Everything You Need to Know About Wikipedia

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Everything You Need to Know About Wikipedia
Everything You Need to Know About Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the famous sites on the Internet. It is educational, controversial, and having a Wiki profile can be highly reliable for your business. It is the world’s favorite encyclopedia that covers every conceivable subject.

Anyone can start a Wiki page or edit it, on any subject they love. The page is then scrutinized by the editor who selects whether or not the page stays. Wikipedia is available in several, famous languages. It is one of the most accessed websites. If you search anything on Google, Wikipedia is mostly the first page you would see in the search results.

The Pros and Cons of an Open-Source Content

The Wikipedia, no doubt, has a lot of benefits that have been listed below.

  • You can get add a lot of data in a short span of time
  • One can get a huge variety of subjects on the site, some of which are extensive
  • If someone spots an error, they can quickly edit it
  • You get a lot of different approaches to a topic

Following are the disadvantages for a crowd-sourced content on a website.

  • If one can add a lot of information in a short span of time, it is easy to slip in misinformation and confusion. It may be some time before it is noticed
  • It is easy to start arguments over new articles. Especially if a Wikipedia editor decides it has to go, and the contributor feels insulted
  • Anyone, especially people who are ineligible for a Wiki page, make one anyway, in the hopes that it won’t be noticed by the Wikipedia page creation agency
  • A person who has a page — a politician, a celebrity, etc. — quite often makes an unknown account, to eradicate anything negative; rewrite parts to make them look good; make their qualifications look better, and so on. Quite a few politicians have been caught doing this. @CongressEdits is a Twitter bot that tweets anonymous edits made to Wikipedia from IP addresses in the US Congress.
  • It is a good thing if an error is spotted and changed immediately. But not if someone disputes the change and begins arguing about it.
  • Finally, pages get destroyed. Some sites consider this amusing, and Wikipedia actually has a page on the most vandalized pages.

Searching Wikipedia

You can enhance your search on Wikipedia with the help of list of Wikipedia search tips and tricks. It delivers all the tips and tricks to look for what you want and also have some gems, you might not know that even exist. You only need to know the correct “wildcards”.

Changing Skins

Wikipedia has hardly improved from the time it has been operative. However, it does have a list of designs both operational and non-operational. There is also mobile version of the page that appears beautifully on your mobile phone screens.

Due to the compactness of smartphones and tablets, the enhanced version of Wikipedia is extremely useful. The iOS app is fast, you can read pages while being offline and the app is 100% open-source. And the Android app is the same as iOS.

The Ultimate Software Which Runs Wikipedia

MediaWiki is free and open-source software that operates Wikipedia. The software helps you in collecting and organizing information and makes it available for people. It is strong, multilingual, reliable, and free of cost.

Browsing Wikipedia from the Front Page

Wikipedia can be irresistible. The first page of the website gives you lots of links. The web page has never done any changes. It is the same as it always have been. It has articles that are related to someone reputed or something doubtful that no one has ever heard about. The best thing about Wikipedia as your daily news source is that the breaking news is updated and revised by contributors and editors.

The Did You Know (DYK) section will expose uncommon facts to trivia lovers. The In The News section informs you about all that is currently happening in the world and also sets up pages for reputed people and events, that are connected with the news and current affairs. It is also said that the Current Events page on Wikipedia is the best source to refer for daily news. It is neutral and you can get an impartial view of trending news.

The On This Day section tells you what happened today in the history. This is actually good if it is your birthday, you will come to know about something remarkable that happened on the same day. And lastly, the prominent feature is the search engine that helps you search the material you are looking for.

Summary

Professors and teachers are also interested in usage of modern technology in education and understand the importance of e-learning sites like Wikipedia. Being an online encyclopedia, Wiki is becoming a great source for new learners and students. Also, if you find any error in the information, you have the right to change it anytime, anywhere.