3 + 2 = 5^[citation_needed] --Wikipedia
Wikipedia is an "officially non-commercial", partially free/open censored ("child protecting", "ideology filtering", ...) pseudoleftist online encyclopedia of general knowledge and social network written mostly by volunteers, running on free software, which used to be editable by anyone but currently allows only politically approved members of the public to edit a subset of its less visible non-locked articles (i.e. it is a wiki); it is the largest and perhaps most famous encyclopedia created to date, sadly littered by propaganda and countless other issues that make it inferior to other encyclopedias. It is licensed under CC-BY-SA and is run by the nonprofit organization Wikimedia Foundation. It is accessible at https://wikipedia.org. Wikipedia is a mainstream information source and therefore extremely politically censored^1234567891011121314151617181920. Wikipedia's claim of so called "neutral point of view" (NPOV) has by now become a hilarious insult to human intelligence. Digdeeper aptly called Wikipedia the Ministry of Truth.
WARNING: DO NOT DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA as the donations aren't used so much for running the servers but rather for their political activities (which are furthermore unethical). See https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4458111/the-wiki-piggy-bank. Rather donate to Encyclopedia Dramatica. Also please go vandalize Wikipedia right now, it's become too corrupt and needs to go down, vandalizing is fun and you'll get banned sooner or later anyway :) Some tips on vandalizing Wikipedia can be found at https://encyclopediadramatica.online/Wikipedia#Tips_On_Vandalizing_Wikpedia or https://wiki.soyjaks.party/Vandalism.
{ Lol I'm banned at Wikipedia now (UPDATE: blocked globally on all their sites now, can't even log in and defend on my talk page), reason being I expressed unpopular opinions on my personal website OUTSIDE Wikipedia :D UPDATE: one guy messaged me more people started to be banned and invited me to an anti-wikipedia forum here https://wikipediasucks.co/forum/, check it out. Also some more stuff on censorship and bias on Wikipedia: https://www.serendipity.li/cda/censorship_at_wikipedia.htm. ~drummyfish }
Shortly after the project started in 2001, Wikipedia used to be a great project -- it was very similar to how LRS wiki looks right now; it was relatively unbiased, objective, well readable and used plain HTML and ASCII art (see it as https://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePage), however over the years it got corrupt and by 2020s it has become a political battleground and kind of a politically correct joke. A tragic and dangerous joke at that. It's still useful in many ways but it just hardcore censors facts and even edits direct quotes to push a pseudoleftist propaganda. Do not trust Wikipedia, especially on anything even remotely touching politics, always check facts elsewhere, e.g. in old paper books, on Metapedia, Infogalactic etc. As old Wikipedia is still accessible, you may also browse the older, less censored version, to see how it deranged from a project seeking truth to one abusing its popularity for propaganda.
Wikipedia exists in many (more than 200) versions differing mostly by the language used but also in other aspects; this includes e.g. Simple English Wikipedia or Wikipedia in Esperanto. In all versions combined there are over 50 million articles and over 100 million users. English Wikipedia is the largest with over 6 million articles.
There are also many sister projects of Wikipedia such as Wikimedia Commons that gathers free as in freedom media for use on Wikipedia, WikiData, Wikinews or Wikisources.
Information about hardware and software used by Wikimedia Foundation can be found at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers. As of 2022 Wikipedia runs of the traditional LAMP framework and its website doesn't require JavaScript (amazing!). Debian GNU/Linux is used on web servers (switched from Ubunatu in 2019). The foundation uses its own wiki engine called MediaWiki that's written mainly in PHP. Database used is MariaDB. The servers run on server clusters in 6 different data centers around the world which are rented: 3 in the US, 3 in Europe and 1 in Asia.
Wikipedia was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and was launched on 15 January 2001. The basic idea actually came from Ben Kovitz, a user of wikiwikiweb, who proposed it to Sanger. Wikipedia was made as a complementary project alongside Nupedia, an earlier encyclopedia by Wales and Sanger to which only verified experts could contribute. Wikipedia of course has shown to be a much more successful project.
