Why is the introduction of Wikipedia a turning point in the history of IT?

      The introduction of Wikipedia has been a major step towards making information accessible to all. It was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15th, 2001.

       Owned by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia is perhaps the largest, and undoubtedly the most popular, reference work online. The content of the site has been used in academic books, researches, and even court cases.

       It was Larry Sanger who coined the name by mixing ‘wiki’ and ‘encyclopedia’. One of the important features of the site is that it can be edited by anyone. The slogan of the company reads, “The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”.

       At first, there was only the English version of the Wikipedia, but soon other language versions too came up, making it easier for non-English users. In total, there are over 40 million wiki articles in 295 languages including Swedish, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, and Polish.

       However, it is the English Wikipedia that still remains the reader’s favourite, having nearly 18 million page views every month as of February 2014. It also has to its credit, a total of 5,325,006 articles.