time and has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Its coverage of controversial topics such as American politics and major events such as the COVID-19 pandemic has received substantial media attention. It has been censored by world governments, ranging from specific pages to the entire site. It has become an element of popular culture,

with references in books, films and acemic studies. In 2018, Facebook and YouTube announced that they would help users detect fake news by suggesting fact-ing links to related Wikipedia articles.Other collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before Wikipedia, but none were as ful. Wikipedia began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a online

English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a al process. It was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis, a web portal company. Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Wikipedia. Nupedia was initially licensed under its own

Nupedia Content License, but even before Wikipedia was founded, Nupedia switched to the GNU Documentation License at the urging of Richard Stallman. Wales is ed with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, while Sanger is ed with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal. On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on the Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia. Launch and early growth