British Handbook for Reliability Data for Components used in Telecommunication. 4 Identical to RDF 2000/Reliability Data Handbook. Reliability Modeling, MIL- STD- 7. ARRL launches “Do It Yourself” theme. There are a LOT of similarities between hams and the growing Do It Yourself (DIY), Maker communities. We can learn from each other and share tools and ideas in our enjoyment of creating things for ourselves and not simply purchasing mass-produced products. ARRL's new video.

Filter by subject-subcategory: • • • Filter by content type: • Filter by year of publication: • 2011 • 2004 • 2016 • 2017 • 2009 • 2012 • 2014 • 1997 • 2000 • 2007 • 2013 • 2010 • 2015 • 1994 • 1995 • 1999 • 2005 • 2006 • 2008 • 1998 • 2002 • 2003 • 1996 • 1988 • 1992 • 2001 • 1989 • 1993 • 1978 • 1979 • 1985 • 1987 • 1990 • 1991 •. / descriptions 1 - 20 of 212 results • • Editors: Jeremy Munday, and Meifang Zhang • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • Discourse analytic approaches are central to translator training and translation analysis, but have been somewhat overlooked in recent translation studies. This volume sets out to rectify this marginalization. It considers the evolution of the use of discourse analysis in translation studies, presents current research from ten leading figures in the field and provides pointers for the future. Topics range from close textual analysis of cohesion, thematic structure and the interpersonal function to the effects of global English and the discourses of cyberspace. The inherent link between discourse and the construction of power is evident in many contributions that analyse institutional power and the linguistic resources which mark translator/interpreter positioning. An array of scenarios and languages are covered, including Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Korean and Spanish.

Originally published as a special issue of Target 27:3 (2015). • • Editors: Letizia Cirillo, and Natacha Niemants • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • Teaching Dialogue Interpreting is one of the very few book-length contributions that cross the research-to-training boundary in dialogue interpreting. The volume is innovative in at least three ways.

First, it brings together experts working in areas as diverse as business interpreting, court interpreting, medical interpreting, and interpreting for the media, who represent a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches. Second, it addresses instructors and course designers in higher education, but may also be used for refresher courses and/or retraining of in-service interpreters and bilingual staff. Third, and most important, it provides a set of resources, which, while research driven, are also readily usable in the classroom – either together or separately – depending on specific training needs and/or research interests. The collection thus makes a significant contribution in curriculum design for interpreter education.

• • Editors: Cecilia Alvstad, Annjo K. Greenall, Hanne Jansen, and Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • The notion of voice has been used in a number of ways within Translation Studies. Against the backdrop of these different uses, this book looks at the voices of translators, authors, publishers, editors and readers both in the translations themselves and in the texts that surround these translations. The various authors go on a hunt for translational agents’ voice imprints in a variety of textual and contextual material, such as literary and non-literary translations, book reviews, newspaper articles, academic texts and e-mails. While all stick to the principle of studying text and context together, the different contributions also demonstrate how specific textual and contextual circumstances require adapted methodological solutions, ending up in a collection that takes steps in a joint direction but that is at the same time complex and pluralistic. The book is intended for scholars and students of Translation Studies, Comparative Literature, and other disciplines within Language and Literature. • • Author: • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • This book presents an interdisciplinary study that straddles four academic fields, namely, autobiography, stylistics, narratology and translation studies.

It shows that foregrounding is manifested in the language of autobiography, alerting readers to an authorial tone with certain ideological affiliations. In refuting the presumed conflation between the author, narrator and character in autobiography, the study emphasizes readers’ role in constructing an implied author.

The issues of implied translator, assumed translation and rewriting are explored through a comparative analysis of the English and Chinese autobiographies by Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew. The analysis identifies different foregrounding practices and attributes these differences to an implied translator. Further evidence derived from narrative-communicative situations in the two autobiographies underscores divergent personae of the implied authors. The study aims to establish a deeper understanding of how translation and rewriting have a far-reaching impact on the self- and world-making functions of autobiography. This book will be of special interest to scholars and students of linguistics, literature, translation and political science.

• • Editors: Sonia Colina, and Claudia V. Angelelli • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • This volume offers a collection of original articles on the teaching of translation and interpreting, responding to the increased interest in this area not only within translation and interpreting studies but also in related fields. It contains empirical, theoretical and state-of-the-art original pieces that address issues relevant to translation and interpreting pedagogy, such as epistemology, technology, language proficiency, and pedagogical approaches (e.g., game-based, task-based). All of the contributors are researchers and educators of either translation or interpreting – or both. The volume should be of interest to researchers and teachers of translation and interpreting, second language acquisition and language for specific purposes. An introduction by the editors – both distinguished scholars in translation & interpreting pedagogy – provides the necessary context for the contributions. Originally published as a special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 10:1 (2015), edited by Brian James Baer and Christopher D.

• • Author: • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • This book deals with the (re)production of cohesion and coherence in translation. Building on the theories and methods of Translation Studies and Discourse Analysis it answers some basic, still much debated questions related to translational discourse production. Such a question is whether it is possible to analyse the (re)production of coherence, and if yes, how? Can the models devised for the study of English original (not translated) and independent texts (unlike translations and their sources) be applied for the analysis of translation?

How do cohesive, rhetorical and generic structure “behave” in translation? How do particular components of coherence relate to translation universals? The volume proposes a complex translational discourse analysis model and presents findings that bring new insights primarily for the study of news translation, translation strategies and translation universals. It is recommended for translation researchers, discourse analysts, practicing translators, as well as professionals and students involved in translator training. • • Authors:, and • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) maintained that translation destroys the harmony of poetry. Yet his Commedia has been translated into English time and again over the last two-and-a-bit centuries. At last count, one-hundred and twenty-nine different translators have published at least one canticle of the Italian masterwork since the first in 1782, and countless more have translated individual cantos.

Among them there are some of the finest poets in the English language, including Robert Lowell and the Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney. Smith and Sonzogni have assembled and annotated two complete translations of Dante’s most popular canticle, Inferno, each canto translated by a different translator.

To Hell and Back is a celebration of the art and craft of poetry translation; of the lexical palettes and syntactical tempos of the English language; and, of course, of the genius of one of the greatest poets of all times. • • Author: • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • Originally published in different journals and collected volumes, these papers in conceptual analysis cover some central topics in translation theory and research: types of theory and hypothesis; causality and explanation; norms, strategies and so-called universals; translation sociology, and ethics. There are critical reviews of Catford’s theory, and of Skopos theory, and of Kundera’s views on literary translation, and detailed analyses of the literal translation hypothesis and the unique items hypothesis. The methodological discussions, which draw on work in the philosophy of science, will be of special relevance to younger researchers, for example those starting work on a doctorate. Some of the arguments and positions defended – for instance on the significant status of conceptual, interpretive hypotheses, and the ideal of consilience – relate to wider ongoing debates, and will interest any scholar who is concerned about the increasing fragmentation of the field and about the future of Translation Studies. Let the dialogue continue!

• • Author: • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • Crowdsourcing and online collaborative translations have emerged in the last decade to the forefront of Translation Studies as one of the most dynamic and unpredictable phenomena that has attracted a growing number of researchers. The popularity of this set of varied translational processes holds the potential to reframe existing translation theories, redefine a number of tenets in the discipline, advance research in the so-called “technological turn” and impact public perceptions on translation. This book provides an interdisciplinary analysis of these phenomena from a descriptive and critical perspective, delving into industry approaches and fostering inter and intra disciplinary connections between areas in which the impact is the greatest, such as cognitive translatology, translation technologies, quality and translation evaluation, sociological approaches, text-linguistic approaches, audiovisual translation or translation pedagogy.

This book is of special interest to translation researchers, translation students, industry experts or anyone with an interest on how crowdsourcing and online collaborative translations relate to past, present and future research and theorizations in Translation Studies. • • Author: • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • David Lucking sees Shakespeare’s plays as negotiating tensions between a number of alternative, and sometimes mutually antagonistic perspectives. Some of these perspectives are associated with particular languages, cultures and texts, while others involve philosophical issues such as the nature of personal ontology and distinctions between reality and dream, being and nothingness. In elaborating his insights Lucking draws extensive comparisons with Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, and between Sophocles’ Theban plays and King Lear, and he also pays close attention to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Antony and Cleopatra. Re-assessing a wide range of earlier commentary, his nine essays confirm the lasting value of apposite contextualization in tandem with detailed close reading. • • Editors: Rachele Antonini, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato, and Ira Torresi • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • In the light of recent waves of mass immigration, non-professional interpreting and translation (NPIT) is spreading at an unprecedented pace. While as recently as the late 20th century much of the field was a largely uncharted territory, the current proportions of NPIT suggest that the phenomenon is here to stay and needs to be studied with all due academic rigour.

This collection of essays is the first systematic attempt at looking at NPIT in a scholarly and at the same time pragmatic way. Offering multiple methods and perspectives, and covering the diverse contexts in which NPIT takes place, the volume is a welcome turn in an all too often polarized debate in both academic and practitioner circles. • • Editor: Amparo Hurtado Albir • Publication Date 2017 • + Show Description - Hide Description • This volume is a compendium of PACTE Group’s experimental research in Translation Competence since 1997.

The book is organised in four main parts and also includes eight appendices and a glossary. Part I presents the conceptual and methodological framework of PACTE’s Translation Competence research design. Part II focuses on the methodological aspects of the research design and its development: exploratory tests and pilot studies carried out; experiment design; characteristics of the sample population; procedures of data collection and analysis. Part III presents the results obtained in the experiment related to: the Acceptability of the translations produced in the experiment and the six dependent variables of study (Knowledge of Translation; Translation Project; Identification and Solution of Translation Problems; Decision-making; Efficacy of the Translation Process; Use of Instrumental Resources); this part also includes a corpus analysis of the translations.

Part IV analyses the translators who were ranked highest in the experiment and goes on to present final conclusions as well as PACTE’s perspectives in the field of Translation Competence research. • • Authors:, and • Publication Date 2016 • + Show Description - Hide Description • This companion volume to provides additional recommendations and theoretical and practical discussion for instructors, course designers and administrators. Chapters mirroring the Complete Course offer supplementary exercises, tips on materials selection, classroom practice, feedback and class morale, realistic case studies from professional practice, and a detailed rationale for each stage supported by critical reviews of the literature.

Dedicated chapters address the role of theory and research in interpreter training, with outline syllabi for further qualification in interpreting studies at MA or PhD level; the current state of testing and professional certification, with proposals for an overhaul; the institutional and administrative challenges of running a high-quality training course; and designs and opportunities for further and teacher training, closing with a brief speculative look at future prospects for the profession. • • Authors:, and • Publication Date 2016 • + Show Description - Hide Description • The conference interpreting skillset – full consecutive and simultaneous interpreting – has long been in demand well beyond the multilateral intergovernmental organizations, notably in bilateral diplomacy, business, international tribunals and the media. This comprehensive coursebook sets out an updated step-by-step programme of training, designed to meet the increasingly challenging conditions of the 21st century, and adaptable by instructors with the appropriate specializations to cover all these different applications in contemporary practice. After an overview of the diverse world of interpreting and the prerequisites for this demanding course of training, successive chapters take students and teachers through initiation and the progressive acquisition of the techniques, knowledge and professionalism that make up this full skillset. For each stage in the training, detailed, carefully sequenced exercises and guidance on the cognitive challenges are provided, in a spirit of transparency between students and teachers on their respective roles in the learning process. For instructors, course designers and administrators, more detailed and extensive tips on pedagogy, curriculum design and management will be found in the companion.

• • Authors:,, and • Publication Date 2016 • + Show Description - Hide Description • Arabic is a language of substantial cultural and religious importance. It is spoken by about 300 million people, predominantly in the 22 countries of the Arab world, as well as in several other regions where the Arab diaspora has settled. Arabic is also the language of Islam and underpins the religious practice of about 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide. In view of the above, the authors thought it important to create an easily accessible handbook for interpreters, translators, educators and other practitioners working between Arabic and English in healthcare settings. Introduction to Healthcare for Arabic-speaking Interpreters and Translators follows the seminal publication Introduction to Healthcare for Interpreters and Translators (Crezee, 2013) and has been supplemented with Arabic glossaries and comments about health communication between Anglophones and Arabic speakers.

This practical resource book will help inform interpreters and translators about healthcare settings, anatomy, physiology, medical terminology and frequently encountered conditions, diagnostic tests and treatment options. Arabic is divided into two categories: formal (Classical, Standard or literary) Arabic, and local dialects (colloquial Arabic).

Formal Arabic is the official language of all Arab countries. In each of these, there are regional dialects which color formal Arabic and add character to a poetic and expressive language. Poetic nature is found in many daily expressions, and not only in Arabic literature, for example, “Good morning” in Arabic is “Ssabah al khair”, which in essence wishes others a morning of goodness; and, the pan-Arab greeting “Salam Alaykum”, which literally means “may peace be upon you”. Dialects once existed principally in spoken form but these days they are increasingly used in writing in social media and its paraphernalia (mobile phones, tablets, etc.).

In this book, formal Arabic is used in the glossaries, simply because it is the recognized language of literacy across the Arabic-speaking world. • • Authors:,, and • Publication Date 2016 • + Show Description - Hide Description • This book is the first comprehensive corpus study of element order in Old English and Old High German, which brings to light numerous differences between these two closely related languages. The study’s innovative approach relies on translated texts, which allows the authors to tackle the problem of the apparent incomparability of OE and OHG textual records and to identify the areas of OE and OHG syntax potentially influenced by the Latin source texts. This is especially important from the point of view of OE research, where Latin is rarely considered to be a significant variable. The book’s profile and content is of direct interest to historical linguists working on OE and/or OHG (and Old Germanic languages in general), but it can also greatly benefit several other groups of researchers: scholars applying corpus methods to the study of dead languages, historical linguists generally, linguists researching element order as well as specialists in translation studies. • • Authors:, and • Publication Date 2016 • + Show Description - Hide Description • This book is based on the very popular international publication (Crezee, 2013) and has been supplemented with Japanese glossaries. Just like the 2013 textbook, this practical resource will allow interpreters and translators to quickly read up on healthcare settings, familiarizing themselves with anatomy, physiology, medical terminology and frequently encountered conditions, diagnostic tests and treatment options.

This is an exceptionally useful and easily accessible handbook, in particular for English-speaking patients, Japanese-speaking doctors, first-language Japanese-speaking students in healthcare related programs. This book includes a special chapter on Japan’s shifting social structure and the hierarchies which exist within its medical system and gives concrete examples of patient expectations for hospital stays and physician visits.

A further special chapter describes the Japanese insurance system and related regulations in a comprehensive fashion, also discussing standards of third party accreditation. Also included is information regarding the establishment of the Aichi Medical Interpretation System, the first of its kind in Japan, which was launched thanks to the combined efforts of local municipal communities, healthcare organizations and universities in the Aichi Prefecture.

Wikipedia originally developed from another encyclopedia project called Other collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before Wikipedia, but none was as successful. Wikipedia began as a complementary project for, a free online encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. Nupedia was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of, a company.

