'Wikipedia is like rock'n'roll; it's a cultural shift,' says Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Internet encyclopedia which is written and edited by its own readers.  It's self-organizing, self-correcting and is fast becoming one of the most-used reference tools on the planet, writes Geraldine Royds.

In 2001, Jimmy Wales, then an options trader, had a radical idea. He dared to imagine 'a world where every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge'. With the help of Larry Sanger, he set out to reinvent the encyclopedia for the Internet age - a collaborative work in many languages managed by a world wide community of volunteers and editors who contribute and review information.

'Wikipedia is non-profit. It was either the dumbest thing I ever did or the smartest thing I ever did,' says Jimmy Wales, who turned the site over to the non-profit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, in 2003.

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