Wikipedia is a free, free, content open encyclopedia collaborative project, with participants from around the world. The site uses a wiki, which means that anyone can edit any article or entry in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization.

Wikipedia was started on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger, and several passionate English-speaking participants. About three years later, in March 2004, there were about 6,000 active participants who had compiled 600,000 entries in 50 languages.

All text and most images and other content in Wikipedia are published under the GNU Free Documentation License to ensure the freedom and openness of the content. All articles written here will follow the copyleft protocol, and all content can be freely distributed and copied.