Wikipedia Slovenia

Primož Peterlin: WIKIPEDIA - THE BASICS ABOUT THE FREE WEB ENCYCLOPEDIA

Wikipedia is a free web encyclopaedia, which came to existence with the collaboration of tens of thousands of volunteers from the entire world. It contains entries in 195 different languages and is sponsored by non-profit foundation Wikimedia. It is comprised of traditionally encyclopaedic topics and at the same time serves as an almanac and anthology. Its founder, Jimmy Wales, describes it as an "attempt to create and offer a free encyclopaedia of the highest quality to every individual in his own language." Wikipedia is one of the most cited web pages on the internet and is visited daily by 50 million users. Wikipedia contains approximately a million and a half entries, more than a half million of those are in English, more than 200 000 in German and more than 100 000 in Japanese. Slovenian language ranks in 20th place with 11 000 entries. Since its beginnings - it was established on 15th of January 2001 as a complement to "serious" project Nupedia - it continuously grew and set in motion other closely linked projects like Wiktionary, Wikibooks and Wikinews. Entries are edited by volunteers in the system, characteristic to Wiki: articles can be edited and changed by anybody at any time. Co-workers of Wikipedia themselves are in charge of unbiased view of the articles, so that the views of experts and quotes from the literature are summarized without an attempt to hull the "objective truth" out of them. Thanks to is open nature it's susceptible for inaccuracies and vandalism. The status of Wikipedia as a reference work is somewhat controversial. On the one hand it receives commendations on account of its free accessibility, freedom of editing and its very large range of topics. On the other hand it's being criticised for the lack of authority in comparison with traditional encyclopaedias, systematic bias and the lack of representation of traditional encyclopaedic topics. Wikipedia's entries are available under conditions, stated in the licence of free documentation of the GNU project (GNU Free Documentation License) and are mirrored on several servers around the world, but they haven't yet been released in a defined form. Until March 2005 at least 45 000 people actively contributed to Wikipedia, 20 000 of those contributed to English, 10 000 to German, 2.400 to Japanese and 70 to Slovenian edition. In the same month 13 000 people actively participated in Wikipedia (five or more contributions monthly), 6000 of which participated in English, 2800 in German, 700 in Japanese and 30 in Slovenian edition, and there were 2300 people, who participated very actively (100 or more contributions a month), 900 of which participated in English, 450 in German, 130 in Japanese and 10 in Slovenian edition.

Administrators of Slovene Wikipedia: "Heretik", Andrej Jakobčič, Ajda Kljun ("Missmarple"), Klemen Kocjančič, Igor Križanovskij, Roman Maurer, Jani Melik ("xJam"), Primož Peterlin, Matija Podhraški