Its main figures were, the CEO of Bomis, and, for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. Nupedia was licensed initially under its own Nupedia License, switching to the before Wikipedia's founding at the urging of. Sanger and Wales founded Wikipedia. While Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a to reach that goal. On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia to create a wiki as a 'feeder' project for Nupedia. Wikipedia according to Simpleshow External audio, Ideas with,, January 15, 2014 Launch and early growth Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com, and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list.

Wikipedia's policy of 'neutral point-of-view' was codified in its first months. Otherwise, there were relatively few rules initially and Wikipedia operated independently of Nupedia. Originally, Bomis intended to make Wikipedia a business for profit. Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, postings, and indexing. By August 8, 2001, Wikipedia had over 8,000 articles. On September 25, 2001, Wikipedia had over 13,000 articles. By the end of 2001, it had grown to approximately 20,000 articles and 18 language editions.

It had reached 26 language editions by late 2002, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the final days of 2004. Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former's servers were taken down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. The passed the mark of two million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, surpassing even the 1408, which had held the record for almost 600 years. Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control in Wikipedia, users of the from Wikipedia to create the in February 2002.

These moves encouraged Wales to announce that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and to change Wikipedia's domain from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org. Though the English Wikipedia reached three million articles in August 2009, the growth of the edition, in terms of the numbers of articles and of contributors, appears to have peaked around early 2007.

Around 1,800 articles were added daily to the encyclopedia in 2006; by 2013 that average was roughly 800. A team at the attributed this slowing of growth to the project's increasing exclusivity and resistance to change. Others suggest that the growth is flattening naturally because articles that could be called '—topics that clearly merit an article—have already been created and built up extensively. In November 2009, a researcher at the in () found that the English Wikipedia had lost 49,000 editors during the first three months of 2009; in comparison, the project lost only 4,900 editors during the same period in 2008. The Wall Street Journal cited the array of rules applied to editing and disputes related to such content among the reasons for this trend. Wales disputed these claims in 2009, denying the decline and questioning the methodology of the study. Two years later, in 2011, Wales acknowledged the presence of a slight decline, noting a decrease from 'a little more than 36,000 writers' in June 2010 to 35,800 in June 2011.

In the same interview, Wales also claimed the number of editors was 'stable and sustainable'. A 2013 article titled 'The Decline of Wikipedia' in MIT's questioned this claim. The article revealed that since 2007, Wikipedia had lost a third of the volunteer editors who update and correct the online encyclopedia and those still there have focused increasingly on minutiae. In July 2012, reported that the number of administrators is also in decline. In the November 25, 2013, issue of magazine, Katherine Ward stated 'Wikipedia, the sixth-most-used website, is facing an internal crisis'.

A promotional video of the Wikimedia Foundation that encourages viewers to edit Wikipedia, mostly reviewing 2014 via Wikipedia content Milestones In January 2007, Wikipedia entered for the first time the top-ten in the U.S., according to Networks. With 42.9 million unique visitors, Wikipedia was ranked number 9, surpassing (#10) and (#11). This marked a significant increase over January 2006, when the rank was number 33, with Wikipedia receiving around 18.3 million unique visitors.

As of March 2015, Wikipedia has rank 5 among websites in terms of popularity according to. In 2014, it received 8 billion pageviews every month. On February 9, 2014, The New York Times reported that Wikipedia has 18 billion and nearly 500 million a month, 'according to the ratings firm comScore.' On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia participated in a series of coordinated protests against two proposed laws in the United States Congress—the (SOPA) and the (PIPA)—by. More than 162 million people viewed the blackout explanation page that temporarily replaced Wikipedia content.

Loveland and Reagle argue that, in process, Wikipedia follows a long tradition of historical encyclopedias that accumulated improvements piecemeal through ' accumulation'. On January 20, 2014, Subodh Varma reporting for indicated that not only had Wikipedia's growth flattened but that it has 'lost nearly 10 per cent of its page-views last year. That's a decline of about 2 billion between December 2012 and December 2013. Its most popular versions are leading the slide: page-views of the English Wikipedia declined by 12 per cent, those of German version slid by 17 per cent and the Japanese version lost 9 per cent.' Varma added that, 'While Wikipedia's managers think that this could be due to errors in counting, other experts feel that Google's project launched last year may be gobbling up Wikipedia users.'

When contacted on this matter,, associate professor at New York University and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Security indicated that he suspected much of the page view decline was due to Knowledge Graphs, stating, 'If you can get your question answered from the search page, you don't need to click [any further].' By the end of December 2016, Wikipedia was ranked fifth in the most popular websites globally. Differences between versions of an article are highlighted as shown Unlike traditional encyclopedias, [ ] Wikipedia follows the principle regarding the security of its content.

It started almost entirely open—anyone could create articles, and any Wikipedia article could be edited by any reader, even those who did not have a Wikipedia account. Working Model 2d 2005 V8.0.1.0 Free. Modifications to all articles would be published immediately. As a result, any article could contain inaccuracies such as errors, ideological biases, and nonsensical or irrelevant text. Restrictions Due to the increasing popularity of Wikipedia, popular editions, including the English version, have introduced editing restrictions in some cases.

For instance, on the English Wikipedia and some other language editions, only registered users may create a new article. On the English Wikipedia, among others, some particularly controversial, sensitive and/or vandalism-prone pages have been protected to some degree. A frequently vandalized article can be or, meaning that only or editors are able to modify it.

A particularly contentious article may be locked so that only are able to make changes. In certain cases, all editors are allowed to submit modifications, but review is required for some editors, depending on certain conditions. For example, the maintains 'stable versions' of articles, which have passed certain reviews.

Following protracted trials and community discussion, the English Wikipedia introduced the 'pending changes' system in December 2012. Under this system, new and unregistered users' edits to certain controversial or vandalism-prone articles are reviewed by established users before they are published. The editing interface of Wikipedia Review of changes Although changes are not systematically reviewed, the software that powers Wikipedia provides certain tools allowing anyone to review changes made by others.

The 'History' page of each article links to each revision. On most articles, anyone can undo others' changes by clicking a link on the article's history page. Anyone can view the to articles, and anyone may maintain a of articles that interest them so they can be notified of any changes.

'New pages patrol' is a process whereby newly created articles are checked for obvious problems. In 2003, economics PhD student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low of participating in a create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that features such as allowing easy access to past versions of a page favor 'creative construction' over 'creative destruction'. Main article: Any change or edit that manipulates content in a way that purposefully compromises the integrity of Wikipedia is considered vandalism. The most common and obvious types of vandalism include additions of obscenities and crude humor. Vandalism can also include advertising and other types of spam. Sometimes editors commit vandalism by removing content or entirely blanking a given page. Less common types of vandalism, such as the deliberate addition of plausible but false information to an article, can be more difficult to detect.

Vandals can introduce irrelevant formatting, modify page semantics such as the page's title or categorization, manipulate the underlying code of an article, or use images disruptively. American journalist (1927–2014), subject of the Obvious vandalism is generally easy to remove from Wikipedia articles; the median time to detect and fix vandalism is a few minutes. However, some vandalism takes much longer to repair. In the, an anonymous editor introduced false information into the biography of American political figure in May 2005. Seigenthaler was falsely presented as a suspect in the assassination of John F.

The article remained uncorrected for four months. Seigenthaler, the founding editorial director of and founder of the at, called Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and asked whether he had any way of knowing who contributed the misinformation. Wales replied that he did not, although the perpetrator was eventually traced. After the incident, Seigenthaler described Wikipedia as 'a flawed and irresponsible research tool'. This incident led to policy changes at Wikipedia, specifically targeted at tightening up the verifiability of. Policies and laws External video,,, 20 minutes, April 5, 2015, co-founder Jimmy Wales at Fosdem Content in Wikipedia is subject to the laws (in particular, laws) of the United States and of the U.S.

