Wikipedia
Wikipedia (/ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdiə/ (
listen), /ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ (listen) WIK-ih-PEE-dee-ə) is a multilingual online encyclopedia with exclusively free content and no ads (though donations are accepted), based on open collaboration through a model of content editing using web-based applications such as web browsers, called wiki. It is the largest and most popular general reference work on the World Wide Web,[3][4][5] and is one of the most popular websites by Alexa rank as of April 2019.[6] It is owned and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that operates on money it receives from donors to remain ad-free.[7][8][9][10]
Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.[11] Sanger coined its name,[12][13] as a portmanteau of wiki (the Hawai’ian word for “quick”[14]) and “encyclopedia“. Initially an English-language encyclopedia, versions in other languages were quickly developed. With 5,861,248 articles,[notes 3] the English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 290 Wikipedia encyclopedias. Overall, Wikipedia comprises more than 40 million articles in 301 different languages[15] and by February 2014 it had reached 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors per month.[16]
In 2005, Nature published a peer review comparing 42 hard science articles from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia and found that Wikipedia’s level of accuracy approached that of Britannica,[17] although critics suggested that it might not have fared so well in a similar study of a random sampling of all articles or one focused on social science or contentious social issues.[18][19] The following year, Time magazine stated that the open-door policy of allowing anyone to edit had made Wikipedia the biggest and possibly the best encyclopedia in the world, and was a testament to the vision of Jimmy Wales.[20]
Wikipedia has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, for presenting a mixture of “truths, half truths, and some falsehoods”,[21] and for being subject to manipulation and spin in controversial topics.[22] But by 2017, Facebook announced that it would help readers detect fake news by suggesting links to related Wikipedia articles. YouTube announced a similar plan in 2018.[23]
East Lansing
East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan directly east of Lansing, the state capital. Most of the city is within Ingham County, with the rest in Clinton County. The population was 48,579 at the 2010 census, an increase from 46,420 in 2000. It is best known as the home of Michigan State University.
East Lansing was an important junction of two major Native American groups: the Potawatomi and Fox.[6] By 1850, the Lansing and Howell Plank Road Company was established to connect a toll road to the Detroit and Howell Plank Road, improving travel between Detroit and Lansing, which cut right through what is now East Lansing. The toll road was finished in 1853, and included seven tollhouses between Lansing and Howell.[7]
Michigan State University was founded in 1855 and established in what is now East Lansing in 1857. For the first four decades, the students and faculty lived almost entirely on the college campus. A few commuted from Lansing, and that number increased when a streetcar line was built in the 1890s, but there were few places to live in the then-rural area immediately around the campus.
That started to change in 1887, when professors William J. Beal and Rolla C. Carpenter created Collegeville, along what is now Harrison Road and Center and Beal Streets, north of Michigan Avenue. Few faculty were attracted to the location, and the first residents were “teamsters and laborers”.[8] In 1898, the College Delta subdivision (including what is now Delta Street) had the support of the college itself, which provided utilities, and several professors built homes there (one of which survives today at 243 W. Grand River Ave.).[9] Other subdivisions followed.
At that time, the post office address was “Agricultural College, Michigan.” A school district encompassing the nascent community was created in 1900. In 1907, incorporation as a city was proposed under the name “College Park”; the legislature approved the charter but changed the name to “East Lansing.” The first seven mayors, starting with Clinton D. Smith in 1907 and Warren Babcock in 1908, were professors or employees of the college.