Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. It provides readers with an extensive, openly accessible collection of knowledge, with more than 7. 2 million English articles and editions in many other languages.

Visitors can search and read articles in subjects spanning a broad range of topics, while volunteer contributors help create and improve the content. Wikipedia presents itself as a source of useful, human-created information and emphasizes that it is not intended to push a particular point of view. The platform is supported in part by reader donations, which help sustain its free-knowledge work.

In addition to Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation hosts other free knowledge projects. Through its multilingual encyclopedia and volunteer-led model, Wikipedia connects readers with information across language communities and offers a public resource that people can access without a purchase. Its central service is the publication of freely available reference articles, supported by a global community of contributors and the foundation that hosts the project