What kind of holiday is this?

Wikipedia’s birthday is celebrated annually on January 15. Where do we get knowledge from? Experience, tradition, intuition, the results of scientific research, recognized authorities, and eventually even hearsay and conjecture can serve for this. All these disparate sources have their shortcomings, they can either work or fail at a critical moment. Therefore, the desire to collect all knowledge under one cover led to the creation of encyclopedias — books that explained names, concepts, and events. Now, in the age of the Internet, we use Wikipedia – a universal encyclopedia. Its main advantage is the possibility of free exchange of all human knowledge.

How the idea to celebrate came about Wikipedia’s birthday?

The first encyclopedist known to history was Aristotle, a student of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. The classifiers of knowledge on various topics compiled by him have come down to us only in fragments. Closer to the modern idea of ​​an encyclopedia is “Natural History” by Pliny, compiled in 77 AD.

In the Middle Ages, in addition to encyclopedias, a new type of reference literature appeared in Europe – glossaries, which explained little-used terms and concepts. In the 17th century, specialized encyclopedias from various fields of knowledge began to be created, and universal encyclopedias became popular again in the 18th century. At the same time, the principle of alphabetical arrangement of the material arose.

The famous encyclopedia of that time was the creation of the French philosopher and scientist Denis Diderot. The first book was published in 1751, and the entire edition consisted of 35 books. During the years 1768-1771, the British Encyclopedia was published in three books. The first encyclopedic work in Ukraine can be called “Synopsis” by Innocent Gisel – an outline of the history of Ukraine.

In the 19th century, instead of one author, encyclopedias were compiled by groups of different authors. For example, in Russia at this time, the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron was published, which won well-deserved recognition, and other reference publications were also printed.

The advent of the Internet has opened up extraordinary opportunities for access to encyclopedic knowledge. In 1999, the website Everything2, which collected knowledge from all possible fields, first gave its users the opportunity to edit the information presented, but the owners of the site did not intend to create an encyclopedia.

Nupedia

In 2000, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales created an English-language Internet resource – Nupedia. Encyclopedic articles for this site were written exclusively by scientific experts, and then the materials were carefully reviewed. Nupedia’s authors strived to achieve the highest quality, so content was added at a very slow pace.

To accelerate the filling of Nupedia with new materials, on January 15, 2001, Sanger and Wales opened a parallel project called Wikipedia. The name came from the wiki technology on which the site was based. Wikipedia was distinguished by the fact that articles could be edited by any Internet user. By the end of 2001, the site had 20,000 articles and 18 sections in different languages. The resource was gaining popularity, but Nupedia was losing its position and ceased to exist in 2003.

Advantages of Wikipedia

The opening of new language sections has become a great advantage Wikipedia. In 2004, about half of all articles were in different languages, and as of 2007, 75% of the materials were not in English.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia’s biggest advantage turned out to be a disadvantage at the same time — the directory is populated by people with different levels of education and competence. This results in some articles containing inaccuracies or unreliable facts. But at the same time, Wikipedia provides the ability to edit, so authors who have free time spend it expanding and filling the site’s database.

Everyone knows projects related to Wikipedia, also based on the wiki platform. These are Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikinews, Wikitheque and others. Their appearance in itself is an indicator of the great popularity of the project among users of the worldwide Internet network.

There have been several cases when the governments of some countries did not like Wikipedia because of its accessibility and objectivity, and they blocked access to it for their citizens. This happened in Turkey, Russia, China.

Wikipedia turned out to be one of the most successful among the bold, strange and unpredictable projects of the 20th century. At the same time, it does not use advertising on its pages, existing mainly thanks to the donations of millions of users from all over the world.

Wikipedia’s birthday in history

• 2002
  December

  Wiktionary was opened to create a multilingual universal dictionary.
• 2003
  June 20

  The Wikimedia Foundation was founded. Wikiquote was also created on this day, and Wikitutorial was launched a month later.
• 2004
  September 20

  Wikipedia had a million articles in 105 languages. The millionth article was published in Hebrew.
• 2005

  In the history of Wikipedia, the first scandal occurred due to the distortion in the article of the biography of John Seigenthaler, a well-known journalist and writer.
• 2014
  October 22

  The first Wikipedia monument was opened in the city of Slubice in Poland.
• 2018

  Artificial intelligence began to be used to create projects of materials on omitted topics in Wikipedia.

Frequent Questions and answers about Wikipedia’s birthday

How to celebrate Wikipedia’s birthday?

Despite the considerable popularity of Wikipedia, no large-scale mass events are held on its birthday. But active authors and editors of resource materials do not ignore this holiday. On January 15, they usually organize so-called wiki meetings, where they share the latest news and discuss problems.

The public association Wikimedia Ukraine has been operating in Ukraine since 2009. On Wikipedia’s birthday, its representatives hold master classes on writing articles, contests for the best article, photo contests, and other events. People who dream of becoming Wikipedia authors will be interested in taking part in them.

Wikimedia Ukraine, like Wikipedia, is non-commercial and exists due to voluntary donations. Therefore, on January 15, Ukrainians should support this organization whenever possible, because it has a noble goal – a world in which everyone can freely create, exchange and use information.

By the way, Wikipedia’s birthday is a great opportunity to try yourself as the author of an article in the global online encyclopedia. To do this, you only need to choose a topic that interests you, collect information from various sources, come up with a name and start the creative process of writing. Where else, if not in Wikipedia, can you tell the whole world about your hometown or region, your favorite hobby or a famous person – about everything that can interest people and be useful in life.

Why do we love this day?

Wikipedia is a unique opportunity for everyone to use a large amount of knowledge collected by all of humanity on one resource, without having a language barrier.

The articles of this resource are the most convenient form of notes in the study of any material. In addition, for schoolchildren and students, Wikipedia becomes even more interesting due to the opportunity to be part of the process of joint creation of knowledge. It creates a feeling of involvement in a common good cause.

Wikipedia emphasizes and elevates the importance of the native language for people, because every language is represented in this collection of world knowledge. By creating articles in one’s native language, anyone can contribute to its development and popularization. This is especially important for the few peoples who want to preserve their language for future generations.

Wikipedia’s community of active users is an intellectual environment in which discussions are conducted quite intelligently compared to other resources. Among the contributors, you can meet many interesting people, both online and at traditional wiki meetings.

We are grateful to everyone who volunteers their time and effort to share important information with us. And most importantly, thanks to Wikipedia, we learn something new every day, and this makes us smarter and stronger.

When will we celebrate Wikipedia’s birthday?