Night – 30 Years of Monty Python'' (1999) – BBC

''Good News Week'' (2000) – Network 10

''Mongrel Nation'' (2002) – Discovery Channel

''The Caroline Rhea Show'' (2002)

''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'' (2002, 2004 and 2007)

''The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien'' (2009)

''40'' (2003) – Channel 4

''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' (2003, 2008) NBC

''QI'' (Unaired pilot- 2002 or 2003, and 2010)

''Top Gear'' (2004) – BBC Two

''Last Call with Carson Daly'' (2005)

''The Sharon Osbourne Show'' (2006)

''Late Show with David Letterman'' (6 times)

''Late Late show with Craig Kilborn'' (4 times)

''The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson'' (2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011)

''The Henry Rollins Show'' (2006)

''The Paul O'Grady Show'' (2009)

''The Secret Policeman's Ball'' (2006)

''Kitchen'' (2007) – five

''Comedy Cuts'' (interview) (2007)

''The Hour'' (2007)

''Friday Night with Jonathan Ross'' (2007 and 2009)

''The Daily Show'' (2000, 2003 and 2007)

''The Riches'' (2007–2008)

''The Secret Policeman's Ball'' (2008)

''The Graham Norton Show'' (2008)

''Late Night with Jimmy Fallon'' (2009)

''Kevin Pollak's Chat Show'' (2009)

''BBC Sports Personality of the Year'' (2009 award winner)

''The Day of the Triffids'' (2009)

''Marathon Man'' (2010)

''The Simpsons'' episode ''To Surveil with Love'' (2010)

''Chelsea Lately'' (2010)

''United States of Tara'' (2011)

''Alan Carr: Chatty Man'' (2011)

Video game

''102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue'' – Sgt. Tibbs the Cat (voice)

Future projects

Eddie Izzard said in a personal appearance (for his biopic ''Believe'') that he is currently putting together a script for a movie as a conclusion to ''The Riches''. He said the plan is to "pick up exactly where we left off, and we think we're going to make a film of the next bit". As of 24 May 2010 there are no indications that this film will ever be made, leaving ''The Riches'' without a conclusion.

He has announced for future tours that a dollar out of each ticket sale will be appropriated to supplying Africa with contraceptives and other means of sexual protection.

See also

Cross-dressing in film and television

References

External links

Official web site

BBC America – Eddie Izzard

Interview with Izzard – ''The Observer'', 3 October 2004

''It's stupid and I love it – the Goon Show and me'' – ''The Guardian'', 14 February 2005.

Izzard interviewed by Bono – ''The Independent'', 16 May 2006

Venus Zine Staff Picks: Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill

Eddie Izzard Category:1962 births Category:People from Aden Category:Drama Desk Award winners Category:English atheists Category:English buskers Category:English comedians Category:English film actors Category:English voice actors Category:English television actors Category:English stand-up comedians Category:Cross-dressers Category:Living people Category:Old Eastbournians Category:Emmy Award winners Category:People educated at Oakleigh House School

ar:إدي آيزارد de:Eddie Izzard es:Eddie Izzard fa:ادی ایزارد fr:Eddie Izzard gv:Eddie Izzard id:Eddie Izzard it:Eddie Izzard he:אדי איזרד hu:Eddie Izzard nl:Eddie Izzard ja:エディー・イザード no:Eddie Izzard nn:Eddie Izzard pl:Eddie Izzard ru:Иззард, Эдди simple:Eddie Izzard fi:Eddie Izzard sv:Eddie Izzard tr:Eddie Izzard

name	10 Years
background	group_or_band
origin	Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
genre	Alternative metal, post-grunge
years active	1999–present
label	Universal Records
website	www.10yearsmusic.com
current members	Jesse HasekRyan "Tater" JohnsonLewis "Big Lew" CosbyBrian Vodinh
past members	Mike UnderdownAndy ParksMatt Wantland }}

10 Years is an American alternative metal band, formed in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1999.

History

Early Years, ''Into the Half Moon'' (1999–2001)

10 Years was initially formed in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1999 with singer Mike Underdown, drummer Brian Vodinh, bassist Lewis Cosby, and guitarists Ryan "Tater" Johnson (also of The American Plague) and Matt Wantland. In 2001, Cosby left and the band recruited Andy Parks on bass. They independently recorded ''Into the Half Moon'' the same year.

''Killing All That Holds You'', ''The Autumn Effect'' (2002–2006)

Lead vocalist Mike Underdown left the band to pursue a career in acting. 10 Years soon recruited current vocalist Jesse Hasek from another local band. In 2002, Parks decided to leave the band and Cosby returned. The band then released their independent album ''Killing All That Holds You'' in 2004.

10 Years was then signed to Universal Records in 2005 and released their major label debut, ''The Autumn Effect'' on August 16, 2005 with the songs "Wasteland" and "Through the Iris" picking up regional radio play. Their first single, "Wasteland" spent over 12 months on the rock charts, finally reaching #1 at active rock radio in December 2005.

