Wikipedia

Although Wikipedia is arguably the most popular and widely known open source website on the web, it certainly wasn't the first. The concept of open source generally refers to software where the original source code is made publicly available for distribution and modification. Wikis are a specific kind of website that take this concept to the next level and allow the public to modify data on a site with some autonomy. The origins of these sites can be traced back to WikiWikiWeb which launched in 1994 as the first known user/visitor editable website on the internet. Generally, wikis act as repositories of data and knowledge that can be modified by anyone who has the expertise to contribute. When Wikipedia launched in 2001, the idea was to create an infinite encyclopedia in which experts from around the world could contribute to a definitie database of human knowledge, even down to incredibly specific topics. In order to prevent sabotage and vandalism, Wikipedia established a set of community guidelines that cover both how articles should be written, formatted, and sourced and encouraged the contributing community to self-police those policies. The experiment has been incredibly successful and has spawned a new generation of wiki and similar open source sites that emulate Wikipedia's operation. The success or failure of these sites is left in the hands of the contributors as an example of how collective collaboration can function on a great scale.