It’s extremely known and used, the Diy- encyclopedia Wikipedia. Its name is a blending of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning “quick”) and encyclopedia. Most of the people consider  Wikipedia an important source of information also because a lot of information gets added in a short space of time. You can get a wide variety of subjects on the site, some of which are eclectic. If someone spots an error, they can quickly change it. You can get a lot of different angles to a subject and use different themes but not always relatable. Anyway, Wikipedia is one of the biggest resources in the internet to find all types of information we need and is the eighth-most-visited site in the world. The English-language version recently surpassed 6 million articles.

But who invented Wikipedia? Who got the idea of creating this website?

Jimmy Wales is the man who started Wikipedia, the one behind the concept of this very successful and controversial on-line encyclopedia.

He was born in Alabama, more precisely in Huseville in 1966.

He received his education from his mother and grandmother, he also used to go to a small private school. Wales obviously spent a lot of time studying the World Bool Encyclopedia.

Then he went on to attend the University of Alabama and he gained a Master Degree and he was that skilled that in the meantime he taught at the university, he studied for PhD in France. He became so successful that he earned enough money to guarantee his family welfare for the rest of their lives.

Lucky him!

He also launched a search portal called Bomis but after that he got some unpleasant accuses by some journalists.

(He was accused of making money selling pornography but he denied this).

Who inspired Wales?

Wales was a follower of Ayn Rand’s philosophy which says that knowledge and understanding are fundamental; he taught as well that happiness comes from heroic and noble acts.

What a clever and open-minded philosophy!

So Wales had been influenced from Nupedia.com, an on-line encyclopedia through which everyone could share their knowledge.

In 2001, the following year, he created Wikipedia but its purpose was to collect all the contributions for Nupedia site but Wikipedia literally exploded!

Nobody could predict such a success; in just five years it has grown into one of the world’s largest and most used encyclopedias with versions in 100 languages.

Who collaborates with Wales?

The heroes of Wikipedia are not giants in their fields but so-called WikiGnomes editors and volunteers who sweep up typos, arrange articles in neatly categorized piles and scrub away vandalism.

As Wikipedia isn’t raised up wholesale but like a barn, it’s assembled grain by grain, like a termite mound. The smallness of the grains, and of the workers carrying them, makes the project’s scale seem impossible. But it is exactly this incrementalism that puts immensity within reach.

Wales’ (and his team) mission is to offer the world free knowledge for everyone.

He explains: “We want to share knowledge in a million ways. We have the people to do it and we have the technology to do it. And we will do it.”

Some brave and inspiring words that should let us think about the importance of always studying and learning new things in all the ways possible.

Because it’s a fact: only knowledge can give us freedom.