Wikipedia is a free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by people from all around the world. The site is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit articles, simply by clicking on the edit this page link. It runs on MediaWiki software.

Wikipedia is a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Press Inquiries: Please use this number for press inquiries only. Please be sure to leave a message and Terry Foote will pass it on to Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation president. Messages on anything other than press inquiries will not be returned. The number to reach Terry Foote is +1 (310) 474-3223. Other inquiries should be made by email to jwales@wikia.com.

Wikipedia began on January 15, 2001 by founders Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger, and a few enthusiastic English-language collaborators. Four years later, as of December 2004, there were 13,000 active contributors working on over 1,300,000 articles in more than 100 languages. As of today, there are 18446744073709551590 articles in English; every day hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles.

All text in Wikipedia, and most images and other content, is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the GFDL license ensures the content will remain freely distributable and reproducible (see the copyright notice and the content disclaimer for more information)

Project history and overviews

• The Wikipedia project and history and FAQ
• The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit parent organization of Wikipedia.
• Wikipedia announcements, press coverage, and a weekly review.

Exploring Wikipedia

• Recent changes — articles being worked on in the last few minutes.
• Featured articles, new articles, requested articles, or a random article.
• The local reference desk, for requesting help or research information.

Contributing to Wikipedia

Reference pages: policies and guidelines for contributors, our welcome page, an introduction for newcomers, and general help with editing and navigating the site.

How to contact project members

Standard places to ask policy and project-related questions are the village pump, online, and the Wikipedia mailing lists, over email. You can also reach other Wikipedians via IRC and instant messenger.

There is also a meta-Wikipedia , a site for coordinating the various Wikipedia projects (and abstract discussions of policy and direction), and there are a few different places for submitting bug reports and feature requests.

See also: Wikipedia:Contact us.

Opinions and objections

• The strengths of Wikipedia and some replies to common objections.

Other links

• Wikipedia statistics, friends, and power structure
• Other projects similar to Wikipedia

Versions in other languages

Sister projects

See also Wikipedia:Paper edition