15th January is observed across the globe as the day when one of the most popular open source information resource was born. Interestingly, Creative Commons, an American Non-Profit organization, also registered their website on the same day Wikipedia came into existence.
Creative Commons was founded by by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred. It created the free and open copyright system which Wikipedia utilized.
Wikipedia even has a Birthday Committee. The ones who register their Birthdays on the talk pages of the website are wished by the Committee. Wikipedia has become a go-to website across the planet for people to visit in order to get all sorts of information on any subject.
Wikipedia also came up with Wikiversity, here teachers from varied backgrounds can come and create study materials for everyone around the world. One will not get any degree from Wikiversity but it is definitely a great platform to enhance knowledge.
Although with time, a lot of questions have been raised on the content available on the website. It is a widely known fact that Wikipedia pages are edited innumerable times, some suggest that the website has had over a billion edits and as a result, there has been a lot of discussion on the credibility of the content available on Wikipedia. A lot of articles have also been deleted from the website. Political organizations have accused Wikipedia's editors of following a set agenda.
Moreover, Wikipedia went all out asking its readers to donate a while ago. This raised many questions about Wikipedia as people were not able to comprehend why one of the biggest websites in the world with billions of views on its pages needed money to survive.
However, it is factually correct that Wikipedia has been under the scanner for a lot of reasons but it is impossible to deny the importance and relevance of it in the age of the Internet.
