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Case Study on famous Open Source Projects

By Monika Sharma, on February 17, 2020

Wikipedia - Case Study on famous Open Source Projects

Wikipedia is no less than an encyclopedia available free of cost to the public nowadays. If you want to write a passage or learn about a famous person or thing, you are just one click away from your desired article.

The Birth of Wikipedia

Wikipedia was registered with the domain Wikipedia.com on January 12, 2001, and with the domain Wikipedia.org on January 13, 2001, before its launch on January 15, 2001. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger were the founders of Wikipedia, with Wikimedia as the founding organization.

The Meaning Behind the Name

The name Wikipedia holds great meaning. In the Hawaiian language, "wiki" means quick, and "pedia" means learning.

Wikipedia's Rise to Fame

The world-famous Alexa from Amazon ranked Wikipedia in the 5th position in the most visited website category. Before Wikipedia, many similar concepts were introduced, but none of them worked. Nupedia, the first one to come up with the concept of an online encyclopedia, developed a free, English-language-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by industry experts and reviewed before publication on the internet.

Open Source and User Contributions

Wikipedia, being open-source, took the lead as it allowed everyone using it to contribute. Wikipedia touched the milestone of more than 42 million distinct visitors to its site in 2007 and featured for the very first time in the top 10 most visited websites, and it has been there since then.

Growth and Recognition

Wikipedia showed constant growth and was appreciated by each individual who used it. In the years 2004 and 2005, Wikipedia won numerous awards and gained a lot of acknowledgment. In 2005, it became a top 100 site according to Alexa.com. Wikipedia's one-millionth article was released in March 2006, and in just three years, that number grew to a total of 13 million articles available in multiple languages.

Wikipedia by the Numbers

Talking about the stats, Wikipedia has kept its number game strong. It is now available in 303 languages and contains more than 5.9 million articles on various topics. There are more than 284,000 active users on Wikipedia, and over 83 million users have registered themselves on Wikipedia to date. The admin of Wikipedia comprises 1,145 members.

Wikipedia's Non-Profit Status

Wikimedia made Wikipedia a non-profit, non-commercial organization to provide people a platform where they can search for anything. Wikipedia's founder pledged never to have promotions or advertisements on its site, a pledge they have kept. Wikipedia features a simple search engine and a reliable format.

Technology Behind Wikipedia

Wikipedia uses MediaWiki software to run its site. Its primary U.S. server farm, comprising around 300 servers, is located in Tampa, Florida. Wikipedia also has a European server farm in Amsterdam, EvoSwitch, with around 50 servers. There are provisional plans to secure another server farm in Virginia. Wikipedia currently uses Ubuntu Linux 2.6 as its OS with a standard LAMP package.

Competitors and Challenges

With great success comes great responsibility and competitors. Wikiwand is one of the biggest competitors in the market, with its pleasing layout being a plus point. Wikipedia has faced certain criticisms over time for providing biased and fake news. In response, Facebook announced in 2017 that it would start providing wiki links to all the fake news spread across the internet. YouTube also announced similar plans, which were set to launch in 2018.

Ref: History of Wikipedia