Wikipedia is a ocean of content and totally free, open content online encyclopedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of users known as Wikipedians. Anyone registered on the site can create an article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles. The site's name comes from wiki, a server program that enables anyone to edit Web site content through their Web browser.
Co-founded of Wikipedia is Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger as an offshoot of an earlier encyclopedia project, Nupedia, in January 2001. firstly, Wikipedia was started to provide information for Nupedia. However, as the wiki website became established it soon grew beyond the scope of the earlier project. As of January 2015, the wiki provided well over five million articles in English and more than that number in all other languages combined. At that same time, Alexa ranked Wikipedia as the seventh-most popular site on the Internet. Wikipedia was the only non-commercial site of the top ten.
- Wikipedia is a great source for information, though many researchers don’t feel comfortable citing it as a resource due to its open contribution model.
- There are several alternatives to Wikipedia that offer different advantages.
- Some online encyclopedias are more reliable than Wikipedia due to different formats and ideology-based approaches.
- Wikipedia is the largest online encyclopedia at 6.2 million articles and growing.
- Encyclopedia Britannica Online is the most reliable and respected online encyclopedia, but it requires a subscription.
Lets deep dive into some of the Wikipedia alternatives
World Book Online
This is another traditional encyclopedia that has made the move to the Internet in order to challenge Wikipedia. It’s aimed slightly towards younger school students, but it’s still a respected name when it comes to general reference. Like Encyclopedia Britannica Online, some of its articles won’t be full-length unless you sign up for a paid subscription.
Britannica Online
Remember regular encyclopedias? Britannica, formerly the most referenced encyclopedia on earth, offers up expert summaries of a wide range of topics online. Though it's been overshadowed by Wikipedia's crowd-sourced approach in recent years, Encyclopedia Britannica is still one of the most respected reference works in the world.
Encyclopedia
(www.encyclopedia.com)
If you've ever Googled for the definition of a word, you've probably run across Free Dictionary. In addition to dictionary functionality, the Website also offers an encyclopedia section with much longer explanations of over 100,000 people, places, and things
This is probably Wikipedia’s biggest rival in terms of free online encyclopedias. It draws information from over 100 different encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses, including The Columbia Encyclopedia, Oxford’s World Encyclopedia, Webster’s New World Dictionary, the Encyclopedia of World Biography, and numerous other trusted publications about medicine, computers, science, and more.
Infoplease
(www.infoplease.com)
Infoplease is a publication of Pearson Education, the world’s largest distributor of educational literature. Content is collected from trusted sources like Random House Dictionary – users are not able to contribute to the content.
Instead of full-length articles like Wikipedia, Infoplease offers brief and informational topic summaries. While significantly shorter, the information is accurate and tamper-proof. Infoplease also offers multimedia features for research assistance.
Citizendium
Citizendium is an open wiki project dedicated to creating a free, comprehensive, repository of structured knowledge. One of the main differences between Citizendium and Wikipedia is that the authors are required to use their real names, and the authors are expected to work professionally. The project was started in 2010.
Everipedia
Everipedia is “Everyone’s Encyclopedia”. “Everipedia offers a space for you to dive into anything you find interesting, connect with people who share your interests, and contribute your own perspective.”
The about page does not provide a clear explanation of how this site differs from Wikipedia and/or how they plan to make sure that the mistakes of Wikipedia are not repeated in this site.
Conservapedia
Wikipedia is believed by some to be too liberal. At Reputation X we can attest to bias by Wikipedia authors, especially in political or environmental contexts. This idea of bias in Wikipedia sparked the creation of Conservapedia, a conservative, Christian Wiki encyclopedia complete with seven Commandments that users must follow.
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