维基百科是如何帮助保持互联网的开放性的
维基百科
![](/data/attachment/album/202303/17/094522xwmr76zb7hwnlfxy.jpg)



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> 维基百科体现了互联网最初愿景的精神，而你也可以成为其中的一部分。
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维基百科是最有意义的开源软件项目之一，原因之一是它远比你想象的庞大。而且，任何人都可以贡献内容，并且任何人都可以为项目背后的许多技术领域贡献代码，确保维基百科正常运行。


[超过 870 个维基百科及其附属网站](https://wikimediafoundation.org/our-work/wikimedia-projects/#a1-reference) 提供了多语言版本，它们服务于一个共同目标，“开发自由的教育内容，并有效地在全球范围内传播”。例如，<ruby> 维基共享资源 <rt>  Wikimedia Commons </rt></ruby> 是一个自由的媒体文件库，截至今天，它已经拥有超过 6800 万张图片。<ruby> 维基文库 <rt>  Wikisource </rt></ruby> 是一个自由的文本资源库，拥有超过 500 万篇文章和 72 种语言的活跃网站子域名。<ruby> 维基数据 <rt>  Wikidata </rt></ruby> 是一个可访问的数据存储库，包含被 [多个与维基百科相关的网站](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_wikis) 所使用的超过 9900 万个数据项。


这些项目由 <ruby> 维基媒体基金会 <rt>  Wikimedia Foundation </rt></ruby> 支持和维护，它是一个总部位于旧金山的非营利组织。基金会使全球数十万名志愿者为项目的自由知识作出贡献。在这个知识收集和生产的社区背后，有着大量的维护、技术支持和管理工作，以保持网站的正常运转。当然，从外部来看，你可能仍然好奇，开发维基百科的软件还需要做哪些工作。毕竟，它可是世界上最受欢迎的十大网站之一，致力于提供最好的信息。


事实上，每篇维基百科的文章都借助了成千上万的软件工具来创建、编辑和维护。这些步骤，确保了你在世界任何地方都能获得公平可靠快速的信息。当你浏览维基百科或任何其他维基网站时，你是在与一个称之为 [MediaWiki](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki) 的软件交互，这是一个强大的团队协作文档软件，用以支持维基百科的内容。它有一些默认特性，而为了进一步增强软件的功能，你可以安装各种扩展。数不胜数的扩展中，最著名的两个是：


* VisualEditor：一种适用于 MediaWiki 驱动的维基站点的 <ruby> 所见即所得 <rt>  WYSIWYG </rt></ruby> 富文本编辑器。
* Wikibase：用于存储、管理和访问维基百科从 <ruby> 维基数据 <rt>  Wikidata </rt></ruby> 上拉取的结构化数据。


所有这些优秀的辅助工具使现代维基百科愈发完善并正常运行，每一个都至关重要。


### 维基百科和 MediaWiki


总体来说维基百科的技术生态是非常庞大的！MediaWiki 是维基媒体世界中最受欢迎的软件之一，遵循开源代码许可，已经有超过四十万个项目和组织使用它来托管内容。例如，NASA 使用它来组织有关太空任务的内容和知识库！


此外，还有许多其他机器人、工具、桌面和移动应用可以帮助用户访问、创建、编辑和维护内容。例如，机器人可以自动化重复繁琐的任务，可以用来对抗恶意破坏、向新手推荐文章、进行文章事实核查等，这大大减轻了编辑的工作负担。InternetArchiveBot 也是个十分流行的机器人，常用于与 <ruby> 网站时光机 <rt>  Wayback Machine </rt></ruby> 通信，修复维基百科上的死链。


上文中的 “工具”，指的是支持贡献者们工作的软件。比如，组织者可以使用这些 “工具” 开展 <ruby> 编辑松 <rt>  editathons </rt></ruby>、举办各种活动、开设维基百科编辑教育课程等。截至 2022 年 5 月，机器人和工具的贡献占 870 个维基媒体编辑总量中的 36.6%，足以证明它们在整个生态中举足轻重。


Kiwix 是一款知名的离线阅读器桌面应用，它可以在网络连接有限的区域，特别是教育场所中提供对维基百科的访问。维基百科和维基共享资源的移动应用，也允许编辑者通过他们的移动设备贡献文章和媒体文件，这使我们的知识平台更加普及化，能够面向全球更广泛的受众。