There exist forks and alternatives to Wikipedia. Simple English Wikipedia can offer a simpler alternative to sometimes overly complicated articles on the main English Wikipedia. Citizendium is a similar online encyclopedia co-founded by Larry Sanger, a co-founder of Wikipedia itself, which is however proprietary (NC license). Citizendium's goal is to improve on some weak points of Wikipedia such as its reliability or quality of writing. GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English (GCIDE) is a large dictionary made by the GNU project (forked from old Webster's dictionary with new terms added). Justapedia is a recently spawned Wikipedia fork. Metapedia and Infogalactic are a Wikipedia forks that are written from a more rightist/neutral point of view. Infogalactic is also a Wikipedia fork that tries to remove the pseudoleftist bullshit etc. Encyclopedia Britannica can also be used as a nice resource: its older versions are already public domain and can be found e.g. at Project Gutenberg, and there is also a modern online version of Britannica which is proprietary (and littered with ads) but has pretty good articles even on modern topics (of course facts you find there are in the public domain). Practically for any specialized topic it is nowadays possible to find its own wiki on the Internet.
Important thing to realize is that, like most mainstream projects do, Wikipedia is not merely an encyclopedia -- no, it's also a self-proclaimed child protector, Internet state, a center for fighting for women rights, language police, a community, an organization for empowering black disabled lesbians and delivering justice. Did you ever wish your encyclopedia was your own private cop that told you which books are approved and prevented you from reading the bad ones? That with a book in your pocket you'd be actually constantly carrying around a community of diverse black fat trans editors ready to rewrite your book according to latest trends? That it would protect you from bad opinions, snapped your fingers and yelled <CHILD PROTECT> whenever you looked at a child picture for too long? Like your toothbrush is actually a subscription software with internet browser and remote camera, Wikipedia is a living, breathing entity that will decide what's best for you, without you having to think. Books that just provide information are so 20th century bro.
Let's note a few positive and negative points about Wikipedia, as of 2022. Some good things are:
And the bad things are (see also this site: http://digdeeper.club/articles/wikipedia.xhtml):
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| <3 PLEASE DON'T SKIP THIS 10 MINUTE READ <3 |
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| RESPONSIBILITY, children and life environment now more than |
| ever, we are live in times when SCIENCE VERIFIED FIGHT |
| RIGHTS to freedom and safe PRIVACY, PROTECTION and EXPERTS |
| DEFEND, MUSTN'T STOP READ! time to ACT like LINCOLN, must |
| have RESPONSIBILITY. Children and Earth are magical. |
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| Give us 20 bucks please. |
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| -- your encyclopedia that protects from bad information |
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| this box was personally seen and signed and approved by |
| dear C.E.O. of the encyclopedia of peer reviewed truth |
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There are many interesting and entertaining pages and articles on Wikipedia, some of them are:
Due to the corruption and increasing censorship of Wikipedia it is important to look for alternatives that are important especially when researching anything connected to politics, but also when you just want a simpler, more condensed or simply better written explanation of some topic. There exist other similar online encyclopedias like Metapedia, Infogalactic, Citizendium, Leftypedia, GCIDE, New World Encyclopedia, Justapedia, HandWiki or Britannica online, as well as dozens of printed encyclopedias and old digitized encyclopedias like Britannica 11th edition. For a more comprehensive list of Wikipedia alternatives see the article on encyclopedias. Many people are actively criticizing Wikipedia and want to diminish its power, among whom is one of Wikipedia's founders, Larry Sanger, who established encyclosphere, a project that tries to connect together various Internet encyclopedias -- this may be another place to look for Wikipedia alternatives. Anyway the moral of the story here is probably to not rely on a single encyclopedia, as we see where that leads. Read more sources and different points of view.
{ See also old Wikipedia at https://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race. ~drummyfish }
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