Wikipedia

Wikipedia is, as all schoolchildren know, enormous and almost anything can be found on it. If you type in almost anything in google, one of the first pages that will pop up is bound to be a wikipedia page. There are more than 12 million pages in several different languages and 2 million in english alone!. It is the largest free encyclopedia in the world. Contrary to what most teachers would have you believe, wikipedia is actually reliable most of the time. At the end of each page, each editor must write a bibliography of where he or she got their information from. This can help to check for reliability, but another way is by checking its edit history. If people spot mistakes, they should and do correct them if they know for certain that one fact is wrong. This means that if a page has been edited many times, it is generally more reliable than a page that has only one version.
Wikipedia has grown ridiculously since it was made public. I has only been around for 8 years but because everyone chips in in small portions, it has developed into an amazing source for all kinds of knowledge. As H.G. Wells said:
'The time is close at hand when any student, in any part of the world, will be able to sit with his projector in his own study at his or her convenience to examine any book, any document, in exact replica.'
Vannevar bush dreamt of a knowledge machine which could be accessed by anyone. He was dreaming of wikipedia. Tim Burners-Lee wanted all science documents to be published on the web. This ,unfortunately, is not what happened. Science documents are among the only articles not on wikipedia. They are being encouraged to be put on it and this is happening slowly.
Unfortunately, some people want to spoil these dreams of a free encyclopedia by Jimmy wales and the people above. Vandalism happens on wikipedia but the wikipedia team normally notice quite quickly and come down hard on the vandal. Wikipedia has a set of rules which must be obeyed on every edit or new page. These are that every page must have sources, no vandalism, correct facts and don't be afraid to edit a page.
Because so many people edit it, wikipedia can be used as a news source. On the july 7 bombings, people were posting all the information that they could get up there and because it was continuing, it had hundreds of edits in the space of a few hours.
On wikipedia, fewer than 2 % of the users on wikipedia make most of the edits and apparently if 10% of its top users vanished, wikipedia would crumble and be destroyed.
I believe that wikipedia will keep on growing and expanding until eventually, it will fill the dreams of many people.