State of, where the majority of Wikipedia's servers are located. Beyond legal matters, the editorial principles of Wikipedia are embodied in the and in numerous intended to appropriately shape content. Even these rules are stored in wiki form, and Wikipedia editors write and revise the website's policies and guidelines. Editors can by deleting or modifying non-compliant material. Originally, rules on the non-English editions of Wikipedia were based on a translation of the rules for the English Wikipedia. They have since diverged to some extent. Content policies and guidelines According to the rules on the English Wikipedia, each entry in Wikipedia must be about a topic that is and is not a dictionary entry or dictionary-like.

A topic should also meet, which generally means that the topic must have been covered in mainstream media or major academic journal sources that are independent of the article's subject. Further, Wikipedia intends to convey only knowledge that is already established and recognized.. A claim that is likely to be challenged requires a reference to a. Among Wikipedia editors, this is often phrased as 'verifiability, not truth' to express the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles and making their own interpretations. This can at times lead to the removal of information that is valid. Finally, Wikipedia must not take sides. All opinions and viewpoints, if attributable to external sources, must enjoy an appropriate share of coverage within an article.

This is known as neutral point of view (NPOV). Further information: Wikipedia's initial integrated and hierarchical elements over time. An article is not considered to be owned by its creator or any other editor and is not vetted by any recognized authority. Wikipedia's contributors avoid a by internalizing benefits. They do this by experiencing and identifying with and gaining status in the Wikipedia community. Administrators Editors in good standing in the community can run for one of many levels of volunteer stewardship: this begins with ', privileged users who can delete pages, prevent articles from being changed in case of vandalism or editorial disputes, and try to prevent certain persons from editing.

Despite the name, administrators are not supposed to enjoy any special privilege in decision-making; instead, their powers are mostly limited to making edits that have project-wide effects and thus are disallowed to ordinary editors, and to implement restrictions intended to prevent certain persons from making disruptive edits (such as vandalism). Fewer editors become administrators than in years past, in part because the process of vetting potential Wikipedia administrators has become more rigorous. Bureaucrats name new administrators, solely upon the recommendations from the community. Dispute resolution Wikipedians often have disputes regarding content, which may result in repeatedly making opposite changes to an article, known as. Over time, Wikipedia has developed a semi-formal dispute resolution process to assist in such circumstances.

In order to determine community consensus, editors can raise issues at appropriate community forums, or seek outside input through or by initiating a more general community discussion known as a. Arbitration Committee. Main article: The Arbitration Committee presides over the ultimate dispute resolution process. Although disputes usually arise from a disagreement between two opposing views on how an article should read, the Arbitration Committee explicitly refuses to directly rule on the specific view that should be adopted. Statistical analyses suggest that the committee ignores the content of disputes and rather focuses on the way disputes are conducted, functioning not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting editors, but to weed out problematic editors while allowing potentially productive editors back in to participate. Therefore, the committee does not dictate the content of articles, although it sometimes condemns content changes when it deems the new content violates Wikipedia policies (for example, if the new content is considered ).

Its remedies include cautions and (used in 63% of cases) and (43%), subject matters (23%), or Wikipedia (16%). Complete bans from Wikipedia are generally limited to instances of impersonation and. When conduct is not impersonation or anti-social, but rather anti-consensus or in violation of editing policies, remedies tend to be limited to warnings. Wikipedians and curators collaborate on the article in June 2010 Wikipedia's community has been described as -like, although not always with entirely negative connotations. The project's preference for cohesiveness, even if it requires compromise that includes disregard of, has been referred to as '. Wikipedians sometimes award one another for good work.

These personalized tokens of appreciation reveal a wide range of valued work extending far beyond simple editing to include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. Wikipedia does not require that its editors and contributors provide identification. As Wikipedia grew, 'Who writes Wikipedia?' Became one of the questions frequently asked on the project. Jimmy Wales once argued that only 'a community. A dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers' makes the bulk of contributions to Wikipedia and that the project is therefore 'much like any traditional organization'.

In 2008, a Slate magazine article reported that: 'According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site's edits.' This method of evaluating contributions was later disputed by, who noted that several articles he sampled had large portions of their content (measured by number of characters) contributed by users with low edit counts.

The English Wikipedia has articles, registered editors, and active editors. An editor is considered active if they have made one or more edits in the past thirty days.

Editors who fail to comply with Wikipedia cultural rituals, such as, may implicitly signal that they are Wikipedia outsiders, increasing the odds that Wikipedia insiders may target or discount their contributions. Becoming a Wikipedia insider involves non-trivial costs: the contributor is expected to learn Wikipedia-specific technological codes, submit to a sometimes convoluted dispute resolution process, and learn a 'baffling culture rich with in-jokes and insider references'. Editors who do not log in are in some sense second-class citizens on Wikipedia, as 'participants are accredited by members of the wiki community, who have a vested interest in preserving the quality of the work product, on the basis of their ongoing participation', but the contribution histories of anonymous unregistered editors recognized only by their cannot be attributed to a particular editor with certainty. A 2007 study by researchers from found that 'anonymous and infrequent contributors to Wikipedia [.] are as reliable a source of knowledge as those contributors who register with the site'.

Jimmy Wales stated in 2009 that '(I)t turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just.7% of the users. And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits.' However, editor and journalist showed in 2009 that in a random sample of articles, most content in Wikipedia (measured by the amount of contributed text that survives to the latest sampled edit) is created by 'outsiders', while most editing and formatting is done by 'insiders'. A 2008 study found that Wikipedians were less agreeable, open, and conscientious than others, although a later commentary pointed out serious flaws, including that the data showed higher openness, that the differences with the control group were small as were the samples. According to a 2009 study, there is 'evidence of growing resistance from the Wikipedia community to new content'.

Wikipedia editor demographics (2008) One study found that the contributor base to Wikipedia 'was barely 13% women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s'. A 2011 study by researchers from the found that females comprised 16.1% of the 38,497 editors who started editing Wikipedia during 2009.

In a January 2011 article, Noam Cohen observed that just 13% of Wikipedia's contributors are female according to a 2008 Wikimedia Foundation survey., a former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, hoped to see female contributions increase to 25% by 2015. Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women, noted the contrast in these Wikipedia editor statistics with the percentage of women currently completing bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and PhD programs in the United States (all at rates of 50 percent or greater). In response, various universities have hosted to encourage more women to participate in the Wikipedia community. In fall 2013, 15 colleges and universities — including Yale, Brown, and Pennsylvania State — offered college credit for students to 'write feminist thinking' about technology into Wikipedia. A 2008 self-selected survey of the diversity of contributors by highest educational degree indicated that sixty-two percent of responding Wikipedia editors had attained either a high school or undergraduate college education. In August 2014, Wikipedia co-founder said in a BBC interview that the was '.

Really doubling down our efforts.' To reach 25% of female editors (originally targeted by 2015), since the Foundation had 'totally failed' so far. Wales said 'a lot of things need to happen. A lot of outreach, a lot of software changes'.

Andrew Lih, writing in The New York Times, was quoted by in December 2016 as supporting Wales comments concerning shortfalls in Wikipedia's outreach to female editors. Lih states his concern with the question indicating that: 'How can you get people to participate in an (editing) environment that feels unsafe, where identifying yourself as a woman, as a feminist, could open you up to ugly, intimidating behavior'.

