- published: 18 Jan 2012
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Wikipedia (i/ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə/ or i/ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ WIK-i-PEE-dee-ə) is a free, collaboratively edited and multilingual Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 22 million articles (over 0 million in English alone) 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 100,000 regularly active contributors. As of June 2012, there are editions of Wikipedia in 285 languages. It has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, ranking sixth globally among all websites on Alexa and having an estimated 365 million readers worldwide. It is estimated that Wikipedia receives 2.7 billion monthly pageviews from the United States alone.
Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Sanger coined the name Wikipedia, which is a portmanteau of wiki (a type of collaborative website, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's departure from the expert-driven style of encyclopedia building and the presence of a large body of unacademic content have received extensive attention in print media. In its 2006 Person of the Year article, Time magazine recognized the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction by millions of people around the world. It cited Wikipedia as an example, in addition to YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook. Wikipedia has also been praised as a news source 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.
Merge, merging, or merger may refer to:
Subramanian Swamy (born 15 September 1939 in Chennai, India sometimes spelt Subramaniam Swamy) is an Indian politician, academician and an economist. He is the President of the Janata Party of India. He also presently serves as chairman of the SCMS Board of Governors of the SCMS Group of Educational Institutions in Kerala.
Swamy has previously served as member of the Planning Commission of India and Cabinet Minister of India. He has written extensively on foreign affairs dealing largely with India-China, India-Pakistan and Indo-Israel relation and is also a published author.
In November 1978, Swamy was member of the Group of Eminent persons called to Geneva to prepare a report of the United Nations (UNCTAD) on Economic Co-operation between Developing countries (ECDC).Swamy simplified trade procedures and formulated a new export strategy which became the forerunner of trade reform adopted subsequently. In 1994, Swamy was appointed as Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade by then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. This was perhaps for the first time that an Opposition Party member was given a Cabinet rank post by the ruling party.