下次当你浏览维基百科时，发现了文章在近期发生相关事件后有频繁的实时更改，你就能更好地想象屏幕后在发生什么啦。


### 维基百科的技术社区


维基百科启动于 2001 年，当时仅有约十名开发人员。自从 2003 年维基媒体基金会成立以来，开发人员的数量在近年里大幅增长。现在，约有一千名开发人员正在为知识运动中的各种项目做出贡献。这个数字每年都会波动，这取决于活跃贡献者和工作人员的数量、支持志愿开发人员的计划、以及全球性事件（如大流行）等因素。


技术社区的成员以各种方式和角色做出贡献。比如代码贡献者、文档编写、设计师、倡导者、导师、社区组织者、测试人员、翻译人员、网站管理员等。


根据一项关于新开发者的调查，维基媒体和其他开源项目一样，吸引了许多来自美国、欧洲和印度的贡献者，在世界各地不断壮大。


志愿开发者和维基百科编辑者有类似的动机。他们成为贡献者，是来支持自由知识事业、学习和获得新技能、改善其他编辑者的体验等等。来自印度的一位志愿开发者说：“我最初其实是作为编辑者加入的，但我还是着手摸索维基百科背后的技术，因为印地语维基百科社区中，能够通过技术手段解决我们当地语言需求的贡献者实在太少了。”


在 2021 年 7 月至 2022 年 6 月期间，仅考虑托管在维基媒体 Gerrit 实例中的代码仓库，514 名开发人员在 1225 个存储库中进行了 45,621 次合并改动。这些贡献中，48.52% 来自维基媒体基金会之外的其他组织和 [独立开发人员](https://wikimedia.biterg.io/)。其中一些开发人员还是不同地区的用户组、分会和附属机构的成员，致力于推广使用维基媒体项目和鼓励贡献。这些数字还不包括选择在外部托管代码的额外开发人员，或直接托管在维基页面上的代码，例如小工具或模块。


### 有所作为


维基百科是一个可供所有人使用的庞大知识库。在许多方面，它体现了互联网的最初愿景：作为信息、理解和协作的来源。


你可以作为贡献者成为维基百科的一份子，无论是通过在文章中分享你的知识，还是通过帮助构建使其所有工作成为可能的软件。如果你有兴趣加入维基媒体的技术社区，请浏览我们的开发者网站上的资源，并学习如何 [参与其中](https://developer.wikimedia.org/)。




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via: <https://opensource.com/article/23/3/how-wikipedia-helps-keep-internet-open>


作者：[Srishti Sethi](https://opensource.com/users/srishakatux-0) 选题：[lkxed](https://github.com/lkxed/) 译者：[onionstalgia](https://github.com/onionstalgia) 校对：[wxy](https://github.com/wxy)


本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创编译，[Linux中国](https://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出


OK
Wikipedia is one of the most significant open source software projects, in part because it's a lot bigger than you may realize. And yet anyone can contribute content, and anyone can contribute code to many technical areas of the projects that work behind the curtain to keep Wikipedia running.

[Over 870 Wikipedia and umbrella sites](https://wikimediafoundation.org/our-work/wikimedia-projects/#a1-reference) are available in different languages, and all of them operate with a common goal of “developing free educational content and disseminating it effectively and globally.” For example, Wikimedia Commons is a repository of free media files, and as of today, it has over 68 million images. Wikisource is a free library of textual sources with over 5 million articles and website subdomains active for 72 languages. Wikidata is an accessible repository of over 99 million data items used across [several Wikipedia-related sites](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_wikis).

These projects are supported and maintained by Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco. The organization also empowers hundreds of thousands of volunteers worldwide to contribute free knowledge to these projects. Behind this community of knowledge gatherers and producers, a lot of work goes into maintenance, technical support, and administrative work to keep these sites up and running. From the outside looking in, you might still wonder what more work could remain in developing Wikipedia’s software. After all, it’s one of the top ten most visited internet websites in the world, and serves its purpose well and provides access to the best possible information.