Language editions. Main article: There are currently 299 language editions of Wikipedia (also called language versions, or simply Wikipedias). Thirteen of these have over one million articles each (,,,,,,,,,,, and ), six more have over 500,000 articles (,,,, and ), 40 more have over 100,000 articles, and 78 more have over 10,000 articles. The largest, the English Wikipedia, has over 5.5 million articles. As of September 2017, according to Alexa, the English (en.wikipedia.org; English Wikipedia) receives approximately 57% of Wikipedia's cumulative traffic, with the remaining split among the other languages (Russian: 7%; Spanish: 6%; Japanese: 6%; Chinese: 5%). As of December 2017, the six largest language editions are (in order of article count) the,,,,, and Wikipedias.

A graph for pageviews of shows a great drop of roughly 80% immediately after the was imposed. Since Wikipedia is based on the and therefore worldwide, contributors to the same language edition may use different dialects or may come from different countries (as is the case for the ). These differences may lead to some conflicts over (e.g.

Colour versus ) or points of view. Though the various language editions are held to global policies such as 'neutral point of view', they diverge on some points of policy and practice, most notably on whether images that are not may be used under a claim of. Jimmy Wales has described Wikipedia as 'an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language'. Though each language edition functions more or less independently, some efforts are made to supervise them all. They are coordinated in part by Meta-Wiki, the Wikimedia Foundation's wiki devoted to maintaining all of its projects (Wikipedia and others). For instance, Meta-Wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of Wikipedia, and it maintains a list of articles every Wikipedia should have.

The list concerns basic content by subject: biography, history, geography, society, culture, science, technology, and mathematics. As for the rest, it is not rare for articles strongly related to a particular language not to have counterparts in another edition. For example, articles about small towns in the United States might only be available in English, even when they meet notability criteria of other language Wikipedia projects. Estimation of contributions shares from different regions in the world to different Wikipedia editions Translated articles represent only a small portion of articles in most editions, in part because fully automated translation of articles is disallowed. Articles available in more than one language may offer ', which link to the counterpart articles in other editions.

A study published by in 2012 also estimated the share of contributions to different editions of Wikipedia from different regions of the world. It reported that the proportion of the edits made from was 51% for the, and 25% for the. The Wikimedia Foundation hopes to increase the number of editors in the Global South to 37% by 2015. On March 1, 2014, in an article titled 'The Future of Wikipedia' cited a trend analysis concerning data published by Wikimedia stating that: 'The number of editors for the English-language version has fallen by a third in seven years.'

The attrition rate for active editors in English Wikipedia was cited by The Economist as substantially in contrast to statistics for Wikipedia in other languages (non-English Wikipedia). The Economist reported that the number of contributors with an average of five of more edits per month was relatively constant since 2008 for Wikipedia in other languages at approximately 42,000 editors within narrow seasonal variances of about 2,000 editors up or down.

The attrition rates for editors in English Wikipedia, by sharp comparison, were cited as peaking in 2007 at approximately 50,000 editors, which has dropped to 30,000 editors as of the start of 2014. At the quoted trend rate, the number of active editors in English Wikipedia has lost approximately 20,000 editors to attrition since 2007, and the documented trend rate indicates the loss of another 20,000 editors by 2021, down to 10,000 active editors on English Wikipedia by 2021 if left unabated. Given that the trend analysis published in The Economist presents the number of active editors for Wikipedia in other languages (non-English Wikipedia) as remaining relatively constant and successful in sustaining its numbers at approximately 42,000 active editors, the contrast has pointed to the effectiveness of Wikipedia in other languages to retain its active editors on a renewable and sustained basis. No comment was made concerning which of the differentiated edit policy standards from Wikipedia in other languages (non-English Wikipedia) would provide a possible alternative to English Wikipedia for effectively ameliorating substantial editor attrition rates on the English-language Wikipedia. Critical reception.

See also: and Several Wikipedians have, which includes over 50 policies and nearly 150,000 words as of 2014. Critics have stated that Wikipedia exhibits. Columnist and journalist criticizes Wikipedia for being a mixture of 'truth, half truth, and some falsehoods'. Articles in and have criticized Wikipedia's policy, concluding that the fact that Wikipedia explicitly is not designed to provide correct information about a subject, but rather focus on all the major viewpoints on the subject and give less attention to minor ones, creates omissions that can lead to false beliefs based on incomplete information.

Journalists and noted how articles are dominated by the loudest and most persistent voices, usually by a group with an 'ax to grind' on the topic. An article in Journal concluded that as a resource about controversial topics, Wikipedia is notoriously subject to manipulation and. In 2006, the Wikipedia Watch criticism website listed dozens of examples of in the English Wikipedia. Accuracy of content. See also: On March 5, 2014, Julie Beck writing for The Atlantic magazine in an article titled 'Doctors' #1 Source for Healthcare Information: Wikipedia', stated that 'Fifty percent of physicians look up conditions on the (Wikipedia) site, and some are editing articles themselves to improve the quality of available information.'

Beck continued to detail in this article new programs of Dr. At the University of San Francisco to offer medical school courses to medical students for learning to edit and improve, as well as internal quality control programs within Wikipedia organized by Dr. To improve a group of 200 health-related articles of central medical importance up to Wikipedia's highest standard of articles using its Featured Article and Good Article peer review evaluation process. In a May 7, 2014, follow-up article in The Atlantic titled 'Can Wikipedia Ever Be a Definitive Medical Text?'

, Julie Beck quotes Wikiproject Medicine's Dr. James Heilman as stating: 'Just because a reference is peer-reviewed doesn't mean it's a high-quality reference.' Beck added that: 'Wikipedia has its own peer review process before articles can be classified as 'good' or 'featured.' Heilman, who has participated in that process before, says 'less than 1 percent' of Wikipedia's medical articles have passed. Quality of writing In 2008, researchers at found that the quality of a Wikipedia article would suffer rather than gain from adding more writers when the article lacked appropriate explicit or implicit coordination. For instance, when contributors rewrite small portions of an entry rather than making full-length revisions, high- and low-quality content may be intermingled within an entry., a history professor, stated that American National Biography Online outperformed Wikipedia in terms of its 'clear and engaging prose', which, he said, was an important aspect of good historical writing. Contrasting Wikipedia's treatment of to that of historian in American National Biography Online, he said that both were essentially accurate and covered the major episodes in Lincoln's life, but praised 'McPherson's richer contextualization [.] his artful use of quotations to capture Lincoln's voice [.] and [.] his ability to convey a profound message in a handful of words.'

By contrast, he gives an example of Wikipedia's prose that he finds 'both verbose and dull'. Rosenzweig also criticized the 'waffling—encouraged by the NPOV policy—[which] means that it is hard to discern any overall interpretive stance in Wikipedia history'.

By example, he quoted the conclusion of Wikipedia's article on. While generally praising the article, he pointed out its 'waffling' conclusion: 'Some historians [.] remember him as an opportunistic, bloodthirsty outlaw, while others continue to view him as a daring soldier and local folk hero.' Other critics have made similar charges that, even if Wikipedia articles are factually accurate, they are often written in a poor, almost unreadable style. Frequent Wikipedia critic Andrew Orlowski commented, 'Even when a Wikipedia entry is 100 per cent factually correct, and those facts have been carefully chosen, it all too often reads as if it has been translated from one language to another then into a third, passing an illiterate translator at each stage.' A study of Wikipedia articles on was conducted in 2010 by Yaacov Lawrence of the Kimmel Cancer Center. The study was limited to those articles that could be found in the Physician Data Query and excluded those written at the 'start' class or 'stub' class level. Lawrence found the articles accurate but not very readable, and thought that 'Wikipedia's lack of readability (to non-college readers) may reflect its varied origins and haphazard editing'.

