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You might be asking yourself why this section about wikipedia? And you might even ignore what exactly wikipedia is. That's the reason of this article where I'll explain what is wikipedia, how did I discover it and why did I choose to create this section on my e-portfolio. What is wikipedia? Wikipedia is a website ( http://www.wikipedia.org ). It has been created by a man who had one goal: to offer his daughter a huge quantity of information on everything; a kind of numeric encyclopaedia. But it was impossible to lead such a project alone. Indeed, the English wikipedia is composed of nearly one and a half million of articles! That's the major force of wikipedia. But how did this man manage to have so many people working on his project? As strange as it can seem, the solution of this problem is also seen by some people like a bigger problem. The creator of wikipedia has had the idea to let anyone modify its site. And anyone means anyone! Without any registration, you can modify any page of wikipedia and put whatever you want. You don't even need to know anything about internet programming, it's as simple as typing a letter in Microsoft word! You understand easily that the problem of this free access of the site by anybody opens a huge door to vandals and other people who find funny to destroy the work of others. But it is also the occasion to let the more people as possible to add articles or correct an article they don't agree with or they find too subjective. Indeed on the contrary of classic sites, another force of wikipedia is that it offers a lot of points of view, and not only the one of the author. All these different points of view lead to a unique article which is as objective as possible. Some people don't trust wikipedia because they don't accept the fact that anybody can modify any single page of this website. But if you don't believe it, just try yourself to modify a page, and you'll see that you don't have to wait a long time before someone corrects your mistakes. Imagine there are more than one million of articles. If you really wanted to destroy wikipedia, where would you start? It's becoming bigger and bigger, and vandals are discouraged before real contributors that correct their damage. If you look for an article, ad think there's an error, you can even have access to all the history of this article since its creation, so you can figure out by yourself that something has been voluntarily falsified. But I must say that it's more than one year that I go on wikipedia nearly every day, and I've never been confronted to such a problem. Who would like to falsify right the article you wanted out of more than a million one? Vandals know their action is useless facing to the size of wikipedia. They often try to modify the Home page of wikipedia which is surely the most visited page of the site, but people known as moderators are watching after this kind of problems. So if we consider that this site isn't subject at all of vandalism, what remains? Surely one of the best sites for information and culture access. Imagine a website where you can type quite anything and it offers you an article of quality in several languages (even in Esperanto sometimes) and a huge collection of links to other wikipedia articles or other chosen websites. It's becoming more and more difficult to get wikipedia answer “no such article found” . Such an evolution of the number and the quality of articles is due to an effect called the piranha effect. It explains how people are willing to complete an article they see they are able to render more attractive. Indeed, it is explained that originally, when wikipedia wasn't grown at all, they diffused articles about common things but very under-developed. Then they followed their evolution. It's amazing to see how fast it grows, and that was just the beginning. For instance, when the article about apples didn't exist, they put online an article where it was just written: “ An apple is a fruit.” . It has fast been completed by “ An apple is a summer fruit.” , and then “ An apple is a summer and juicy fruit.” . You imagine if someone knows something else about apples, he can complete the page with his knowledge, and the site grows and grows… Sometimes, you don't know anything else, but you just want to correct spelling mistakes or reformulate part of the article: “ An apple is a juicy fruit. It is mostly picked during summer. ” . If you want to see the evolution of this article by yourself, you should go on wikipedia and type apple. You'll surely be amazed to see all the sorts of apples listed, some of them you haven't ever heard of… That's what they call the piranha effect. It is true that even I have contributed to some articles by correcting spelling mistakes, adding a few links or even creating an article about something I found important but missing in wikipedia (although I must admit it's difficult to find something missing in wikipedia…), and I found it really satisfying to feel involved in something as big as that. I find it interesting to see that the article you have created has been read and modified by people like you who have the same interests and want to share it with others; just like you… What Wikipedia is not Now that we've seen what wikipedia is, let's see what it isn't. I mean, when do I go on wikipedia, and when do I go elsewhere. Wikipedia is not a search engine as Google is. Whereas Google places the type cursor on the search bar, wikipedia doesn't. It might be insignificant, but I find that it shows that wikipedia is more an encyclopaedia than a search engine. I mean I don't use wikipedia when I'm looking for anything. There are sometimes when I must use Google, but more and more, I use wikipedia. If I have to do researches about any kind of topic, I go on wikipedia. If I'm found of something, and I want to know more about it, if I want to know who is this person, what is this tree, what is this song, how do I program in C++?: I use wikipedia. It's an amazing source of information that I consider as the biggest encyclopaedia of the world. I often go on wikipedia just to see what's knew, what has been added in the “ featured articles ”, or in the “ did you know it?” section. The “actuality”, “It happened on this day” sections are also really interesting, and if I don't find anything interesting, I click a few times on the “ Random article ” button until I find an article interesting. And once found, it's difficult to stop. Wikipedia is an extraordinary portal to culture. I couldn't imagine myself learning about Germanic mythology, but I did… That's why I've decided to put this section on my e-portfolio. I wanted to share with you the articles I found interesting, those I found amazing. Sometimes it will only be a two or three line text, just a fact, a data… But I'm glad to have the opportunity to talk about this things I'm fascinated by. Why is it called wikipedia? That's now a while I'm talking about wikipedia, but I haven't explained yet why is it called like this. I think you have understood the “ -pedia ” part of the name stands for encyclopaedia, but where does the “ wiki- “ part comes from? Well it comes from the Hawaiian language in which it means “quick”. The creator of wikipedia has decided to call his site this way because he wanted to show how easy and fast it was to participate in his project. And that's true… Now the term “wiki” designate any kind of site that you can freely modify; just as wikipedia. Well that's what I think about wikipedia, and I have just one more thing to add, the wikipedia project started in 2000. It is just the beginning
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