The truth is that every article on Wikipedia leverages thousands of software tools for its creation, editing, and maintenance. These are crucial steps in ensuring equitable, reliable, and fast access to information no matter where you are in the world. When you browse Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia sites, the software you interact with is called [MediaWiki](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki), a powerful collaboration and documentation software that powers the content of Wikipedia. It comes with a default set of features. To further enhance the software’s capabilities, you can install various extensions. They’re too numerous to mention, but two notable extensions are:

- VisualEditor: A WYSIWYG rich-text editor for MediaWiki-powered wikis
- Wikibase: Allows storing, managing, and accessing structured data which Wikipedia pulls from Wikidata.

All of this apparent ancillary tooling makes the modern Wikipedia, and each one is important for its functioning.

## Wikimedia and Mediawiki

Overall, Wikipedia’s technology ecosystem is vast! As MediaWiki, one of the most popular software in the Wikimedia world, is available under an open source license, [over four hundred thousand projects](https://wikistats.wmcloud.org/) and organizations use it for hosting their content. For example, [NASA uses it](https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2016/05/05/mediawiki-nasa/) to organize its content around space missions and their knowledge base!

In addition, there are many other bots, tools, desktop and mobile apps that help with content access, creation, editing, and maintenance. For example, bots in particular help drastically reduce the workload of editors by automating repetitive and tedious tasks, such as fighting vandalism, suggesting articles to newcomers, fact-checking articles, and more. InternetArchiveBot is a popular bot that frequently communicates with the Wayback Machine to fix dead links on Wikipedia.

Tools are software applications that support various contributors in their work. For example, organizers can access tools for conducting editathons, running campaigns, educational courses around Wikipedia editing, and so on. As of May 2022, bots and tools contribute 36.6% of edits made to 870 Wikimedia wikis, demonstrating their significant impact on the ecosystem.

[Kiwix](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kiwix) is a well-known offline reader and a desktop application that provides access to Wikipedia in limited internet access regions, particularly in educational settings. Mobile apps for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons allow editors to contribute articles and media files through their devices too, making our knowledge platforms accessible to a larger audience around the world.

The next time you are browsing a Wikipedia article and notice frequent changes being made to it in real-time in the wake of a recent event, you might be able to visualize better what might be happening behind the scenes.

## Wikipedia’s technical community

Wikipedia was launched in 2001. It had about ten developers at that time. Since the inception of the Wikimedia Foundation in 2003, the developer pool has vastly grown over these years. About a thousand developers are now contributing to various projects within our knowledge movement. This number fluctuates yearly, depending on the number of active contributors and staff members, initiatives supporting volunteer developers, global events such as the pandemic, and so on.

Members in the technical community contribute in various ways and roles. There are code contributors, documentarians, designers, advocates, mentors, community organizers, testers, translators, site administrators, and more.

According to a survey conducted for new developers, Wikimedia draws a lot of contributors from the United States, Europe, and India like other open source projects and is growing in different regions of the world.

Volunteer developers have similar motivations as Wikipedia editors. They join as contributors to support the free knowledge mission, learn and gain new skills, improve the experience of other editors, and so on. One of the volunteer developers from India says, “While I joined as an editor, I started to familiarize myself with the tech behind Wikipedia because there were significantly fewer contributors in the Hindi Wikipedia community who could address our local language needs through technology.”


Between July 2021 and June 2022, looking only at code repositories hosted in Wikimedia’s Gerrit instance, 514 developers contributed 45,621 merged software changes to 1225 repositories. Of these contributions, 48.52% came from outside the Wikimedia Foundation by other organizations and [independent developers](https://wikimedia.biterg.io/). Some of these developers are also part of various user groups, chapters, and affiliate bodies working in different regions to promote the use and encourage contributions to Wikimedia projects. These numbers do not include the additional developers who chose to host their code externally instead, or code that is hosted directly on wiki pages, such as gadgets or modules.

## Making a difference

Wikipedia is a vast repository of knowledge, available to everyone. In many ways, it’s the embodiment of the original vision of what the internet can and should be: A source of information, understanding, and collaboration.

You can be a part of Wikipedia as a contributor, either by sharing your knowledge in articles, or by helping to build the software that makes it all possible. If you’re interested in joining Wikimedia’s technical community, then explore the resources on our developer site, and learn how to [get involved](https://developer.wikimedia.org/).

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