The Economist argued that better-written articles tend to be more reliable: 'inelegant or ranting prose usually reflects muddled thoughts and incomplete information'. Coverage of topics and systemic bias. Parts of this article (those related to ) need to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.

(March 2017) Wikipedia seeks to create a summary of all human knowledge in the form of an online encyclopedia, with each topic covered encyclopedically in one article. Since it has of disk space, it can have far more topics than can be covered by any printed encyclopedia. The exact degree and manner of coverage on Wikipedia is under constant review by its editors, and disagreements are not uncommon (see ).

Wikipedia contains materials that some people may find objectionable, offensive, or pornographic because. The policy has sometimes proved controversial: in 2008, Wikipedia rejected an online petition against the inclusion of in the of its article, citing this policy. The presence of politically, religiously, and pornographically sensitive materials in Wikipedia has led to the by national authorities in, and amongst other countries. • Culture and the arts: 30% (210%) • Biographies and persons: 15% (97%) • Geography and places: 14% (52%) • Society and social sciences: 12% (83%) • History and events: 11% (143%) • Natural and physical sciences: 9% (213%) • Technology and the applied sciences: 4% (−6%) • Religions and belief systems: 2% (38%) • Health: 2% (42%) • Mathematics and logic: 1% (146%) • Thought and philosophy: 1% (160%) These numbers refer only to the quantity of articles: it is possible for one topic to contain a large number of short articles and another to contain a small number of large ones. Through its ' program, Wikipedia has partnered with major public libraries such as the to expand its coverage of underrepresented subjects and articles. A 2011 study conducted by researchers at the indicated that male and female editors focus on different coverage topics. There was a greater concentration of females in the People and Arts category, while males focus more on Geography and Science.

Coverage of topics and selection bias Research conducted by Mark Graham of the in 2009 indicated that the geographic distribution of article topics is highly uneven. Africa is most underrepresented. Across 30 language editions of Wikipedia, historical articles and sections are generally Eurocentric and focused on recent events. An editorial in in 2014 noted that are better covered than as a further example. Systemic bias When multiple editors contribute to one topic or set of topics, may arise, due to the demographic backgrounds of the editors.

In 2011, Wales noted that the unevenness of coverage is a reflection of the demography of the editors, which predominantly consists of young males with high education levels in the developed world (cf. The October 22, 2013 essay by Tom Simonite in MIT's Technology Review titled 'The Decline of Wikipedia' discussed the effect of systemic bias and on the. May follow that of culture generally, for example favoring certain nationalities, ethnicities or majority religions.

It may more specifically follow the biases of, inclining to being young, male, English-speaking, educated, technologically aware, and wealthy enough to spare time for editing. Biases of its own may include over-emphasis on topics such as pop culture, technology, and current events. Of the, in 2013, studied the statistical trends of systemic bias at Wikipedia introduced by editing conflicts and their resolution.

His research examined the of edit warring. Yasseri contended that simple reverts or 'undo' operations were not the most significant measure of counterproductive behavior at Wikipedia and relied instead on the of detecting 'reverting/reverted pairs' or 'mutually reverting edit pairs'. Such a 'mutually reverting edit pair' is defined where one editor reverts the edit of another editor who then, in sequence, returns to revert the first editor in the 'mutually reverting edit pairs'. The results were tabulated for several language versions of Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia's three largest conflict rates belonged to the articles, and. By comparison, for the German Wikipedia, the three largest conflict rates at the time of the study were for the articles covering (i), (ii) and (iii). Researchers from the developed a statistical model to measure systematic bias in the behavior of Wikipedia's users regarding controversial topics.

The authors focused on behavioral changes of the encyclopedia's administrators after assuming the post, writing that systematic bias occurred after the fact. Identifying the filter-bubble problem Dimitra Kessenides, writing for Bloomberg News Weekly, identified the ' problem as a recurrent and long-standing issue at Wikipedia. As Kessenides states: 'If the only way to get an article about the developing world published on Wikipedia was to know a former board member, it was hard to imagine how a random editor in Johannesburg or Bangalore would have any hope. This so-called filter-bubble problem, coined by, co-founder of the viral video site, is the idea that the internet can contribute to the insularity of certain communities.

Filter bubbles have been blamed for the spread of misinformation during the 2016 presidential election and for the failure of pundits in the U.K. To anticipate Brexit. Wikipedia's filter-bubble problem is a particularly acute threat for an organization whose stated mission is 'to empower and engage people around the world.' ' Explicit content.

See also: and “ Problem? What problem? So, you didn't know that Wikipedia has a porn problem?

” — Larry Sanger Wikipedia has been criticized for allowing information of graphic content. Articles depicting what some critics have called objectionable content (such as,,,, and ) contain graphic pictures and detailed information easily available to anyone with access to the internet, including children.

The site also includes such as images and videos of and,,, and photos from films in its articles. The Wikipedia article about —a 1976 album from —features a picture of the album's original cover, which depicts a naked girl. Malata Dvr 0900 Manual. The original release cover caused controversy and was replaced in some countries. In December 2008, access to the Wikipedia article Virgin Killer was blocked for four days by most in the United Kingdom after the (IWF) decided the album cover was a potentially illegal indecent image and added the article's URL to a 'blacklist' it supplies to British internet service providers. In April 2010, Sanger wrote a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, outlining his concerns that two categories of images on contained child pornography, and were in violation of.

Sanger later clarified that the images, which were related to and one about, were not of real children, but said that they constituted 'obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children', under the. That law bans photographic child pornography and cartoon images and drawings of children that are. Sanger also expressed concerns about access to the images on Wikipedia in schools. Spokesman Jay Walsh strongly rejected Sanger's accusation, saying that Wikipedia did not have 'material we would deem to be illegal.

If we did, we would remove it.' Following the complaint by Sanger, Wales deleted sexual images without consulting the community. After some editors who volunteer to maintain the site argued that the decision to delete had been made hastily, Wales voluntarily gave up some of the powers he had held up to that time as part of his co-founder status. He wrote in a message to the Wikimedia Foundation mailing-list that this action was 'in the interest of encouraging this discussion to be about real philosophical/content issues, rather than be about me and how quickly I acted'. Critics, including, noticed that many of the pornographic images deleted from Wikipedia since 2010 have reappeared. Privacy One concern in the case of Wikipedia is the right of a private citizen to remain a 'private citizen' rather than a ' in the eyes of the law.

It is a battle between the right to be anonymous in and the right to be anonymous in ('). A particular problem occurs in the case of an individual who is relatively unimportant and for whom there exists a Wikipedia page against her or his wishes. In January 2006, a German court ordered the shut down within Germany because it stated the full name of, aka 'Tron', a deceased hacker. On February 9, 2006, the injunction against Wikimedia Deutschland was overturned, with the court rejecting the notion that Tron's or that of his parents was being violated. Wikipedia has a ' Volunteer Response Team' that uses the system to handle queries without having to reveal the identities of the involved parties.

This is used, for example, in confirming the permission for using individual images and other media in the project. Main article: Wikipedia has been described as harboring a battleground culture of and. The perceived toxic attitudes and tolerance of violent and abusive language are also reasons put forth for the gender gap in Wikipedia editors. In 2014, a female editor who requested a separate space on Wikipedia to discuss improving civility had her proposal referred to by a male editor using the words 'the easiest way to avoid being called a is not to act like one'. Operation A group of Wikipedia editors may form a to focus their work on a specific topic area, using its associated discussion page to coordinate changes across multiple articles. Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia movement affiliates.

