Some time back, a writing assignment comes on my way. It's about providing small biographies of some 1000-odd personalities. The place to look for information, my assigner tells me, is the venerable Wikipedia. The job needs me to refer Wikipedia day in day out, and I'm overawed more than ever by the richness of resources it offers.

Prior to this, I did have occasional peeks at it, but those were mere skimming the surface. The more I now dig into Wikipedia, the more I become convinced that there's no other resource quite like it, not perhaps even the ubiquitous Encyclopedia Britannica. When my son's school asks him to do his project work with the help of Wikipedia, I know for sure it is the numero-uno place for serious information-seekers. Little wonder then that it is the 17th most visited site globally.

What it is that is so enticing about Wikipedia? It doesn't need my telling, for I'm sure my readers will have pretty good knowledge about it. Instead, I'll focus on some lesser-known aspects that, put together, speaks a lot eloquent about it.

Wikipedia has nearly a million articles in English language alone, the total of which represents just about one-third of total contents. It caters to at least 48 languages, each of which having not less than 10,000 articles.

Wikipedia depends on some 2000 to 3000 strong core community that has taken upon itself to voluntarily maintain and improve it. It's they who do most of new content addition in English as well as corrections and modifications of existing matter as needed.

Though necessarily an open source venture, Wikipedia does not earn revenues from any ad-network. It does not display any ad on its pages, which is quite remarkable, because if it does so, it will not need to depend on voluntary contribution, which is usually around $50 to $100 each.

Wikipedia's budget is modest compared to the volume it caters to and the service it offers. Its 2005 budget was $750,000 and this year it's likely to be $1.5 million, a clean 100% jump. But that without doubt is required because it wants to find ways to improve quality of contents that is better than Britannica, and of course add more and more fresh contents. Besides, there may be other revenue-generating plans. For example, extracting articles on request from its repository to be sold in print or DVD/CD.

The one factor that is truly worth watching is how its contents stand up on contentious issues. This is where neutrality emerges out of pushes and pulls of the community members. So be it Iraq War or the infamous World War II holocaust, Wikipedia has them all with no scope for circumventing the truths. Just this quality makes it the most unique one can imagine and a treasure-trove of information hunters (or, shall I say truth-seekers) worldwide.

By now, if you think Wikipedia has to a big organization, you are mistaken. For all that it offers, apart from Jim Wales, the founder, Wikipedia has only 4 more full-time staff on its rolls, a CEO, a manager and 2 programmers, one in US, the other in Australia. Quite a feat that for a site fetching close to 48,000 visitors everyday, don't you think?

Partha Bhattacharya
http://www.words2content.com/