Wikipedia
Free content, multilingual online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through a model of open collaboration, using a wiki-based editing system.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application type
Platforms
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- iPad
- Kindle Fire
- MediaWiki
- F-Droid
Features
- Multiple languages
- Ad-free
- Encyclopedia
- User generated
- Community-based
- Crowdsourced
- Wiki
- IFTTT Integration
- WordPress Integration
- WYSIWYG Support
- Dark Mode
- HTTPS Support
- Non profit
- Nearby Search
- Sample packs
- Works Offline
Wikipedia News & Activities
Highlights • All activities
Recent News
- POX published news article about Wikipedia
Wikipedia has finally launched a dark mode, one of the most highly-requested featuresWikipedia has finally introduced a highly anticipated dark mode feature, aimed at enhancing accessi...
Recent activities
Wikipedia information
AlternativeTo Categories
Education & Reference, Travel & Location, Online ServicesApple AppStore
- Updated Sep 23, 2024
- 4.38 avg rating
What is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is a free, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia has 62 million articles (6.7 million in English), which have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Wikipedia website.
Comments and Reviews
This is one of the best examples of what a community can do, with no money interest. Yes, the information itself can't be 100% trusted, but you can gather basic stuff by reading the page, or you can check the reference section for more reliable sources.
thanks a lot to wikipedia without which I won't be this me today!
wikipedia admins are terrible. They don't want you to know the truth and will remove everything. I hope there will be an alternative for wikipedia.
Multiple languages
Who doesn't love Wikipedia, I mean c'mon
Extremely large source of general information about a wide variety of topics, no equivalent comes close in my observation. It is completely free, and with the notable exception of occasional fundraising ads, lacks any advertising. It is generally a very smooth reading experience. Minor corrections to articles are usually quite easy to make, provided they are not contentious.
Occasionally, Wikipedia will run obnoxious fundraising campaigns. Problems of (predominantly leftist) bias and inconsistent enforcement of rules also persist. The issue of bias is near omnipresent on articles related to U.S. politics, which IMO comes across sometimes as if written by CNN.
That being said, for a user-generated encyclopedia, it handles bias relatively well compared to other alternatives. It has held up reasonably well especially in this age of electronic mis/disinformation. Just be wary of politically contentious articles.
The idea of Wikipedia being under a "spontaneous order" is a bit of misnomer as there is an army of bots and users with higher privileges that tirelessly combat the endless stream of vandals and spammers. This is very fortunate for both Wikipedia and readers as without these numerous technical/human interventions, the site would be a complete mess.
There is also an intense amount of bureaucracy that lies underneath the surface. You could spend many years attempting to familiarize yourself with all the rules and guidelines that have been written. While I do think this bureaucracy exists for benevolent purposes, it is too complicated for most users to adhere to — hence the selective enforcement of it.
I am not a fan of the fluid definition of "consensus" they have and would prefer a clearer majoritarian-based system.
Overall however, it is amazing that a site like Wikipedia still exists. I would say it has had as a whole a positive influence on the Internet and humanity.
Not competitive compared to majority of adequate commercial enterprises which just do their own things.