Biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet Over two million articles and still growing free encyclopedia built collaboratively using Wiki software Arts Biography Geography History Mathematics Science Society Technology All portals Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by many of its readers. It uses a special type of website, called a wiki, that makes collaboration easy. Lots of people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes an hour, all of which are recorded on article histories and recent changes. Wikipedia is free online encyclopedia. The name is a portmanteau of the Hawaiian word for quick, "wiki", and "encyclopedia". Actively updated in over 100 languages, including constructed languages such as Esperanto, the English language Wikipedia contains over one and a half million articles.There are 11 other language editions with over 100,000 articles each, and over 50 languages with over 10,000 articles each. Wikipedia is a Web-based, free-content encyclopedia written collaboratively by volunteers and sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. It contains entries both on traditional encyclopedic topics and on almanac, gazetteer, and current events topics. Its purpose is to create and distribute a free international encyclopedia in as many languages as possible. Wikipedia is the most popular reference site on the internet, receiving tens of millions hits per day. Wikipedia (pronunciation  ) is a free,[3] multilingual, open content encyclopedia project operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopedia. Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger,[4] it currently the largest, fastest-growing and most popular general reference work available on the Internet. Italy (Italian: Italia), officially the Italian Republic, (Italian: Repubblica Italiana), is located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe, and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia. The independent states of San Marino and the Vatican City are enclaves within the Italian Peninsula, while Campione d'Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland. Italy has been the home of many European cultures, such as the Etruscans and the Romans, and later was the birthplace of the movement of the Renaissance, that began in Tuscany and spread all over Europe. Italy's capital Rome has been for centuries the center of Western civilization, and is the seat of the Catholic Church. Today, Italy is a democratic republic and a developed country with the 20th highest GDP per capita, the 8th-highest Quality-of-life index,[1] and the 20th-highest Human Development Index rating in the world. It is a founding member of what is now the European Union (having signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957), and also a member of the G8 (having the world's 7th largest nominal GDP), NATO, OECD, the Council of Europe, the Western European Union, the Central European Initiative, and a Schengen state. On January 1, 2007 Italy began a two year term as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. |