See also: The operation of Wikipedia depends on, a custom-made, and platform written in and built upon the database system. The software incorporates programming features such as a,, a system for, and. MediaWiki is licensed under the and it is used by all Wikimedia projects, as well as many other wiki projects. Originally, Wikipedia ran on written in by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia. The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written.

Several MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of the MediaWiki software. In April 2005, a extension was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from to Lucene for searching. The site currently uses Lucene Search 2.1, [ ] which is written in and based on Lucene library 2.3. In July 2013, after extensive beta testing, a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) extension,, was opened to public use.

It was met with much rejection and criticism, and was described as 'slow and buggy'. The feature was changed from opt-out to opt-in afterward. Automated editing Computer programs called have been used widely to perform simple and repetitive tasks, such as correcting common misspellings and stylistic issues, or to start articles such as geography entries in a standard format from statistical data. One controversial contributor massively creating articles with his bot was reported to create up to ten thousand articles on the Swedish Wikipedia on certain days. There are also some bots designed to automatically notify editors when they make common editing errors (such as unmatched quotes or unmatched parenthesis).

Edits misidentified by a bot as the work of a banned editor can be restored by other editors. Tries to detect and revert vandalism quickly and automatically. Bots can also report edits from particular accounts or IP address ranges, as was done at the time of the MH17 jet downing incident in July 2014. Bots on Wikipedia must be approved prior to activation. According to, the current expansion of Wikipedia to millions of articles would be difficult to envision without the use of such bots. Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and quality. Main article: A ' is a of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia.

These groups often focus on a specific topic area (for example, ), a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). The English Wikipedia currently has over and activity varies. In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Wikipedia introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles.

Articles are rated by WikiProjects. The range of quality classes begins with 'Stub' (very short pages), followed by 'Start', 'C' and 'B' (in increasing order of quality). Community peer review is needed for the article to enter one of the highest quality classes: either ', 'A' or the highest, '. Of the about 4.4 million articles and lists assessed as of March 2015, a little more than 5,000 (0.12%) are featured articles, and fewer than 2,000 (0.04%) are featured lists. One featured article per day, as selected by editors, appears on the of Wikipedia.

The articles can also be rated as per 'importance' as judged by a WikiProject. Currently, there are 5 importance categories: 'low', 'mid', 'high', 'top', and '???'

For unclassified/uncertain level. For a particular article, different WikiProjects may assign different importance levels. The has developed a table (shown below) that displays data of all rated articles by quality and importance, on the English Wikipedia. If an article or list receives different ratings by two or more WikiProjects, then the highest rating is used in the table, pie-charts, and bar-chart.

The software regularly auto-updates the data. Researcher Giacomo Poderi found that articles tend to reach featured status via the intensive work of a few editors. A 2010 study found unevenness in quality among featured articles and concluded that the community process is ineffective in assessing the quality of articles. (32.00%) All rated articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Total 1,237 1,886 1,791 1,153 194 6,261 145 580 690 600 124 2,139 229 445 594 381 81 1,730 2,190 4,999 9,714 10,758 1,758 29,419 12,427 23,562 36,153 29,861 14,629 116,632 10,815 31,713 70,963 100,617 46,611 260,719 17,561 78,519 317,279 848,338 310,671 1,572,368 4,268 31,193 234,603 1,949,950 854,180 3,074,194 3,162 11,779 36,067 99,337 61,743 212,088 Assessed 52,034 184,676 707,854 3,040,995 1,289,991 5,275,550 120 442 1,804 16,782 559,029 578,177 Total 52,154 185,118 709,658 3,057,777 1,849,020 5,853,727.

See also: Wikipedia receives between 25,000 and 60,000 page requests per second, depending on time of day. As of 2008 page requests are first passed to a front-end layer of caching servers. [ ] Further statistics, based on a publicly available 3-month Wikipedia access trace, are available.

Requests that cannot be served from the Squid cache are sent to load-balancing servers running the software, which in turn pass them to one of the Apache web servers for page rendering from the database. The web servers deliver pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the language editions of Wikipedia. To increase speed further, rendered pages are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. Overview of system architecture as of December 2010 Wikipedia currently runs on dedicated of servers (mainly ). As of December 2009, there were 300 in Florida and 44 in. By January 22, 2013, Wikipedia had migrated its primary data center to an facility in.

Internal research and operational development In accordance with growing amounts of incoming donations exceeding seven digits in 2013 as recently reported, the Foundation has reached a threshold of assets which qualify its consideration under the principles of economics to indicate the need for the re-investment of donations into the internal research and development of the Foundation. Two of the recent projects of such internal research and development have been the creation of a Visual Editor and a largely under-utilized 'Thank' tab which were developed for the purpose of ameliorating issues of editor attrition, which have met with limited success. The estimates for reinvestment by industrial organizations into internal research and development was studied by Adam Jaffe, who recorded that the range of 4% to 25% annually was to be recommended, with high end technology requiring the higher level of support for internal reinvestment. At the 2013 level of contributions for Wikimedia presently documented as 45 million dollars, the computed budget level recommended by Jaffe and Caballero for reinvestment into internal research and development is between 1.8 million and 11.3 million dollars annually.

In 2016, the level of contributions were reported by Blomberg News as being at $77 million annually, updating the Jaffe estimates for the higher level of support to between 3.08 million and 19.2 million dollars annually. Internal news publications Community-produced news publications include the, founded in 2005 by Michael Snow, an attorney, Wikipedia administrator and former chair of the board of trustees. It covers news and events from the site, as well as major events from other, such as. Similar publications are the German-language, and the Portuguese-language.

Other past and present community news publications on English Wikipedia include the 'Wikiworld' web comic, the podcast, and newsletters of specific WikiProjects like from and the monthly newsletter from. There are also a number of publications from the Wikimedia Foundation and multilingual publications such as the and.

Access to content Content licensing When the project was started in 2001, all text in Wikipedia was covered by the (GFDL), a license permitting the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work. The GFDL was created for software manuals that come with programs licensed under the. This made it a poor choice for a general reference work: for example, the GFDL requires the reprints of materials from Wikipedia to come with a full copy of the GFDL text.

In December 2002, the was released: it was specifically designed for creative works in general, not just for software manuals. The license gained popularity among bloggers and others distributing creative works on the Web. The Wikipedia project sought the switch to the Creative Commons. Because the two licenses, GFDL and Creative Commons, were incompatible, in November 2008, following the request of the project, the (FSF) released a new version of the GFDL designed specifically to allow Wikipedia to by August 1, 2009. (A new version of the GFDL automatically covers Wikipedia contents.) In April 2009, Wikipedia and its sister projects held a community-wide referendum which decided the switch in June 2009. The handling of media files (e.g. Image files) varies across language editions.

Some language editions, such as the English Wikipedia, include non-free image files under doctrine, while the others have opted not to, in part because of the lack of fair use doctrines in their home countries (e.g. Media files covered by licenses (e.g. ' CC BY-SA) are shared across language editions via repository, a project operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia's accommodation of varying international copyright laws regarding images has led some to observe that its photographic coverage of topics lags behind the quality of the encyclopedic text. The Wikimedia Foundation is not a licensor of content, but merely a hosting service for the contributors (and licensors) of the Wikipedia. This position has been successfully defended in court.

Methods of access Because Wikipedia content is distributed under an open license, anyone can reuse or re-distribute it at no charge. The content of Wikipedia has been published in many forms, both online and offline, outside of the Wikipedia website. • Websites – Thousands of ' exist that republish content from Wikipedia: two prominent ones, that also include content from other reference sources, are and. Another example is, which began to display Wikipedia content in a mobile-device-friendly format before Wikipedia itself did. • Mobile apps – A variety of mobile apps provide access to Wikipedia on, including both and devices (see ). (See also.) • Search engines – Some make special use of Wikipedia content when displaying search results: examples include (via technology gained from ) and.

