example to create and manage dictionaries, encyclopedias, or reference tools. The software can be simple or more elaborate. A simple program handles text and hyperlinks. With a more elaborate program, one can embed images, charts, tables, etc. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia.

January 2001 > Wikipedia, a global free cooperative online encyclopedia

Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger (Larry resigned later on). It has quickly grown into the largest reference website on the internet, financed by donations, with no advertising. Its multilingual content is free and written collaboratively by people worldwide, who contribute under a pseudonym. Its website is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit, correct, and improve information throughout the encyclopedia. The articles stay the property of their authors, and can be freely used according to the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License) and the Creative Commons license. In December 2004, Wikipedia had 1.3 million articles (by 13,000 contributors) in 100 languages. In December 2006, Wikipedia was among the ten top sites on the web, with 6 million articles. In May 2007, Wikipedia had 7 million articles in 192 languages, including 1.8 million articles in English, 589,000 articles in German, 500,000 articles in French, 260,000 articles in Portuguese, and 236,000 articles in Spanish. In 2008, Wikipedia was in the top five websites. In september 2010, Wikipedia had 14 million articles in 272 languages, including 3.4 million articles in English, 1.1 million articles in German and 1 million articles in French.