Wikipedia

This is perhaps the best example of a community effort - power of the people.
This almost makes me believe in socialism. A mammoth work created by the
cumulative effort of perhaps thousands of people across the globe,
transcending all barriers of region, language, religion and all such others
that we tend to raise between us and our neigbours.


For the English version, check out http://en.wikipedia.org


This project started on January 2, 2001. It basically uses a system based on
wikis (a wiki is web page that can be edited using your web browser by
whoever has rights to do so and the name 'wiki' is derived from the Hawaiian
word 'wiki-wiki', meaning 'quick') to create an encyclopedia. The inspiration
behind this idea was Richard M Stallman.


This is an encyclopedia that you can modify if you want to (unless you have
been blacklisted for vandalism). By now it must be the largest repository of
knowledge in the world ... and it is still growing at a phenomenal rate. You
can get more information about this by searching for wikipedia on ... well,
wikipedia :)
To test it out, I searched for 'tendulkar', 'stanley matthews', 'vajpayee',
'dennis ritchie', 'ram', 'sahyadri', 'hale-bopp', 'tandoor', 'baobab',
'basilisk' and many more. The results have to be seen to be believed. Up to
date and in-depth information about everything! Just could not resist bookmarking this page.


The interesting thing about wikipedia is that it is a voluntary activity that
is done without making people sit in an office and bribing them to do it with
fat paychecks. The whole system runs on free software and all the documents
are published under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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