Wikipedia has been the most popular wiki on the web since 2001 and is considered the most popular collaborative social media source in the history of internet. Wikipedia is available as a self-styled, multilingual web based encyclopedia which is built by its users from all over the world. Wikipedia is operated by Wikimedia Foundation which is a US based nonprofit organization.

Since its creation, Wikipedia has rapidly grown into the largest reference website on the Internet. The content of Wikipedia is free, and is written collaboratively by people from all around the world. You can expect to find any article on Wikipedia that you might find in other encyclopedias.

There is a great difference between Wikipedia and other encyclopedias. Encyclopedias that are available in the form of books and CDs are written by authoritative writers and compiled by professional editors, while Wikipedia allows its user community to write and edit articles (and correct mistakes or bias). Supporters claim that this model produces an encyclopedia that is more current than traditional encyclopedias.

Social Aspect of Wikipedia:

Wikipedia is the only collaborative social media website that is ranked in top 10 websites all over the world and its articles are available in the top searches of various search engines including Google. Users from all over the world contribute to write the articles and if there are any mistakes or inaccuracies, anyone who has an account on Wikipedia can edit them. Of course, there are errors and vandalism does occur in the articles, but the strong Wikipedia community and its administrators do not let those factual errors exist for very long.

There are different forms of interactions between the global users on Wikipedia. Some of them are:

1-     Interaction in the form of comments on article

2-     The Village Pump where people ask questions about the guidelines and other issues in using Wikipedia

3-     You can submit news to be listed on the “In the News” page

4-     Editing pages - page edits are saved permanently in the edit history of each article

5-     Participating in collaborations organized by Wikipedia to improve the quality of articles that are lacking details or references

6-     Taking part in discussions on different topics

7-     Taking part in wiki projects

There are many other forms of social interactions on Wikipedia. You can visit the Community Portal of Wikipedia to find out how you can contribute and participate in this great community serving website.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

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