who created wikipedia and why
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger co-founded Wikipedia as an offshoot of an earlier encyclopedia project, Nupedia, in January 2001. Originally, Wikipedia was created to provide content for Nupedia. However, as the wiki site became established it soon grew beyond the scope of the earlier project. As of January 2015, the website provided well over five million articles in English and more than that number in all other languages combined.
Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. Sanger coined its name, a portmanteau of wiki and encyclopedia. There was only the English-language version initially, but it quickly developed similar versions in other languages, which differ in content and in editing practices.