BBC

Later, when rights contracts were renewed, this problem was resolved. Here is a list of alternate spellings for Wikipedia according to the language editions:. This led to some broadcasts being made unavailable on the Sky Digital platform, such as Scottish Premier League and Scottish Cup football, while on other platforms such broadcasts were not disrupted. These include:. Consequently, some rights concerns have needed to be resolved with programme providers such as Hollywood studios and sporting organisations, which have expressed concern about the unencrypted signal leaking out. All of them are multilingual, free-content wikis and administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. While the "footprint" of the Astra 2D satellite was smaller than that of Astra 2A, from which it was previously broadcast encrypted, it meant that viewers with appropriate equipment were able to receive BBC channels "free-to-air" over much of Western Europe. Wikipedia has several sister projects that fulfill non-encyclopedic roles.

This move was estimated to save the BBC £85 million over the next five years. Its founder has replied that it is not intended as one, though that is a consequence.^[26]. In March 2003 the BBC announced that from the end of May 2003 (subsequently deferred to 14 July) it intended to transmit all eight of its domestic television channels (including the 15 regional variations of BBC 1) unencrypted from the Astra 2D satellite. Former Wikipedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger has said that having the GFDL license as a "guarantee of freedom is a strong motivation to work on a free encyclopedia."^[24] In a study of Wikipedia as a community, Economics professor Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in wiki software create a catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation.^[25] Wikipedia has been viewed as a social experiment in anarchy or democracy. BBCi provides viewers with over 120 interactive TV programmes every year, as well as the 24/7 service. Vandalism or the minor infraction of policies may result in a warning or temporary block, while long-term or permanent blocks for prolonged and serious infractions are given by Jimmy Wales or, on its English edition, an elected Arbitration Committee. However, the amount of content available on the digital television BBCi service does not currently match the amount available on Ceefax, which is still available on analogue terrestrial television. Many users have been temporarily or permanently blocked from editing Wikipedia.

All of the BBC's digital television stations, with the exception of BBC Parliament on digital satellite, allow access to the BBCi service. Administrators are the largest such group, privileged with the ability to prevent articles from being edited, delete articles, or block users from editing in accordance with community policy. Recent examples include the interactive sports coverage for football and rugby football matches, BBC Soundbites which starred young actress Jennifer Lynn and an interactive national IQ test. Maintenance tasks are performed by a group of volunteer developers, stewards, bureaucrats, and administrators, which number in the hundreds. Unlike Ceefax, BBCi is able to display full-colour graphics, photographs, and video, as well as eductional programs. According to Wikimedia, one-quarter of Wikipedia's traffic comes from users without accounts, who are less likely to be editors.^[23]. BBCi is the brand name for the BBC's interactive digital television services, which are available through Freeview (digital terrestrial), as well as Sky Digital (satellite) and (cable) NTL and Telewest. During January 2005, Wikipedia had about 13,000 or more users who made at least five edits that month; 9,000 of these active users worked on its three largest language editions.^[22] A more active group of about 3,000 users made more than 100 edits per month, over half of these users having worked in the three largest editions.

(For example, instead of providing local events information and timetables, users will be guided to outside websites already providing that information.) Part of this plan included the BBC closing some of its websites, and rediverting money to redevelop other parts. Awards to the Wikipedia project and press clippings are listed by Wikimedia contributors on its website. bbc.co.uk will now attempt to fill in gaps in the market, but will guide users to other websites for currently existing market provision. Wikipedia has received plaudits from sources including BBC News, Washington Post, The Economist, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Science, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times, The Times (London), Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, The Financial Times, Time Magazine, Irish Times, Reader's Digest and The Daily Telegraph. In response to this the BBC carried out an investigation, and has now set in motion a plan to change the way it provides its online services. This award, normally given to individuals for great contributions to the Web in Japanese, was accepted by a long-standing contributor on behalf of the project. Some have proposed that the amount of licence fee money spent on bbc.co.uk should be reduced — either being replaced with funding from advertisements or subscriptions, or a reduction in the amount of content available on the site. In September 2004, the Japanese Wikipedia was awarded a Web Creation Award from the Japan Advertisers Association.

In recent years some major on-line companies and politicians have complained that the bbc.co.uk website receives too much funding from the television licence, meaning that other websites are unable to compete with the vast amount of advertising-free on-line content available on bbc.co.uk. Wikipedia was also nominated for a "Best Practices" Webby. A new system known as iMP is currently under development, which uses peer-to-peer and DRM technology to deliver both radio and TV content for offline use for up to 7 days. The second was a Judges' Webby award for the "community" category. The site also allows users to listen to most Radio output live and for seven days after broadcast using its RealPlayer-based "Radio Player"; some TV content is also distributed in RealVideo format. Wikipedia won two major awards in May 2004^[21]: The first was a Golden Nica for Digital Communities, awarded by Prix Ars Electronica; this came with a 10,000 euro grant and an invitation to present at the PAE Cyberarts Festival in Austria later that year. The website allows the BBC to produce sections which complement the various programmes on television and radio, and it is common for viewers and listeners to be told website addresses for the bbc.co.uk sections relating to that programme. Wikipedia related communities, such as The Wikipedia Review, whose members tend to dislike Wikipedia, also exist.

(References: Global Top 500 Sites - Top English Language Sites). Also see Asking questions and Getting in touch. According to Alexa's TrafficRank system, in January 2006 bbc.co.uk was the 11th most popular English Language website in the world. That is, authors can be asked to defend or clarify their work, and disputes are readily seen.^[20] Wikipedia editions also often contain reference desks in which the community answers questions. It is the UK's most-visited digital destination with over 3 million web pages and that number is rising fast every day. In a page on researching with Wikipedia, its authors argue that Wikipedia is valuable for being a social community. The bbc.co.uk [2] website, formerly BBCi and before that BBC Online, includes a comprehensive news website and archive. Emigh and Herring argue that "a few active users, when acting in concert with established norms within an open editing system, can achieve ultimate control over the content produced within the system, literally erasing diversity, controversy, and inconsistency, and homogenizing contributors' voices." Editors on Wikinfo, a fork of Wikipedia, similarly argue that new or controversial editors to Wikipedia are often unjustly labeled "trolls" or "problem users" and blocked from editing.^[18] Its community has also been criticized for responding to complaints regarding an article's quality by advising the complainer to fix the article.^[19].

In addition, BBC Worldwide acquired the independent magazine publisher Origin Publishing in 2004. The Wikipedia community consists of users who are proportionally few, but highly active. BBC Magazines, formerly known as BBC Publications, publishes the Radio Times and a number of magazines that support BBC programming such as BBC Top Gear, BBC Good Food, and BBC Music. While limited to science-based articles, the study reveals the substantial effectiveness of the peer-reviewed system utilized by Wikipedia. BBC Worldwide also maintains the publishing arm of the BBC and it is the third-largest publisher of consumer magazines in the United Kingdom [1]. Of eight "serious errors" found — including misinterpretations of important concepts — four came from each source. In addition, BBC television news appears nightly on many Public Broadcasting Service stations in the United States, as do reruns of BBC programmes from Lionheart TV. The average scientific entry in Wikipedia contained four errors or omissions, while Britannica had three.

BBC Worldwide also runs a 24-hour news channel, BBC World. However, in a study conducted by the journal Nature, making side-by-side comparisons of articles covering a broad swath of the scientific spectrum contained in Wikipedia with those found in Encyclopædia Britannica, found that the accuracy of the two databases is essentially the same. The cable and satellite stations BBC Prime (in Europe, Africa the Middle East, and Asia), BBC America, BBC Canada, and BBC Japan broadcast popular BBC programmes to people outside the UK, as does UK.TV in Australasia. This led to the decision to restrict the ability to start articles to registered users. It broadcasts television stations throughout the world. found that his biography had been vandalized. BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC responsible for the commercial exploitation of BBC programmes and other properties. At the end of 2005, controversy erupted after journalist John Seigenthaler Sr.

