http://en.wikipedia.org/open should redirect here; or this page's contents could be transcluded or copied there.

This page is in response to the /open initiative: http://slashopen.net/ (archive).

This page describes the English-language Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. More at Wikipedia:About.

Wikipedia is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, and features content created by volunteers from around the world.

Our mission[edit]

Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

Wikipedia, like all Wikimedia projects, is founded on a principle of open participation. We don't merely provide an encyclopedia that is free to read and reuse; we provide it on a platform that permits anyone with Internet access to build the encyclopedia. The software developed to support Wikipedia, MediaWiki, is available under a free license, and is continually improved through the efforts of thousands(?) of volunteers. It is designed in a way that supports tens of thousands of individuals to improve Wikipedia, without even needing to create an account, or provide any more personal information than they wish to. Wikipedia also has numerous formal and informal programs, mostly volunteer-led, that help new contributors learn to edit the site and build community around our shared project. Decisions are generally made on a consensus-based model in which anyone may participate in deliberation. Openness is a one of Wikipedia's core values. Even the rules governing Wikipedia are open to improvement, and have been refined and improved over the years by a variety of volunteers and project participants.

Wikipedia wants you to participate in its vision of freely shared knowledge.

Wikipedia itself is a database from which article content and related media can be extracted.

We also publish metadata about our articles, templates and categories, how they are viewed, and how they are edited.

Third parties[edit]

Some third parties use or database dumps to offer extra datasets or services. For example:

• DBpedia
• Geonames 'find nearest'

Most of Wikipedia's text and many of its images are dual-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Some text has been imported only under CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-SA-compatible license and cannot be reused under GFDL; such text is identified either on the page footer, in the page history or on the discussion page of the article that utilizes the text. Every image has a description page which indicates the license under which it is released or, if it is non-free, the rationale under which it is used.

Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the CC-BY-SA and GFDL licenses ensure the content is freely distributable and reproducible. (See the copyright notice and the content disclaimer for more information.)

• Wikipedia:Database download
• DBpedia
• Wikipedia:Microformats - our microformats
• Wikipedia:Toolserver - has several datasets about Wikipedia, such as editing statistics
• Wikipedia:Database queries
• Category:Wikipedia database reports