Ivan Petkov

GRReporter correspondent in Albena

“Running under a free license, Wikipedia allows free access to information and is created by thousands of volunteering users.” That is what Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and chairman of the board of directors of Foundation Wikipedia, said in his key-note speech at the start of the second media congress, taking place as a part of the media festival “Mediamixx” in beach resort Albena. Times magazine describes Jimmy Wales as one of the top 100 most influential people on the planet, while Forbes portray him as one among the most significant people for the development of Internet.

What is the message that the creator of Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia tries to deliver? It can be explained in four simple principles:

·          The freedom to create;

·          The freedom to share;

·          The freedom to change;

·          The freedom to develop, by sharing your work.

Wikipedia originated in the so called “.com bust” as an effort to overhaul the imperfections and ideas for the Internet of that period. Starting with limited financial resources compensated by incredible enthusiasm, Wikipedia ended up as a large community of volunteering users. Following the four principles mentioned above, Wikipedia- an organization of 25 official members and a community of thousands of supporters - has become one of the four most influential web-sites in the net along with Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

Mr. Wells also tells the story of his project called Wikia. Started in 2004, it aims at consolidating a number of thematic web-sites in a unified library of its own kind which will unite different communities according to their interests. Here are several interesting facts about Wikipedia that you may not know:

·          Articles written in English represent 20% of the total volume of contents of the free encyclopedia. This share is expected to fall to 10% shortly, mainly due to the quick rise in the number of articles written in foreign languages.

·          The main factors facilitating Wikipedia’s expansion are:

1.     Broadband internet connectivity.

2.     Level of English fluency, including general literacy.

3.     Climate – with a humorous connotations Mr Wales mentions the fact that articles in Norwegian have increased significantly in a short period, mainly due to the bad weather in Norway and people’s desire to find different occupations, including posting articles for Wikipedia.

·          The biggest lingual group in India, comprised of 250 million people fluent in Hindi, has only 25 thousand articles in Wikipedia.

·          Wikipedia is the eleventh most-popular web-site in Iran.

Below, exclusively for the GRReporter readers, is a photo with Jimmy Wales, founder of the free encyclopedia – Wikipedia: