Wikipedia editors quarrel and sue: five facts about the largest online encyclopedia

On Saturday, January 15, Wikipedia turns 21. The largest online encyclopedia was launched in the United States in 2001 and was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

Today, Wikipedia is considered to be the largest and most popular online reference book. It contains over 55 million articles and is the fifth most popular website in the world. One of the main advantages of Wikipedia is the ability to get information in your native language - the site includes 325 language sections. Five interesting facts about Wikipedia are described in the OBOZREVATEL article.

1. The name of the resource - "Wikipedia" - is formed from the words "wiki" (a Hawaiian word meaning "fast") and "encyclopedia".

2. Anyone can edit articles on Wikipedia, providing a link to the source. All changes are checked by moderators.

3. Wikipedia editors quarrel over grammar and worldview. Moreover, a resident of Belarus once filed a lawsuit against an editor from Moscow who misspelled the name of his country. The spelling of Kyiv (vs. Kiev) in the English section of the encyclopedia was also a cause for dispute.

In addition, Russian Wikipedia editors often make mistakes in articles about events in Ukraine. Similar disputes occur in countries around the world. The largest number of controversies concerns articles about George W. Bush, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and the manifestation of human sexuality.

4. In China, Wikipedia is blocked, as are Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. The local version was closed for access back in June 2004, and in June 2015, the Chinese authorities completely blocked this resource. Beijing's decision is attributed to the anniversary of the Tiananmen protests, as the authorities often block certain websites before such events.

Nevertheless, Wikipedia is the 106th most popular website in the country, as the Chinese visit it using a VPN.

5. If you print out the Ukrainian version of Wikipedia, you will get more than 500 volumes of 4400 pages each. If all versions of the online encyclopedia are printed, it will take more than 24,000 volumes or more than 120 bookcases.

As OBOZREVATEL reported, earlier Ukrainian Wikipedia got into a scandal because of a map where Crimea was marked as Russian territory. The mistake was made in the article "Time in Russia".