Since 1975, the BBC has also provided its TV programmes to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), allowing members of HM Forces serving all over the world to watch and listen to their favourite programmes from home on two dedicated TV channels. The journal Nature reported in 2005 that science articles in Wikipedia are comparable in accuracy to those in Encyclopedia Britannica (Wikipedia has an average of four mistakes per article; Britannica contains three) ^[17] (Nature, 438, pp 900-901, 15 December 2005). The BBC's commercial subsidiary BBC Worldwide is also part of a joint venture with Flextech in the TV company UKTV, and provides various channels for overseas markets, such as BBC World, BBC Prime, BBC America, BBC Canada and BBC Kids (in Canada), and BBC Japan. In overall score, Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points ("B-"), Brockhaus Premium 3.3, and Microsoft Encarta 3.1.^[15] In an analysis of online encyclopedias, Indiana University professors Emigh and Herring wrote that "Wikipedia improves on traditional information sources, especially for the content areas in which it is strong, such as technology and current events."^[16]. The BBC also runs BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, and two children's channels, CBBC and CBeebies. The German computing magazine c't performed a comparison of Brockhaus Premium, Microsoft Encarta, and Wikipedia in October 2004: Experts evaluated 66 articles in various fields. The BBC is also promoting the new channels BBC Three and BBC Four, which are only available via digital television. Encarta Feedback allows any user to propose revisions for review by their staff.^[14].

BBC One and BBC Two are the BBC's flagship television channels. Microsoft Encarta has started to solicit comments from readers in attempt to improve the accuracy and timeliness of its encyclopedia. The BBC has also recently experimented with the free, open source Ogg Vorbis streaming audio format and podcasting. Its editors have also argued that, as a website, Wikipedia is able to include articles on a greater number of subjects than print encyclopedias may.^[13]. All of the national BBC radio stations, as well as the BBC World Service, are available over the Internet in the RealAudio streaming format. For example, the then-new article on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on its English edition was cited often by the press shortly after the incident. Since 1943, the BBC has also provided radio programming to the British Forces Broadcasting Service, which broadcasts in countries where British troops are stationed. It has been praised for, as a wiki, allowing articles to be updated or created in response to current events.

Another famous member of staff was Egon Jameson (Egon Jacobsson), a former Ullstein journalist from Berlin. These problems have had a negative impact on Wikipedia's desired image as a fast and reliable source of information. Brinitzer, a German lawyer from Hamburg living in exile in London, was a founding member. The English-language website also suffers from frequent timeouts, server errors and occasional downtime due to heavy user traffic. The authoritative source is Carl Brinitzer's book "Hier spricht London". The entry on Hurricane Frances is five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street is twice as long as the article on Tony Blair."^[11] (Note that this is not true anymore as of December 2005.) Former Nupedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger stated in 2004, "when it comes to relatively specialized topics (outside of the interests of most of the contributors), the project's credibility is very uneven."^[12]. The German Service, created in 1938, which has recently been discontinued, played an important part in the propaganda war against Nazi Germany. Encyclopædia Britannica editor-in-chief Dale Hoiberg has argued that "people write of things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail.

It broadcasts in 43 different languages, (including English) in the most relevant local language. Wikipedia has been accused of deficiencies in comprehensiveness because of its voluntary nature, and of reflecting the systemic biases of its contributors. It can be received in most capital cities and it is a major source of news and information programming, and it is funded by the British Foreign Office. Referencing Linus' law of open-source development, Sanger stated earlier: "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow."^[8] Technology figure Joi Ito wrote on Wikipedia's authority, "[a]lthough it depends a bit on the field, the question is whether something is more likely to be true coming from a source whose resume sounds authoritative or a source that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (with the ability to comment) and has survived."^[9] Conversely, in an informal test of Wikipedia's ability to detect misinformation, its author remarked that its process "isn't really a fact-checking mechanism so much as a voting mechanism", and that material which did not appear "blatantly false" may be accepted as true.^[10]. For a world-wide audience, the BBC produces the BBC World Service, which is broadcast on shortwave radio (DAB Digital Radio in the UK) and can be received in many places across the globe. Wikipedia's editing process assumes that exposing an article to many users will result in accuracy. The BBC has been in the forefront of digital radio broadcasting with Five Live Sports Extra (a companion to Five Live for additional events coverage), 1Xtra (for black, urban and gospel music), BBC 6 Music (alternative genres of music), BBC7 (Comedy, Drama & Kids shows), Asian Network (Asian talk, music and news in many Asian languages), and World Service. Former Nupedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger criticized Wikipedia in late 2004 for having, according to Sanger, an "anti-elitist" philosophy of active contempt for expertise.^[7].

There is also a network of local stations with a mixture of talk, news and music in England and the Channel Islands as well as national stations of BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru (in Welsh), BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio nan Gaidheal (in Scots Gaelic), BBC Radio Ulster, and BBC Radio Foyle. Aaron Krowne wrote a rebuttal article in which he criticized McHenry's methods, and labeled them "FUD," the marketing technique of "fear, uncertainty, and doubt."^[6]. The BBC has five major national stations, Radio 1 ("the best in new music"), Radio 2 (the UK's most listened to radio station, with 13.7 million weekly listeners), Radio 3 (specialist-interest music such as classical, world, arts, drama and jazz), Radio 4 (current affairs, drama and comedy), and Radio 5 Live (24 hour news, sports and talk). In this way a reader can know "who has used the facilities before him" and how long the community has had to process the information in an article to provide calibration on the "sense of security." However, these proposals for provenance are quite controversial (see Wikipedia talk:Provenance). During major events the majority of domestic television viewers in the UK tune to BBC news for information, but its coverage does not come without criticism. The idea is to provide source provenance on each interval of text in an article and temporal provenance as to its vintage. Although the BBC news service in the UK is mostly non-commercial by reason of its financial base, it does compete for its audience with commercial companies such as Sky News and ITN. In response to this criticism, proposals have been made to provide various forms of provenance for material in Wikipedia articles; see for example Wikipedia:Provenance.

The BBC had carried news programmes prior to this, but in the form of newsreels. In a 2004 piece called "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia," former Britannica editor Robert McHenry criticized the wiki approach, writing,. Its first bulletin was telecast in 1954. However, these links are offered as background sources for the reader, not as sources used by the writer, and the "enhanced perspectives" are not intended to serve as reference material themselves. On 5 July 2004 the BBC celebrated 50 years of television news. The first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Wikipedia was "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light" (Linden, 2002), and dozens of enhanced perspectives have provided such links since then. Coverage of political events is controlled from the Millbank Studios in Westminster. Wikipedia articles have been referenced in "enhanced perspectives" provided on-line in Science.

It also operates regional news offices throughout the UK and bureaux in almost every country around the world. Academic circles have not been exclusively dismissive of Wikipedia as a reference. The BBC News Centre maintains its headquarters within the BBC Television Centre. Discussing Wikipedia as an academic source, danah boyd said in 2005 that "[i]t will never be an encyclopedia, but it will contain extensive knowledge that is quite valuable for different purposes"^[4]. Desktop news alerts, e-mail alerts, and digital TV alerts are also available. That premise is completely unproven."^[3] On October 24, 2005, The Guardian published an article "Can you trust Wikipedia?" where a group of experts critically reviewed entries for their fields. New BBC News services that are also proving popular are mobile services to mobile phones and PDAs. Similarly, Encyclopædia Britannica's executive editor, Ted Pappas, was quoted in The Guardian as saying: "The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection.

