WIKIPEDIAImagine a world in which every single person is given

free access to the sum of all human knowledge…

AJENDA

• Quick Intro• What is Wikipedia?• BFT

[ Business, Functionality , Technology ]• FAB

[ Features, Advantages, Benefits ]• PPF

[ Past, Present, Future ]• Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

• The latest generation of collaborative Web-based tools, namely wikis, blogs and more, offer many unique and powerful information sharing and collaboration features.

• They also have the added advantage of taking the technical skill out of these features, allowing users to focus on the information and collaborative tasks themselves.

• Wikis, blogs and photoblogs carry the potential of complementing, improving and adding new collaborative dimensions to the many Web-based education,.

What is Wikipedia? “The Free Encyclopedia”

• a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project

• Wiki+ (encyclo)Pedia = Wikipedia

• Not only a community-developed encyclopedia, a well-linked Web site, (boosts Google rankings)

What is Wikipedia? “The Free Encyclopedia”

• A Collaborative Dictionary.

• Everyone becomes an author, an editor, and a publisher.

• Web site allows (add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some content, sometimes without registration. )

BUSINESS

• Non-profit foundation• 10,265,335 registered users,

including 1,673 administrators

• Aims to distribute a free encyclopedia to every

• Funded by public donations

• Applying for grants

BUSINESS

• One of the largest reference web sites (Top 10 in Google)

• Attracting around 65 million visitors monthly as of 2009

• More than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 13,000,000 articles

• More than 260 languages

• 2,987,097 and more articles, 17,648,485 pages

FUNCTIONALITIES

• A wiki page starts more or less empty

• Wiki pages are connected by internal hyperlinks,

• And every page should be connected

• No ownership of wiki content – anyone can work on any page

• Apache/PHP webservers in the middle

• Database backend (MySql)

TECHNOLOGY

• Web 2.0

• Written in PHP

• RDBMS MySQL or PostgreSQL

• OS Cross platform

TECHNOLOGY

• Wikipedia is running MediaWiki version 1.16 alpha-wmf(r54535 ).

• Type WikiLicenseGPLv2+

• Website mediawiki.org(English)

• Available in over 300 languages

FEATURES

– Editing features (simple markup)

– Quality control features (versioning, recent changes

– Organisational features (categories…)

FEATURES

• Scalable and multilingual

• Community features (talk pages, user pages, access levels)

• Other features (page protection…)

ADVANTAGES

• Multilingualism/multiculturalism• Amazing size• It’s remarkably good

– Easy to create– Provides high-profile information (Google-friendly)– Allows community to enhance &

develop content

ADVANTAGES

• Free access (if you have the internet)

• Fundamental change to information production, distribution , and authority

• Freedom to:

-copy

-modify

BENIFITS• provide clear benefits to colleges and schools

– Wikis can make it easier for students to create Web content, avoiding complexities of CMSs

– Lecture notes– Tutorial activities– Student journals– Latest news– Wikiquizzes

BENIFITS

• Flexible governance

• Freedom in the sense of GNU

• Collaborative software which respects the users

• Open and free

PAST

• Wikipedia was launched on its own domain, wikipedia.com, on January 15 2001

• Until 2001 wikis were virtually unknown outside of the restricted circles of computer programmers

• Wikipedia was originally conceived as a complement to Nupedia, a free on-line encyclopedia founded by Jimmy Wales

PRESENT

• English Wikipedia larger than Britannica and Microsoft Encarta combined

• German >220,000 article

• Japanese > 110,000 articles

• French >100,000 articles

• Swedish > 71,000 articles

• Nearly 10 million across 260 languages

FUTURE

• Uniform– (many) topics are incomplete, unclear,

and possibly wrong– (many other) topics are well

explained, illustrated, referenced

• Uniformly reviewed– some articles get more attention than

others

FUTURE

• Finished

– Wikipedia articles can always change

• Complete

– There’s always something else to add!

CONCLUSIONS

ONEMANY

Knowledge

ONE MANY

Knowledge

MANYMANY

Knowledge

CONCLUSIONS

• Wikipedia is Community

• Wikipedia is most useful as a quick and simple way to find basic reference information. It will never be a source of primary literature.

• Wikipedia is, by and large, accurate most of the time. However, until some formal validation process is introduced, the information can not be considered 100% reliable.

THANK U…

By… Sounthar Rajan A.,

www.rajansounthar.blogspot.com www.rajansounthar.ucoz.com