With Saturday, January 15, 2011, marking the completion of a decade of existence of Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia solely financed by reader donations -, it is clear that the globally crowd-sourced encyclopedia has effectively weathered severe criticism about its reliability and banishment from the academia.

The popularity of Wikipedia, which went online in 2001, can be gauged from the fact that it features quite consistently among the top 10 Google results for almost all searches. In fact, over the years, Wikipedia has become an indispensable tool for Internet users.

Wikipedia was founded by a somewhat unconventional pair of men - Jimmy Wales, who ran Bomis. com online portal; and philosopher Larry Sanger - who got to know each other via online philosophical discussions. Sanger, however, left Wikipedia in 2002 in a dispute over quality control. Ever since, Wales is viewed as sole founder of the encyclopedia.

Initially, it was from the Bomis. com revenues that Wales steered start-up funds to Wikipedia. But, in 2003, Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation, to which he moved all of Wikipedia's intellectual property rights and domain names; thereby establishing general policy for the encyclopedia on a donor-funded basis.

Noting that "Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website in the world," Wales said in a recent interview with Wired. co. uk: "Wikipedia is pretty good but not perfect, and that it is getting better all the time. It's really important that our community remain steadfastly committed to taking quality really seriously."