Wikipedia Web Site

The new headquarters of one of the world's most popular websites is 3,000 square feet of rented space furnished with desks and chairs bought on the cheap from EBay and Craigslist. A sheet of printer paper taped to the door says the office belongs to the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, the online almanac of anything and everything that users want to chronicle, from Thomas Aquinas to Zorba the Greek.

Microsoft Corp. landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced encyclopedia website. Although Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries.

AROUND 12:30 p.m. PST on Feb. 8, the first word of Anna Nicole Smith's death began to float into public consciousness. Within minutes, cable news networks ground to a halt as anchors fumbled for profundity. Within the next hours, newsrooms across America began a weeklong debate: "Is she a real celebrity?" and "Just because America is dying to know about her death, does that make it news?" But while old media struggled to get its ducks in a row, online an unlikely news team snapped into action.

Online encyclopedia Wikipedia may launch trivia games and quiz programs to boost funds and possibly veer from its no-advertising policy in the future to raise cash for charity. But Jimmy Wales, who founded the free, multilingual virtual encyclopedia in 2001, said Wikipedia would continue to eschew advertising for now.

On Sept. 17, Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, the founding father of Wikipedia and the community's most celebrated member, created a one-sentence article that read as follows: "Mzoli's Meats is a butcher shop and restuarant [sic] located in Guguletu [sic] township near Cape Town, South Africa." Twenty-two minutes later, the article was deleted from the site.