Facts about Wikipedia April 2018
| Created | 2001 |
| Number of Visitors | 374 million per month |
| Number of Contributors | 71,000 |
| Number of articles, in all languages | 47,000,000 |
| Total Number of Languages | 299 |
| Total number of English language articles |
5,510,945 As of 18 April 2018, there are 5,615,569 articles in the English Wikipedia |
| Average number of new articles per day for the past year, English Wikipedia | 684 |
| Total number of new articles so far, this year, English Wikipedia |
73,712 |
| Total number of edits | 896,071,047 |
| Size of Encyclopedia Britannica in print volumes | 32 |
| Estimated Size of the English language articles in Wikipedia in print volumes |
Nov 2017=2,563 April 2018 =2,652 |
Source: Wikipedia:About, and Wikipedia:Statistics Wikimedia Foundation
Wikipedia (
i/ˌwɪkᵻˈpiːdi.ə/ or i/ˌwɪkiˈpiːdi.ə/ wik-i-pee-dee-ə) is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of openly editable content. The name "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia.
| Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous volunteers who write without pay. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism. Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or, if they choose to, with their real identity. |
Since the articles in WIkipedia can be edited by anyone, they are unreliable and should not be used as a source for your paper. However, there is nothing wrong in using Wikipedia as a place for starting your research. The many references or footnotes that are displayed at the bottom of the article page, (that were used to create the article) are still useful. Many times by looking at the references at the end of a article in Wikipedia, you can discover previously unknown sources.