That same summer, the band toured with Disturbed and Ill Niño. In the fall of 2005, they toured with Breaking Benjamin and Smile Empty Soul, then followed up with the Masters of Horror tour with Mudvayne and Sevendust. They opened for Korn and Mudvayne on Korn's ''See You on the Other Side'' tour. They also toured with Korn and Deftones on the Family Values Tour, which started in late July 2006.

In mid February 2006, "Wasteland" reached #1 on the ''Billboard'' Alternative Songs chart. "Wasteland" has been certified Gold by the RIAA.

In mid-2006, the band toured Australia in a lineup which included Hatebreed, Disturbed and Korn.

Their first music video, "Wasteland", addresses the social problem of human rights as well as addiction around the world. The video received a nomination for Best Direction and Best Art Direction at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, but did not win either.

On March 27, 2006, an EP was released on iTunes containing acoustic versions of "Wasteland" and other tracks from ''The Autumn Effect''.

''Division'' (2006–2008)

On November 19, 2006, 10 Years unveiled and confirmed the title "Division" for their second album. The band would begin recording Division in late June 2007 after spending the better part of a year writing.

Lewis told in an interview that the album is "so different from the first one [The Autumn Effect], but it's still 10 Years," and, "It just sounds like [the songs] would be from a totally different album, which was, you know, the goal." It was also revealed that the track titled "Focus" was co-written with Stone Temple Pilots and former Army of Anyone guitarist Dean DeLeo.

On May 21, 2007 a demo song titled "All Your Lies" from Division was released onto their MySpace along with a post stating the band had chosen producer Rick Parasher to produce the new album. On September 7, the band announced on their MySpace that the album was finished and would be released in 2008, following a tour with Dir En Grey, Sevendust, Operator, Thousand Foot Krutch and Chevelle.

On January 29, 2008, "Beautiful," the new single from Division, was released to iTunes and a snippet was also posted on the band's MySpace page. ''Division'' was released on May 13, 2008 after being pushed back due to finalization of the album's artwork.

10 Years was featured on the Revolution Stage of Linkin Park's Summer Projekt Revolution 2008 tour with Atreyu, Hawthorne Heights and Armor For Sleep.

They went on tour with Mudvayne until mid December 2008.

''Feeding the Wolves'' (2009–present)

10 Years announced that their upcoming third major label album would be entitled ''Feeding the Wolves''. The album was produced by Grammy-nominated producer Howard Benson and mixed by Chris "Lord" Alge. The band has mentioned the album is of their heaviest material to date and "very similar to some of their early songs."

Throughout the first half of 2010, the band went back and forth between putting on live shows and working in the studio. Before the album was released, the band debuted new songs at live performances such as "Dead in the Water", "Now is the Time", and the new album's first single "Shoot It Out".

On June 12, 2010, "Shoot It Out" was featured on Sirius/XM Radio. The track was released to radio later that month, and was made available for download on iTunes July 6. ''Feeding the Wolves'' was released on August 31, 2010.

To promote the album's release, the band opened Shinedown's 2010 Carnival of Madness summer tour alongside Chevelle, Puddle of Mudd, and Sevendust. In the fall they joined Sevendust again on the Hard Drive Live tour with support from Since October and Anew Revolution.

In December, the band went on a mini-headline tour, where they played some older songs that they had not played in some time. February 2011, their new single "Fix Me" releases to radio while they headline a spring tour with Hollywood Undead.

On June 17 and 18 the band shot a music video for "Fix Me" in Columbus, Ohio with production company Thunder Down Country. The video was released via YouTube on August 9, 2011.

Band members

Current

Jesse Hasek – Vocals (2002–present)

Ryan "Tater" Johnson – Guitar, Backing Vocals (1999–present)

Lewis Cosby – Bass (1999–present)

Brian Vodinh – Guitar, Backing Vocals (2009–present); Drums (1999–2009)

Matt Brown – Drums (2010–present)

Live

Sam Anderson – Drums (2010)

Kyle Mayer – Drums (2010)

Former

Mike Underdown – Vocals (1999–2001)

Matt Wantland – Guitar (1999–2009)

Discography

Studio albums

Year	Album details	Peak chart positions
		!style="width:3em;font-size:75%"	!style="width:3em;font-size:75%"
2001	''Into the Half Moon''	* Released: 2001	Compact Disc>CD
2004	''Killing All That Holds You''	* Released: 2004	Universal Records>Universal	* Format: CD
2005	''The Autumn Effect''	* Released: August 16, 2005	* Label: Universal Republic	* Format: CD
2008		* Released: May 13, 2008	* Label: Universal Republic	* Format: CD
2010		* Released: August 31, 2010	* Label: Universal Republic	* Format: CD

Extended plays

2006: ''Acoustic EP''

Singles

Year	Title	Peak chart positions	Album
!style="width:3em;font-size:75%"	!style="width:3em;font-size:75%"	!style="width:3em;font-size:75%"
2005
	"Through the Iris"
"Waking Up"
2009	"Actions & Motives"
2010	"Shoot It Out"
2011	"Fix Me"

References

External links

Official Site

Category:American post-grunge musical groups Category:Musical groups from Knoxville, Tennessee Category:Musical groups established in 1999 Category:Rock music groups from Tennessee Category:Musical quartets

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