Initially only available in English, editions in other languages were quickly developed. Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization that employs a staff of over 700 people. It consistently ranks as one of the ten most popular websites in the world, and as of 2024 it is ranked the fifth most visited website on the Internet by Semrush. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. Wikipedia is a free-content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the use of the wiki-based editing system MediaWiki. Most text is also dual-licensed under GFDL media licensing varies