Initially only available in English, editions in other languages were quickly developed. Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, on January 15, 2001, it is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization that employed a staff of over 700 people by October 2023. It consistently ranks as one of the 10 most popular websites in the world, and as of 2023 it is ranked the 6th most visited website on the Internet by Semrush. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history.
Wikipedia is a free-content online encyclopedia, written and maintained by a community of volunteers, collectively known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the use of wiki-based editing system MediaWiki.
Most text is also dual-licensed under GFDL media licensing varies
