One of the best places to search for information online is Wikipedia. This online encyclopedia is written by thousands of people from all over the world. Anyone can contribute to any topic he or she finds interesting. Likewise, topics that are poorly written or incorrect can be changed. Therefore, you don't have to be a university professor to write for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia started in 2001 by philosopher Larry Sanger and businessman Jimmy Wales. Both men wanted to create an ad-free online English-language encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone. However, Wikipedia was only meant to boost traffic for Nupedia, another Internet encyclopedia that was written by experts. Nupedia's website was shut down in September 2003. Its content and articles have since moved to Wikipedia.

As of December 2017, there are over five million English articles written on Wikipedia. In addition, another 40 million articles are written in one of 301 different languages that occupy the online encyclopedia. This makes Wikipedia one of the most international websites on the Internet. Many people who visit Wikipedia use it as a source for news because it is constantly updated.

Interestingly, researchers have discovered that countries with bad weather tend to have more Wikipedia pages than sunny countries. This may be because people living in warmer climates spend less time on their computers.

Nevertheless, Wikipedia has its problems. There have been complaints that some of the information on Wikipedia is not accurate. Additionally, some important subjects are not even included. Sometimes, this has led to arguments among contributors. In January of 2014, it was reported that Wikipedia had two billion fewer views than the year before.

The people running Wikipedia have listened and responded to these complaints. They say that accuracy on the website is always improving. They must be doing something right, because Wikipedia has become the fifth most popular website on the Internet.

網路上最棒的資料搜尋去處就是維基百科。此線上百科全書是由世界各地無數網民共同編寫而成。任何人均可針對感興趣的主題貢獻一己心力。同樣地，文句不通順或資料不正確的主題也可以修改。因此，毋須具備大學教授的身分，也能成為維基百科的作者。

維基百科是由哲學家賴瑞．桑格與商人吉米．威爾斯於 2001 年所創。他們希望設立一個不含廣告、人人均可編輯的線上英文百科全書。不過，維基百科設立的初衷，是希望拉高「Nupedia」（這是另一個由專家執筆的網路百科全書）的流量。「Nupedia」網站於 2003 年 9 月關閉，其內容文章全數移轉至維基百科。

截至 2017 年12 月，維基百科上已有五百多萬篇英文文章。此外，還有 4,000 萬篇文章是以 301 種不同語言（網路百科全書上的語言版本）編寫的。維基百科因而成為最具國際知名度的網站。許多人將維基百科視為消息來源，原因在於百科內容經常更新。

耐人尋味的是，研究人員發現氣候不佳的國家其維基百科頁數，比陽光充足的國家還多。這也許是因為居住溫暖氣候地區的人，坐在電腦桌前的時間較少。