I have always known about Wikipedia, but I was never allowed to use it. I think for most students, high school and college, Wikipedia has been off limits for research and facts. In high school, I don’t believe I visited the site more than a few times. In college now, if I feel unsure about a certain fact and I want to find an answer quickly I know where I can go to get it right at that moment. I’m not so unsure anymore about relying on information from Wikipedia because of the fact that it is becoming more reliable, after almost 11 years of existence and operating.
I still don’t use Wikipedia for research or cite it when doing scholarly work, because I know of more reliable sources that are better to cite and work off of, but I do visit the site more often than before. I think this is due to the convenience of the website. Wikipedia is the only project of Wikimedia that I frequently visit. Some of the other projects under Wikimedia I haven’t even heard of or knew existed. For instance, I didn’t know about Wikispecies, but the idea I think is pretty good. The convenience and availability of Wikipedia, is what I think makes Wikipedia so popular. Of course, it has the most articles in English, but various other languages have growing numbers of articles as well. Wikipedia is one of those websites that you can instantly look up anything, without having to sign into a user account, let alone create an account and pay monthly or yearly fees for something you may only use sparingly. The ease of use and availability have made Wikipedia as popular as it is today.
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