Who has not heard of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which has made le Grand Larousse and the Encylopædia Universalis seem old-fashioned? Yet it dates back only to 2001! In 2020, the English-language edition contained more than six million articles and had around 136,000 active users—people who had contributed at least once during the previous 30 days. The French-language edition ranked third, however, with 2.2 million articles and around 20,000 active users, not far behind the German-language edition, with 2.4 million articles.
Getting started…
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But why "Wikipedia"? The prefix "wiki" comes from the Hawaiian wiki-wiki, meaning "quick", but with the rise of the online encyclopedia, it has come to mean "collaborative". This collaboration is both Wikipedia's strength and the source of its shortcomings. Anyone can write whatever they please: all they have to do is click the "Edit" button (without even registering!). However, if you add fanciful material to an article, your lines will quickly be deleted or at least reworked, since the editors watching the page will be notified of your changes.
Have you ever been quietly reading an article when a small typo catches your eye?
Click the "Edit" button; you will be warned that, because you are not registered, your changes will be recorded in the page history along with your IP address. Make your changes, briefly describe them, and publish them.