BBC News provides its services to BBC domestic radio as well as television networks such as BBC News 24, BBC Parliament, BBC World, BBCi, Ceefax and BBC News Online. But with something like this, all that goes out the window"(Waldman, 2004). BBC News is the largest broadcast news gathering operation in the world and it produces almost 160 hours of news output every hour. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data is reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. Today the BBC broadcasts in almost all media and operates an Internet service, bbc.co.uk. The main problem is the lack of authority. More recent deregulation of the British television broadcasting market produced analogue cable television and satellite broadcasting and later digital satellite, digital cable and digital terrestrial television (DTT). In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, librarian Philip Bradley said that he would not use Wikipedia and is "not aware of a single librarian who would.

Before the introduction of Independent Television in 1955 and subsequently Independent Radio in 1973, it held a monopoly on broadcasting. Wikipedia contains no formal peer review process for fact-checking, and the editors themselves may not be well-versed in the topics they write about. In addition the BBC operates a number of radio and television world services in cooperation with funding from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, one of which includes a recently set up TV news station in the Middle East in the Arabic language. Some argue that allowing anyone to edit makes Wikipedia an unreliable work. The BBC has both satellite and cable broadcasting joint-ventures serving the United States, Canada, and other countries. An entire website called Wikipedia Watch has been created to denounce Wikipedia as having "...a massive, unearned influence on what passes for reliable information.". It also has many non-broadcasting commercial ventures within the United Kingdom including book & magazine publishing (BBC Books), and multimedia production services (DVDs, CDs, computer games) provided by BBC Multimedia. It is considered to have no or limited utility as a reference work among many librarians, academics, and the editors of more formally written encyclopedias.

The BBC also jointly operates a number of other broadcasting services, namely the UKTV channels, some of the Discovery channels, and several other services available on satellite & cable services in the UK. Wikipedia has been criticized for a perceived lack of reliability, comprehensiveness, and authority. Among its many services are domestic radio and television stations. Proponents contend that open editing improves quality over time while critics allege that non-expert editing undermines quality. There are also many smaller local and regional studios scattered throughout the UK, some of which are known locally as "Broadcasting House" in imitation of the BBC's London headquarters. Wikipedia has been both praised and criticized for being open to editing by anyone. As well as the various BBC buildings in London, there are major BBC production centres located in Cardiff, Belfast, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and Newcastle upon Tyne. Wikipedia is criticised on the following issues:.

Well known buildings in this area include TVC (internal acronym for BBC Television Centre), White City, Media Centre, Broadcast Centre and Centre House. Notable criticisms include that its open nature makes Wikipedia unauthoritative and unreliable, that Wikipedia exhibits systemic bias and that the group dynamics of its community are hindering its goals. By far the largest concentration of BBC staff in the UK exists in White City. Critics of Wikipedia include Wikipedia editors themselves, ex-editors, representatives of other encyclopedias, and even subjects of the articles. In 2007/2008 BBC News is expected to relocate from the News Centre at BBC Television Centre to the refurbished Broadcasting House in what is being described as "one of the world's largest live newsrooms". Criticism of Wikipedia has increased with its prominence. While the rebuilding process is being undertaken many of the BBC Radio networks have been relocated to other buildings in the vicinity of Portland Place. Information related to evaluations of Wikipedia, including individual opinions, quality control, and awards are discussed below.

The major part of this plan involves the demolition of the two post-war extensions to the building and construction of a new building, to be of equal "architectural creativity", beside the existing structure. This is seen in articles and discussion venues both within Wikipedia and elsewhere. As part of a major reorganisation of BBC property, Broadcasting House is to become home to BBC News (both television and radio), national radio, and the BBC World Service. Wikipedia's claimed status as an encyclopedia has been increasingly controversial as it has gained prominence. Broadcasting House is currently undergoing renovation, scheduled for completion in 2010. Bomis, an on-line advertising company that hosts mostly adult-oriented web-rings, played a significant part in the early development of Wikipedia. On the front of the building are statues of Prospero and Ariel (from Shakespeare's The Tempest), by Eric Gill. [2].

It is home to the national radio networks Radio 2, 3, 4, 6 Music, and BBC 7. It's 4th Quarter 2005 costs were $321,000 dollars with hardware making up almost 60% of the budget. Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London is the official headquarters of the BBC. Wikipedia is funded through the Wikimedia Foundation . The BBC's current Political Editor, Nick Robinson, was previously a chairman of the Young Conservatives and has, as a result, attracted informal criticism from the current Labour government. The ongoing status of Wikipedia's website is posted by users at a status page on OpenFacts. Despite these criticisms, many still regard the BBC as a trusted and politically neutral news source across the globe, and in some areas the BBC World Service radio is the only available free press. In spite of all this, Wikipedia page load times remain quite variable.

Commercial competition has influenced BBC programming on both radio and television throughout its history. A new Dutch cluster is also online now. Political influence may manifest itself via appointments to its Board of Governors and by threats to change the level of the licence fee. Wikimedia has begun building a global network of caching servers with the addition of three such servers in France. Quite often domestic audiences have affectionately referred to the BBC as the Beeb, or as Auntie; the latter originating in the somewhat fuddy duddy Auntie knows best attitude dating back to the early days when John Reith was in charge. To increase speed further, rendered pages for anonymous users are cached in a filesystem until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses. Some have argued that a current of anti-BBC thinking exists in many parts of the political spectrum and that, since the BBC's theoretical impartiality means they will broadcast many views and opinions, people will see the bias they wish to see. The web servers serve pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the Wikipedias.

Conversely, some of those who style themselves anti-establishment in the United Kingdom or who oppose foreign wars have accused the BBC of pro-establishment bias or of refusing to give an outlet to "anti-war" voices. Requests that cannot be served from the Squid cache are sent to two load-balancing servers running the Perlbal software, which then pass the request to one of the Apache web servers for page-rendering from the database. This gave rise, during the first Gulf War, to the satirical name "Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation". Page requests are processed by first passing to a front-end layer of Squid caching servers. Similarly, during times of war, the BBC is often accused by the UK government, or by strong supporters of British military campaigns, of being overly sympathetic to the view of the enemy. By September 2005, its server cluster had grown to around 100 servers in four locations around the world. This gave rise to the satirical name "Buggers Broadcasting Communism". This configuration included a single master database server running MySQL, multiple slave database servers, 21 web servers running the Apache software, and seven Squid cache servers.

However, the BBC is regularly accused by the government of the day of bias in favour of the opposition and, by the opposition, of bias in favour of the government. In January 2005, the project ran on 39 dedicated servers located in Florida. The BBC is, in theory, free from both political and commercial influence and answers only to its viewers and listeners. Wikipedia was served from a single server until 2003, when the server setup was expanded into an n-tier distributed architecture. The main points of this are:. It was licensed under the GNU General Public License and used by all Wikimedia projects. On 2 March 2005 the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell published a green paper setting out her proposals for the future of the BBC. Instituted in July 2002, this Phase III software was called MediaWiki.

Although the Charter is widely expected to be renewed in 2006, some proposals have suggested dramatic changes. Ultimately, the software was rewritten again, this time by Lee Daniel Crocker. The BBC's Royal Charter is currently under review. Several rounds of modifications were made to improve performance in response to increased demand. On his first day in the role he announced a shake-up of senior management, including the replacement of the Executive Committee, formed by directors of divisions within the BBC, with a streamlined nine-member Executive Board currently consisting of:. This software, Phase II, was written specifically for the Wikipedia project by Magnus Manske. The current Director-General is Mark Thompson. Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database in January 2002.

The governors as of 19 January 2005 are:. At first it required CamelCase for links; later it was also possible to use double brackets. General management of the organisation is in the hands of a Director-General appointed by the governors. Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki by Clifford Adams (Phase I). It is run by an appointed Board of Governors. MediaWiki is Phase III of the program's software. The BBC is a nominally autonomous corporation, independent from direct government intervention. Wikipedia is run by MediaWiki free software on a cluster of dedicated servers located in Florida and three other locations around the world.

The BBC gives the following figures for expenditure of licence fee income:. Publication will begin in October 2006, and finish in 2010. In total, the BBC's group income is estimated at £3835.3m for 2005. There are currently plans to license the usage of the Wikipedia trademark for some products like books or DVDs.^[25] The German Wikipedia will be printed in its entirety by Directmedia, in 100 volumes of 800 pages each. The 2005 Annual report gave revenue sources in millions of:. Technically a servicemark, the scope of the mark is for: "Provision of information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet". Its annual budget is approximately £3.7 billion. Trademark protection was accorded by Japan on December 16, 2004 and in the European Union on January 20, 2005.

Income from commercial enterprises and from overseas sales of its catalogue of programmes has substantially increased over recent years. The mark was granted registration status on January 10, 2006. The BBC has the largest budget of any UK broadcaster. The Wikimedia Foundation applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark Wikipedia® on September 17, 2004. World Service external broadcasting is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Wikipedia reached its one millionth article among 105 language editions on September 20, 2004,^[23] while the English edition alone reached its 500,000th on March 18, 2005^[24]. In theory the BBC is answerable only to the licence payer. The English Wikipedia reached a 100,000 article milestone on January 22, 2003^[22].

However, the BBC does engage in commercial advertising in its publications and some broadcasting activities. In its first two years, it grew at a few hundred or fewer new articles per day; by 2004, this had accelerated to 1,000 to 3,000 per day across all editions. Because government regulation controls its funding, the BBC is able to provide domestic public service broadcasting to educate, inform and entertain, free of commercial advertising. Wikipedia has traditionally measured its status by article count. Some also claim that it also leads to better programmes on the commercial channels as they seek to draw viewers/listeners away from the BBC's output. Wikimedia has since started a number of other projects, detailed below. However, supporters of the licence fee claim that it helps maintain a higher quality of programming on the BBC compared to its commercial rivals. Wikipedia's first sister project, "In Memoriam: September 11 Wiki" had been created in October 2002 to detail the September 11, 2001 attacks; Wiktionary, a dictionary project, was launched in December 2002; Wikiquote, a collection of quotes, a week after Wikimedia launched; and Wikibooks, a collection of collaboratively-written free books, the next month.

The television licence is often the subject of controversy; some argue that the licence is a regressive tax, in that the very poorest are those least likely to have a licence, and least able to pay the fine for not having a licence. From Wikipedia and Nupedia, the Wikimedia Foundation was created on June 20, 2003.^[21] Wikipedia and its sister projects thereafter operated under this non-profit organization. Collecting them has been the responsibility of TV Licensing (an autonomous arm of the BBC) since 1990, but much of the collection work is subcontracted to the independent companies Capita and AMV. Projects have since forked from Wikipedia's content for editorial reasons, such as Wikinfo, which abandoned "neutral point-of-view" in favor of multiple complementary articles written from a "sympathetic point-of-view.". Licence fees are set by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (a Cabinet Minister). Later that year, Wales announced that Wikipedia would not display advertisements, and moved its website to wikipedia.org. Subsidised TV licences are available for the blind and the residents of residential care homes. Citing fear of commercial advertising and lack of control in a perceived English-centric Wikipedia, users of the Spanish Wikipedia forked from Wikipedia to create the Enciclopedia Libre in February 2002.

In the case of the elderly (over 75), TV licences are funded by the government. It subsequently became inactive and its creator, free-software figure Richard Stallman, lent his support to Wikipedia.^[20]. For a more detailed historical explanation see British Broadcasting Company. Under a similar concept of free content, though not wiki production, the GNUPedia project existed alongside Nupedia early in its history. These licences were originally issued by the British General Post Office (GPO), which was then the regulator of public communications within the UK. Wales mentioned that he heard the concept first from Jeremy Rosenfeld, an employee of Bomis who showed him the same wiki, in December 2000,^[19] but it was after Sanger heard of its existence from Ben Kovitz, a regular at this wiki, in January 2001,^[17] and proposed a creation of a wiki for Nupedia to Wales that Wikipedia's history started. A similar licence used to exist for radios, but was abolished in 1971. Wales and Sanger attribute the concept of using a wiki to Ward Cunningham's WikiWikiWeb or Portland Pattern Repository.

The television licence is set by the government and enforced by the criminal law but is collected privately and does not pass through the state before reaching the BBC, and hence it is inaccurate to refer to the BBC as a "state" broadcaster. It had 26 language editions by the end of 2002, 46 by the end of 2003, and 161 by the end of 2004.^[18] Nupedia and Wikipedia coexisted until the former's servers went down, permanently, in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Wikipedia. Such a licence is required to operate a broadcast television receiver within the UK. It grew to approximately 20,000 articles among 18 language editions by the end of its first year. The principal means of funding the BBC is through the television licence. Wikipedia gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and search engine indexing. In this respect it filled a role that is now lacking in many areas, since it was motivated by the desire for quality, not profit. There were otherwise few rules initially.

In the early days it carried out essential research into acoustics, programme level measurement, and noise measurement and established standards that rapidly spread, particularly throughout the British Empire. Its policy of "neutral point-of-view" was codified in its initial months, though it is similar to Nupedia's earlier "nonbias" policy. The BBC Research Department has played a major part in the development of broadcasting and recording techniques. It was relaunched off-site after Nupedia's Advisory Board of subject experts disapproved of its production model.^[17] Wikipedia thereafter operated as a standalone project without control from Nupedia. Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the 1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector (and from the advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4), especially on satellite television, cable television, and digital television services. Wikipedia was formally launched on 15 January 2001, as a single English-language edition at wikipedia.com, and announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list.^[16] It had been, from 10 January, a feature of Nupedia.com in which the public could write articles that could be incorporated into Nupedia after review. BBC 2 was broadcast in colour from July 1, 1967, and was joined by BBC 1 and ITV on November 15, 1969. So there's little downside, as far as I can see."^[15].

The BBC introduced a second TV channel, (BBC 2), in 1964, renaming the existing channel BBC 1. They're also a potentially great source for content. Competition to the BBC was introduced for the first time in 1955 with the commercially and independently operated ITV. It seems to me wikis can be implemented practically instantly, need very little maintenance, and in general are very low-risk. Television broadcasting was suspended from September 1, 1939 to June 7, 1946 during the Second World War. We have occasionally bandied about ideas for simpler, more open projects to either replace or supplement Nupedia. It started experimental television broadcasting in 1932, becoming a regular service (known as the BBC Television Service) in 1936. (...) As to Nupedia's use of a wiki, this is the ULTIMATE "open" and simple format for developing content.

The BBC, with John Reith as general manager, took on its current form in 1927 when it was granted a Royal Charter of incorporation. Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not. The first transmission was on 14 November of that year. It's an idea to add a little feature to Nupedia. The British Broadcasting Company was founded in 1922 by various private firms, to broadcast experimental radio services. "No, this is not an indecent proposal. . Under the subject "Let's make a wiki", he wrote:.

- Deutscher Universitaetsverlag. In total, Wikipedia contains 211 language editions of varying states with a combined 3.3 million articles.^[9]. Reasons, Results and Consequences - Encompassing account of the BBC and influencing external factors until 1996. Wikipedia encompasses 123 "active" language editions (100+ articles) as of January 2006.^[8] Its five largest editions are, in descending order, English, German, French, Polish and Japanese. - The BBC in Transition. ^[7]. Spangenberg, Jochen. For instance, the Parliament of Canada website refers to Wikipedia's article on same-sex marriage in the "further reading" list of Bill C-38.^[6] Noncomprehensive lists of such uses are maintained by Wikipedians.