Wikiquote.org - Vast Reference Of Quotations

Looking for quotations from prominent people? Willing to learn more about a particular quotation? As quotations will exist forever as a summary of the collective insights of society, communal knowledge passed on from one generation to the next, Wikiquote has been collecting a wide number of quotations of all types. Wikiquote is a free online compendium of quotations from notable people and creative works in every language, including sources (where known), translations of non-English quotes, and links to Wikipedia for further information. The site is a wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit any entry right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears in every Wikiquote entry. Although you can search Wikiquote in a search box by topical words such as "peace," "animal rights," "silence," "success," etc., and identifies applicable quotations; searching by categories of quotes can be more entertaining. You can start browsing categories like films, literary works, occupations, proverbs, television shows, themes, electronic games. For instance, you’ll find quotations from movies ranging from Titanic and Dirty Dancing to Pirates of the Caribbean and RoboCop. You can search for "misquotations" in the search box and find a list of frequently used misquotes such as: “Religion is the opiate of the masses”, “Houston, we have a problem”, and many more. Enter "misattributions" and discover Benjamin Franklin never said “God made beer because he loves us and wants us to be happy”. Wikiquote abounds in proverbs from places near and far. You will also find listings of "Epitaphs" and "Last Words" ("Where is my clock?" by Salvador Dali).

“Wikiquote is one of a family of wiki-based projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation, running on MediaWiki software. Based on an idea by Daniel Alston and implemented by Brion Vibber, the goal of the project is to produce collaboratively a vast reference of quotations from prominent people, books and proverbs, and to give details about them. Wikiquote pages are cross-linked to articles about the notable personalities on Wikipedia. Initially the project was created in English, but in July 2004, more languages were added.”

Wikiquote has interesting and useful categories to examine and also offers all readers the opportunity to become Wikiquotians (people who write and/or edit articles) themselves. Every day many contributors from around the world make hundreds of edits and create lots of new articles. By May 2007, the English Wikiquote reached 10,000 pages, followed closely by German, then the Polish, Italian, Slovak, Russian, Portuguese, Bosnian, Bulgarian and Slovenian versions.

How will they be able to compete with many other online collections of quotations? Will they be able to obtain enough donations to keep it going?