I doubt if anyone has not heard of the Wikipedia. The concept behind the wikipedia was something new to the World Wide Web; it was something revolutionary in one sense. The wikipedia is an online free encyclopaedia. It is anyone's encyclopaedia. Why it is said so is because it gives us freedom to add, edit, and comment on articles. This kind of a system allows the encyclopaedia to become an encyclopaedia in a complete sense.

Some of the main differences between wikipedia and other online encyclopaedias are that (a) you have the freedom to edit articles, (b) you have the freedom to add content, (c) you can leave your comments on an article, and (d) you can add some relatively new topic in a short span of time. And moreover the system is so easy to use. Other encyclopaedias don't give you that freedom; moreover they follow the traditional method of including an article, which may take some time with reviewing and editing itself. All these features mentioned above make wikipedia an encyclopaedia in a complete sense.

Wikipedia is the people's encyclopaedia. It is actually people (like you and me) who makes articles or edits them. So it does not really matter if you "spoil" something; there is always someone to fix it. In fact the very design of wikipedia allows for this. Anyone, anywhere in the world, can work with the wikipedia, at any time. This is what makes wikipedia a peoples' encyclopaedia.

The Wikipedia is actually a project of the Wikimedia foundation. Like all projects, wikipedia has its own upsides and pitfalls. The upsides are all that I've mentioned above. The pitfalls are many. Like for e.g., at any time there is no guarantee that an article is reliable or not. The only solution to this is that you might have to ask other people (who are aware about the subject) to review it. Like this there are many more problems. But I think it is best you discover them yourself. Almost all these problems might have been solved before. But however, you must express your problem yourself and discuss it with people. The wikipedia has a support bench for issues like these. This will not only help you understand wikipedia, but at some point of time you will start to appreciate wikipedia.