It is one of the 15 most popular websites as ranked by Alexa, as of January 2021 and The Economist magazine placed it as the "13th-most-visited place on the web". Featuring no advertisements, it is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded primarily through donations.

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Sanger coined its name as a portmanteau of "wiki" and "encyclopedia". It was initially an English-language encyclopedia, but versions in other languages were quickly developed. With 6.2 million articles, the English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 300 Wikipedia encyclopedias. Overall, Wikipedia comprises more than 55 million articles, attracting 1.7 billion unique visitors per month.

In 2006, Time magazine stated that the open-door policy of allowing anyone to edit had made Wikipedia the biggest and possibly the best encyclopedia in the world, and was a testament to the vision of Jimmy Wales. The project's reputation improved further in the 2010s as it increased efforts to improve its quality and reliability, based on its unique structure, curation and absence of commercial bias. In 2018, Facebook and YouTube announced that they would help users detect fake news by suggesting links to related Wikipedia articles.

Due to the increasing popularity of Wikipedia, some editions, including the English version, have introduced editing restrictions in some cases. For instance, on the English Wikipedia and some other language editions, only registered users may create a new article.

In certain cases, all editors are allowed to submit modifications, but review is required for some editors, depending on certain conditions.  Under this system, new and unregistered users' edits to certain controversial or vandalism-prone articles are reviewed by established users before they are published.

Other Events:

- Celebrating 115 years of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. - The first African American sorority in the United States (January 15, 1908 - January 15, 2023)

- Celebrating the 92nd Anniversary of the American Women's Physical Therapeutic Association (January 15, 1921 - January 15, 2023)

According to en.wikipedia.org