The Wealth of Free Knowledge: Wikipedia Celebrates 10 Years

By Laura McNamara | December 1, 2010 at 1:09 pm

Knowledge is expensive. Conferences and consulting fees are hundreds, even thousands of dollars. College and university degrees cost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet, one website continually offers an ever-growing database of information and expertise… for free.

“Let’s just say some people were skeptical of the notion that volunteers from all across the world could come together to create a remarkable pool of human knowledge – all for the simple purpose of sharing.”

Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that operates Wikipedia – the world’s #1 online encyclopedia. Wikipedia is currently celebrating its 10^th anniversary in offering free, volunteer-supported content on the Web with “no ads. No agenda. No strings attached.”

Wales says nearly a third of Internet users across the globe – about 400 million people – log on to Wikipedia and its sister sites every month. And though it is the 5^th most popular website in the world, users won’t find a single outside advertiser within Wikimedia’s network.

“Wikipedia is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things,” declares Justmeans writer Ritika Puri. “People like us write Wikipedia, one word at a time. People like us fund it, one donation at a time. It’s proof of our collective potential to change the world.”

In honor of Wikipedia’s ten years of success in nurturing the free exchange of information , Wales is appealing to users to contribute both their expertise and their dollars. The Wikimedia foundation is also currently hiring for those who feel the urge to become more heavily involved in the commitment to “a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.”

Users can get access to even more free resources through these additional Wikimedia sites: