On this day in 2001, the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia launched. As of early last year it had over 6.8 million articles in over 300 languages.
Wikipedia was 'take two' for entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and project developer Lawrence Sanger. Nupedia, which launched the year prior, saw only two articles published in its first six months. Wikipedia was far more successful, netting over 20,000 articles in 18 languages in its first year. Five years in, it reached a million articles.
The encyclopedia still generates occasional scandal because of misstatements in articles, but the website can also be surprisingly on-point. A 2014 study in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association noted that articles on herbal supplements contained useful information on the uses and side effects of them but also lacked some information on drug interactions and other issues. The study itself didn't discourage people from using the site—rather, it said readers should cross-check their learning against another source.
To learn more about how Wikipedia oversees the writing and editing of articles, you can read the article "Reliability of Wikipedia" on, well, Wikipedia.
