Wiki

1 . Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia. Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers more than ten million articles in 273 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than three million articles; it is followed by the German, French, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Dutch, and Portuguese editions, each of which contain more than half a million articles. Over twenty-five other language editions contain 100,000+ articles, and more than 150 other languages contain 1,000+ articles.

Wikipedia is also known for its community. In 2004 Wikipedia

won the Webby Award for "Community" and the Prix Ars

Electronica's Golden Nica for "Digital Communities". Since

the start of the project, over 650,000 registered users have

made at least ten edits. The total number of accounts 

created on the English Wikipedia alone exceeds 10 million

. 

However, most edits on that language edition come from a

 few thousand of the most dedicated users.

Some Wikipedias release or plan to release regular 

snapshots. The German Wikipedia is released twice a year as 

a DVD, in collaboration with Directmedia Publishing, and the 

Polish Wikipedia has released one DVD of content.

Wikimedia

Wiktionary is a project to create a 

multilingual free content dictionary in 

every language. This means each project seeks to use a particular

 language to define all words in all

 languages. It actually aims to be much 

more extensive than a typical dictionary

, including thesauri, rhymes, translations, audio

 pronunciations, etymologies, and quotations. The project 

started in December 2002, and as of October 2010 is

 available in over 150 languages with over 3,000,000 entries

 in all. The largest language edition is English, followed by

 French, Lithuanian and Chinese. All four of them have more

 than 300,000 entries each, while 19 languages in total have

 more than 100,000 entries each. 67 other languages have at

 least 1,000 entries.

Wiktionary works in collaboration with the Wikimedia 

Commons. Many sound files have been uploaded to 

Commons to provide Wiktionary and other projects with

 examples of pronunciation.

Wikiquote

Wikiquote is a repository of quotationstaken from famous people, books,speeches, films or any intellectually nteresting materials. Proverbs,mnemonics or slogans are also includedin Wikiquote.

The project started in July 2003; October 2010, it includes over 113,564 pages in over 75 languages. The largest Wikiquote is in English with over 18,000 pages. Then Polish, Italian, and German, each over 7,500 articles.

Wikibooks

Wikibooks aims to build a collection of

free e-book resources, including 

textbooks, language courses, manuals, 

and annotated public domain books. It 

aims to help both (self-)instruction of students and teachers in 

high schools and universities.

As of October 2010, the largest Wikibooks is in the English language, with over 35,000 modules from over 2,500 

developing books. The German and French follow, each has over  

9,000 modules. The project started in July 2003 and now has 

over 139,000 modules from over 5,000 developing books, 

across over 100 languages.

Wikispecies

tWikispecies is an open, wiki-based projec

 to provide a central, more extensive 

species database for taxonomy. Launched 

14 September 2004, Wikispecies is aimed 

specifically at the needs of scientific users, and as of October 

2010, has over 240,000 entries. There are plans to help 

Wikispecies collaborate with the Encyclopedia of Life project 

when the latter is more fully underway.