• Compact discs, DVDs – Collections of Wikipedia articles have been published on. An English version,, contained about 2,000 articles. The Polish-language version contains nearly 240,000 articles. There are German- and Spanish-language versions as well. Also, 'Wikipedia for Schools', the Wikipedia series of CDs / DVDs produced by Wikipedians and, is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia targeted around the and intended to be useful for much of the English-speaking world. The project is available online; an equivalent print encyclopedia would require roughly 20 volumes.

• Printed books – There are efforts to put a select subset of Wikipedia's articles into printed book form. Since 2009, tens of thousands of books that reproduced English, German, Russian and French Wikipedia articles have been produced by the American company and by three subsidiaries of the German publisher. • Semantic Web – The website, begun in 2007, extracts data from the infoboxes and category declarations of the English-language Wikipedia. Wikimedia has created the project with a similar objective of storing the basic facts from each page of Wikipedia and the other WMF wikis and make it available in a queriable format,. This is still under development. As of Feb 2014 it has 15,000,000 items and 1,000 properties for describing them. Obtaining the full contents of Wikipedia for reuse presents challenges, since direct cloning via a is discouraged.

Wikipedia publishes of its contents, but these are text-only; as of 2007 there was no dump available of Wikipedia's images. Several languages of Wikipedia also maintain a, where volunteers answer questions from the general public. According to a study by Pnina Shachaf in the, the quality of the Wikipedia reference desk is comparable to a standard, with an accuracy of 55%. Mobile access. In, Poland Wikipedia's content has also been used in academic studies, books, conferences, and court cases.

The 's website refers to Wikipedia's article on in the 'related links' section of its 'further reading' list for the. The encyclopedia's assertions are increasingly used as a source by organizations such as the US federal courts and the – though mainly for supporting information rather than information decisive to a case.

Content appearing on Wikipedia has also been cited as a source and referenced in some reports. In December 2008, the scientific journal launched a new section for descriptions of families of RNA molecules and requires authors who contribute to the section to also submit a draft article on the for publication in Wikipedia. Wikipedia has also been used as a source in journalism, often without attribution, and several reporters have been dismissed for plagiarizing from Wikipedia. In 2006, recognized Wikipedia's participation (along with,,, and ) in the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction by millions of people worldwide. In July 2007 Wikipedia was the focus of a 30-minute documentary on which argued that, with increased usage and awareness, the number of references to Wikipedia in popular culture is such that the word is one of a select band of 21st-century nouns that are so familiar (, Facebook, YouTube) that they no longer need explanation. On September 28, 2007, politician raised a parliamentary question with the minister of cultural resources and activities about the necessity of.

He said that the lack of such freedom forced Wikipedia, 'the seventh most consulted website', to forbid all images of modern Italian buildings and art, and claimed this was hugely damaging to tourist revenues. Receiving the A Mission of Enlightenment award On September 16, 2007, reported that Wikipedia had become a focal point in the, saying: 'Type a candidate's name into Google, and among the first results is a Wikipedia page, making those entries arguably as important as any ad in defining a candidate. Already, the presidential entries are being edited, dissected and debated countless times each day.' An October 2007 article, titled 'Wikipedia page the latest status symbol', reported the recent phenomenon of how having a Wikipedia article vindicates one's notability. Active participation also has an impact.

Law students have been assigned to write Wikipedia articles as an exercise in clear and succinct writing for an uninitiated audience. A working group led by (formed as a part of the -based project ) in its report called Wikipedia 'the best-known example of crowdsourcing. That far exceeds traditionally-compiled information sources, such as encyclopedias and dictionaries, in scale and depth.' Wikipedians meeting after the Asturias awards ceremony Wikipedia won two major awards in May 2004. The first was a Golden Nica for Digital Communities of the annual contest; this came with a €10,000 (£6,588; $12,700) grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival in later that year.

The second was a Judges' for the 'community' category. Wikipedia was also nominated for a 'Best Practices' Webby award. In 2007, readers of brandchannel.com voted Wikipedia as the fourth-highest brand ranking, receiving 15% of the votes in answer to the question 'Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?' In September 2008, Wikipedia received A Mission of Enlightenment award of Werkstatt Deutschland along with,, and. The award was presented to Wales.

In 2015, Wikipedia was awarded both the annual, which recognizes exceptional contributions to culture, society or social sciences, and the on International Cooperation. Speaking at the Asturian Parliament in Oviedo, the city that hosts the awards ceremony, praised the work of the Wikipedia users. The night of the ceremony, members of the Wikimedia Foundation held a meeting with Wikipedians from all parts of Spain, including the local.

Many parodies target Wikipedia's openness and susceptibility to inserted inaccuracies, with characters vandalizing or modifying the online encyclopedia project's articles. Comedian has parodied or referenced Wikipedia on numerous episodes of his show and coined the related term, meaning 'together we can create a reality that we all agree on—the reality we just agreed on'. Another example can be found in 'Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence', a July 2006 front-page article in, as well as the 2010 The Onion article 'L.A. Law' Wikipedia Page Viewed 874 Times Today'. In an episode of the television comedy, which aired in April 2007, an incompetent office manager () is shown relying on a hypothetical Wikipedia article for information on tactics in order to assist him in negotiating lesser pay for an employee. The tactics he used failed, as a joke about the unreliability of Wikipedia and what anyone can do to change its contents. Viewers of the show tried to add the episode's mention of the page as a section of the actual Wikipedia article on negotiation, but this effort was prevented by other users on the article's talk page.

', a 2007 episode of the television show, played on the perception that Wikipedia is an unreliable reference tool with a scene in which reacts to a patient who says that a Wikipedia article indicates that the reverses the effects of by retorting that the same editor who wrote that article also wrote the. In 2008, the comedic website produced a video sketch named 'Professor Wikipedia', in which the fictitious Professor Wikipedia instructs a class with a medley of unverifiable and occasionally absurd statements. The comic strip from May 8, 2009, features a character supporting an improbable claim by saying 'Give me ten minutes and then check Wikipedia.' In July 2009, broadcast a comedy series called, which was set on a website which was a parody of Wikipedia. Some of the sketches were directly inspired by Wikipedia and its articles.

In 2010, comedian Daniel Tosh encouraged viewers of his show,, to visit the show's Wikipedia article and edit it at will. On a later episode, he commented on the edits to the article, most of them offensive, which had been made by the audience and had prompted the article to be locked from editing. On August 23, 2013, the published a cartoon with this caption: 'Dammit, have you considered the pronoun war that this is going to start on your Wikipedia page?' In December 2015, stated, in a letter published in newspaper, that as an historian he resorted to Wikipedia 'at least a dozen times a day', and had never yet caught it out. He described it as 'a work of reference as useful as any in existence', with so wide a range that it is almost impossible to find a person, place or thing that it has left uncovered, and that he could never have written his last two books without it. Sister projects – Wikimedia. Main article: Wikipedia has also spawned several sister projects, which are also wikis run by the.

These other include, a dictionary project launched in December 2002,, a collection of quotations created a week after Wikimedia launched,, a collection of collaboratively written free textbooks and annotated texts,, a site devoted to free-knowledge multimedia,, for citizen journalism, and, a project for the creation of free learning materials and the provision of online learning activities. Another sister project of Wikipedia,, is a catalogue of species. In 2012, an editable travel guide, and, an editable knowledge base, launched.