Wikipedia, established in January of 2001, is a comprehensive encyclopedia available in hundreds of languages that anyone can edit. Being an encyclopedia, the tone of individual articles is neutral and objective. Wikipedia also has distinct pages geared toward helping users, explaining the site’s policies and guidelines, and other meta-Wikipedia information. The purpose of the site, as defined here, is “to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest quality to every single person on the planet in their own language.” The site (or “project,” as it’s commonly referred to) is a free content encyclopedia, meaning that it can be used, distributed, and modified without legal restriction. As a result, several Web sites mirror Wikipedia’s article content (like answers.com). This is in contrast to traditional encyclopedias like Britannica that do not allow their text to be freely used.
With its continuing popularity, Wikipedia has attracted criticism from the academic world which often believes that the project is unreliable and should not be used for serious research. In turn, some have come to the defense of Wikipedia and disagree with the notion that, as a resource, it is useless.
The pages presented on this Web site deal with describing what Wikipedia is, the criticisms often levied at it, and reasonable responses to these criticisms in the hopes that online users will not be dissuaded from using the encyclopedia.