Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a massive online encyclopedia founded in 2001. Its open-content nature has caused it to grow larger than any other encyclopedia ever created, and has inspired many other specialized "wikis," including CarlWiki. Additionally, Wikipedia's open-source software, Mediawiki, is used by CarlWiki.

Wikipedia consists of encyclopedias in several languages, which can be found at http://wikipedia.org/. The largest is the English version, which contains over 1,000,000 articles as of early 2006.

Several Carleton students are known to be active contributors to Wikipedia, as well as readers. There is a small Carleton group called "Wikipedians" on Facebook.

In some classes, it is considered appropriate to cite Wikipedia in a paper. However, due to the fact that anyone can edit articles on Wikipedia, there is no guarantee as to the accuracy of the information. Therefore, it is best to corroborate such information with another source. Fortunately, sources are often cited in Wikipedia's articles.

External links

• Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Official site
• Wikipedia - Article about itself
• Carleton College - Wikipedia article