Wikipedia:Purpose

Wikipedia has a lofty goal: "a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge."

Wikipedia's purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia; a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge.

Encyclopedias are designed to introduce readers to a topic, not to be the final point of reference. Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias, is a tertiary source and provides overviews of a topic.

The goal of a Wikipedia article is to present a neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge in a fair and accurate manner with a straightforward, "just-the-facts style". Articles should have an encyclopedic style with a formal tone instead of essay-like, argumentative, promotional, or opinionated writing.

Concept of an encyclopedia

Wikipedia's goal

Wikipedia's content

Content is governed by three principal core content policiesneutral point of view, verifiability, and no original research.

See also

  • Administration – discusses both the human administrative structure of Wikipedia, as well as its non-human components.
  • The Free Encyclopedia – describes how Wikipedia is "Free" as in Free Software and Free Culture.
  • The essence of Wikipedia – describes how Wikipedia uses collective intelligence, collaboration, and preservation to build, expand, and improve content.
  • Statement of principles – by the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, as updated by the community since then.
  • What Wikipedia is not – describes how there are certain things that Wikipedia is not.
  • Offline access – describes how to access Wikipedia's free content without internet access.
  • Original Wikipedia policy – as edited by the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, on 1 November 2001.

References

Uses material from the Wikipedia article Wikipedia:Purpose, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.