Princess of Asturias Cooperation for Wikipedia – The Economist

“The jury praised the important example of international cooperation, democratic, open and participatory, with the collaboration selflessly thousands of people of all nationalities.” President of the jury

Madrid, Esp. The digital encyclopedia Wikipedia free Internet access, with more than 37 million articles in 288 languages, including indigenous languages, won Wednesday the Princess of Asturias Award for International Cooperation in recognition his “open and inclusive” spirit.

“The jury praised the important example of international cooperation, democratic, open and participatory, with the collaboration selflessly thousands of people of all nationalities,” explained his president.

Wikipedia “has managed to reach worldwide universal knowledge in a similar line that succeeded the encyclopedic spirit of the eighteenth century,” he said.

Established in 2001 by the American Jimmy Wales with the help of the philosopher Larry Sanger, “Wikipedia, which ranks among the 10 most visited sites on the Internet,” it had a “continuous” growth, said in announcing the award at a brief ceremony in Oviedo.

Here you can also find articles on invented languages ​​such as Esperanto, or dead, such as Latin.

This online encyclopedia written by volunteers around the world whose items can be modified by registered users, “uses the wiki technology, which facilitates content editing and storage of historical changes to the page,” said the Princess of Asturias Foundation, which awards the prize.

Wikipedia he was born as a complement to a letter written by experts called Nupedia, with the aim of “making articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias thanks to the participation of scholars, mainly PhD students and academic encyclopedia, which is intended to collaborate It so unpaid “

said. To speed up project progressed slowly, and created a portal that would allow writing articles in parallel for review by experts.

Wikipedia eclipsed Nupedia

“Both projects coexisted until the success of Wikipedia ended eclipsing Nupedia, which stopped working in 2003,” he added.

was created that same year Wikipedia Foundation, based in San Francisco, which manages the encyclopedia and other projects such as Wikibooks, putting pedagogical texts available to users, or Wikiquote a compendium of quotations in many languages.

With 4.8 million articles, the English version is the largest of this digital encyclopedia that has about 500 million visits per month and 25 million registered users, of which more than 73,000 are active editors.

Critics reproach, however, a risk of introducing errors or incorrect information due to open system that allows any registered user to write and edit articles.

The award for International Cooperation is the seventh eight each year, since 1981, granted Princess of Asturias Foundation (renamed in honor of Leonor of Spain, nine, heir to the throne of Spain).

Equipped with 50,000 euros (about $ 56,000 ) and a sculpture created by Joan Miró, the Princess of Asturias awards honor individuals or institutions in relevant areas ranging from scientific research to sports, through letters and harmony.