
Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. It was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis, a web portal company.
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Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. Various collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before the start of Wikipedia, but with limited success. Wikipedia originally developed from another encyclopedia project called Nupedia.

Initially available only in English, versions in other languages were quickly developed. Sanger coined its name as a blend of " wiki" and " encyclopedia." Wales was influenced by the " spontaneous order" ideas associated with Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian School of economics, after being exposed to these ideas by Austrian economist and Mises Institute Senior Fellow Mark Thornton. On January 15, 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia.

It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded mainly through donations. It is consistently one of the 10 most popular websites ranked by the Similarweb and former Alexa as of 2022, Wikipedia was ranked the 7th most popular site. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. Wikipedia ( / ˌ w ɪ k ɪ ˈ p iː d i ə/ ( listen) wik-ih- PEE-dee-ə or / ˌ w ɪ k i-/ ( listen) wik-ee-) is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through open collaboration and a wiki-based editing system.

Most text is also dual-licensed under GFDL media licensing varies
