Wikipedia:Wikipedia in nine words
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia is a: neutral and unbiased compilation of previously written, verifiable facts.
This can be expanded as follows:
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- Neutral: Wikipedia does not judge or advocate specific views. Rather, it judges the value to users of neutrally representing different views.
- Unbiased: Views are allowed to speak for themselves rather than being cast into one "correct" viewpoint.
- Compilation: Wikipedia is not a simple collection or list of facts. There is a process of summarizing, grading, organizing and collating involved, to ensure that the resulting articles are as useful as possible for readers seeking both detail and overview.
- Verifiable: Information must be realistically verifiable, including being cited from a reliable source.
- Facts: Wikipedia contains facts, not opinions, and not original research. Since any opinion of note has been expressed by some person or group of people, we do not try to decide or claim that an opinion is "true" or "false". We state instead, neutrally and factually, which people hold what views, and allow the facts to speak for themselves.
