You must be familiar with Wikipedia, the Online Free Encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org). Search for anything, and there appears an article about it.
It gives you an article related to the subject you need, good. But what about the case when you need multiple articles related to a single subject (for example, the articles related to a selected number of birds, rather than a single bird)? Haven’t you really wanted to get a page that lists every article, picture, and news related to the given subject in such situations? Well, here is the trick!
Add a portal: keyword before what you type in the Wikipedia search box, and there comes a portal on that subject. For example, try portal:birds and you are presented with the Birds Portal. While searching in Google, you can use wikipedia portal:birds.
A portal not only lists the Wikipedia articles on the given subject, but also showcases some selections and links to related works on other Wikimedia projects. For example, the Birds portal features selected article, picture and species which change frequently. Under the section Associated Wikimedia, you can find links to bird-related works on other sites like Wiktionary (Wiki Dictionary) and Wikibooks. You can also look for a Things you can do section, which tells how you can contribute.
Bonus points
- Wikipedia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001.
- The name Wikipedia is derived from two words Wiki and Encyclopedia. Wiki means a page that visitors can edit.
- Contributed to by millions of users around the globe, Wikipedia is one of the largest reference works ever created. It is available in more than 290 languages and contains millions of articles and pictures. Now, search portal:contents/portals in Wikipedia will bring you the list of all available portals.