Image via WikipediaA new book has come out about Wikipedia, How Wikipedia Works: And how you can be a part of it. I plan to write a review of the book during the coming week, however I thought that in the meantime I would share some important facts about Wikipedia that everyone should know, but might not be aware of:

1. All content in Wikipedia is completely free for anyone to use. There are no copyright restrictions.
2. Not all information is included in Wikipedia. It must be encyclopediac, neutral and verifiable.
3. The mission of Wikipedia is to make the whole world's information available in all languages.
4. Wikipedia is just one form of a Wiki. The acronym Wiki stands for What I Know Is. A Wiki is a web page that anybody can edit (although passwords are needed in private wikis ).
   
5. Every page on Wikipedia has its complete history saved of every version from its first edit on.
6. Anybody can edit articles on Wikipedia.
7. As of August 2008, there were over 2,500,000 articles on Wikipedia.
8. There is no censorship on Wikipedia as long as an article meets the guidelines in number 2 above to be encyclopediac, neutral and verifiable. Therefore, there will be articles with language and material not appropriate for all.
9. There are 3 types of hyperlinks used in Wikipedia - a) external-links to pages out of Wikipedia b) internal-links to other articles within Wikipedia c) redlinks-links to articles within Wikipedia that don't exist yet.
10. Every article has a discussion and talk page for the editors to discuss it.
11. If you see an article in Wikipedia with a yellowbar and a broom chasing dust, that means that this article needs a lot of cleaning up. This is an article ripe for edit.
12. The name for members of the Wikipedia community is Wikipedians.
13. There are guidelines to make new writers and editors in Wikipedia feel welcome. The main two are: a) assume good faith - if somebody new does something against policy, first assume it was a mistake and give them the chance to fix it, b) focus on the importance of being welcoming.
14. Editors can be blocked or banned from further editing and various articles are not available to be edited by anybody because they are very open to vandalism.
15. Wikipedia contains no ads.
    
16. There are Wikipedias in over 250 languages.
17. Wikipedia's infrastructure is run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. There are several other sister projects to Wikipedia that Wikimedia runs:
18. Wikimedia Commons - Free media and other images
19. Wiktionary - Dictionary definitions
20. Wikinews - Freecontent alternative to proprietary news agencies
21. Wikibooks - A wiki for the creation of free content textbooks and manuals
22. Wikiquote - Collection of quotations from notable people and works
23. Wikisource - A collection of source documents and primary texts that are in public domain
24. Wikispecies - Biological database of species
25. Wikiversity - Educational materials

The book "How Wikipedia Works" covers all the details of how to write and edit pages, other rules and policies and much more. Stay tuned to my review soon.

Edited to add: See Review of "How Wikipedia Works"


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