Gingerly climbing the rickety, creaky staircase, you breathe in dry stale air and choke on the dust. You push open a door and peer into a dimly lit room. In the corner, beneath a mass of cobwebs, you see a pile of encyclopedias. They're intimidating, bulky tomes, full of thin pages and small print. Hand shaking, you dust off a few lethargic spiders and open one.

Oh no, copyright 2003! Well, that's just ducky. How in the world are you supposed to do your research and report on 2004's SpaceShipOne, the first privately-funded human spaceflight?

Printed encyclopedias had their place and it's time for an information evolution. Something new is cooking, and it smells pretty good.

What is Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia with completely free articles, and anyone can contribute or add to them.

Visit Wikipedia and type in a search topic, like "SpaceShipOne". You'll see pictures, flight history, specifications and other interesting details. Article links lead to other Wikipedia articles.

What's the big Wiki deal?

Almost every page you see, you can edit. That's you, me, or anyone with specialized knowledge, or just the desire to fix a spelling error. All Wikipedia's information is constantly changing and evolving. The information never stagnates or is outdated. It develops and grows over time, based on the input of, well, everyone.

It's free. Free to access, free to modify, free to copy and use in any personal or business way you can imagine. Other online encyclopedias require fees to access their material. Under the terms of the "GNU Free Documentation License", Wikipedia has no such limits.

It exemplifies the best of the chaotic and socially-intense nature of the Internet. There is no "overhead" or bureaucracy. With a few exceptions to keep Wikipedia running behind the scenes, your first edit is just as important as a daily contributor's, and changes submitted are instantly available. Everyone contributes, and this free-for-all, self-regulating atmosphere has worked surprisingly well.

The Wiki problems

What's to stop anyone from defacing articles or inserting incorrect content? Repeat offenders are blocked from Wikipedia. All previous versions of all articles are kept, so any lost or wrongly changed information can be restored. Problem users are rare, but do happen, and the self-repairing Wikipedia community monitors and fixes this.

Popular topics in world news or the geek community are covered very well, but other topics aren't. But with the article count soaring above seven hundred thousand, and the popularity of Wikipedia spreading through the non-geek world, the scope is widening considerably.

Since the content is free, no one can claim ownership. Say you spent hours writing an article, and later decide you want to copyright or restrict the material. You can't: Wikipedia is meant to be free for everyone to use in any way they want. Article authors have no ownership of their content.

Learn more

Wikipedia's website

Examples of quality Wikipedia articles

How to edit Wikipedia articles

Yes, it's a free online encyclopedia. But there's far more to the picture. Wikipedia is also a bold and unique social experiment running solely on charity donations and users' goodwill. And so far, it's succeeding.