Simple Wikipedia Website Template

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This article is about the writing implement. For other uses, see Pencil (disambiguation).

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001, Wikipedia has been hosted since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization funded mainly by donations from readers.[1] Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history.[2][3]

Nupedia

Various collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before the start of Wikipedia, but with limited success.[13] Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process.[14] It was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis, a web portal company. Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia.[15][16] Nupedia was initially licensed under its own Nupedia Open Content License, but before Wikipedia was founded, Nupedia switched to the GNU Free Documentation License at the urging of Richard Stallman.[W 2] Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia,[17] while Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal.[citation needed] On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia.[W 3]