Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger as a free, collaboratively edited encyclopedia, intended at first to feed material into Nupedia, an earlier project with a slow system of expert review. Its use of wiki software, which lets any visitor edit pages immediately, allowed the English edition to grow rapidly, and editions in other languages soon followed. The nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation was set up in 2003 to run the project, which is now written by volunteers in several hundred languages and funded largely by donations. Critics have questioned its reliability and its coverage gaps, while supporters point to its policies on neutrality, verifiability and citation. It has become one of the most visited websites in the world and a model for open collaboration.
Before and after
- 8 January 2001Construction of Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport
- 15 January 2001Release of Drupal
- 15 January 2001Release of English Wikipedia
- 15 January 2001Founding of Creative Commons
- 15 January 2001Wikipedia
- from 22 January 2001 to 13 August 20012001 insurgency in Macedonia
- 1 February 2001Release of VLC media player
- 2 February 2001Establishment of Alexander von Humboldt National Park
- 26 February 2001Treaty of Nice
More in Science & technology
- 1949Discovery of berkelium
- 1955Discovery of mendelevium
- 14 February 1961Discovery of lawrencium
- 8 December 1994Discovery of roentgenium
- 1996Discovery of copernicium
- 2006Discovery of nihonium
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 21st century.