Initially available only in English, versions in other languages were quickly developed. Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger Sanger coined its name as a blending of 'wiki' and 'encyclopedia'. It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded mainly through small donations.

A visitor spends an average time on Wikipedia of 3 minutes and 45 seconds each day. It is the largest and most-read reference work in history, and consistently one of the 15 most popular websites ranked by Alexa as of 2021, Wikipedia was ranked the 13th most popular site. Individual contributors, also called editors, are known as Wikipedians. Wikipedia ( / ˌ w ɪ k ɪ ˈ p iː d i ə/ ( listen) wik-ih- PEE-dee-ə or / ˌ w ɪ k i-/ ( listen) wik-ee-) is a free content, multilingual online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through a model of open collaboration, using a wiki-based editing system.

Most text is also dual-licensed under GFDL media licensing varies

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