English Wikipedia

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Favicon of Wikipedia English Wikipedia
Logo of the English Wikipedia
Screenshot
The Main Page of the English Wikipedia on 31 January 2009
en.wikipedia.org
Type of site
Internet encyclopedia project
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
Created byJimmy Wales, Larry Sanger[1]
URLen.wikipedia.org
CommercialCharitable
RegistrationOptional (required to create articles)

The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching three million articles by August 2009,[2] it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with almost three times as many articles as the next largest, the German Wikipedia. As of May 2024, nearly 10.8% of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English language edition. This share has gradually declined from more than 50% in 2003, because of the growth of Wikipedias in other languages.[3] There are 6,821,351 articles on the site (live count).[4] In January 2012, the combined text of the English Wikipedia's articles totalled approximately 9.7 gigabytes, excluding images.[5]

The Simple English Wikipedia is a variation, with most of the articles using a simplified level of English vocabulary.

Pioneering edition

Percentages of articles written in various language families. English highlighted has 22% of articles (2009-09-06).

The English Wikipedia was the first Wikipedia edition and has remained the largest. It has pioneered many ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by some of the other-language Wikipedia editions. These ideas include "featured articles",[6] the neutral-point-of-view policy,[7] navigation templates,[8] the sorting of short "stub" articles into sub-categories,[9] dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration,[10] and weekly collaborations.[11]

The English Wikipedia has adopted features from the German Wikipedia, and from smaller editions. These features include verified revisions from the German Wikipedia (dewiki), and town population-lookup templates from the Dutch Wikipedia (nlwiki).

Although the English Wikipedia stores images and audio files, as well as text files, many of the images have been moved to Wikimedia Commons with the same name, as passed-through files. However, the English Wikipedia also has fair-use images and audio/video files (with copyright restrictions), most of which are not allowed on Commons.

Many of the most active participants in the Wikimedia Foundation, and the developers of the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia, are English Wikipedia users.

Users and editors

Origin of edits (04/10 - 03/11) Source
United States
 
 44.0%
United Kingdom
 
 16.3%
Canada
 
 6.6%
Australia
 
 4.5%
India
 
 3.2%
Germany
 
 2.0%
Philippines
 
 1.3%
New Zealand
 
 1.1%
Netherlands
 
 1.0%
Ireland
 
 1.0%
Other
 
 19.0%
In April 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation conducted a usability study on the English Wikipedia, questioning users about the editing mechanism.[12]

The English Wikipedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007,[13] just a little over a year since it had crossed a threshold of 1,000,000 registered user accounts in late February 2006.[14]

About 250,000 new accounts are created every month.[citation needed] About 300,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times.[citation needed] Approximately the same number, 300,000 editors, edit Wikipedia every month; of these, about 50,000 perform more than 5 edits, and 5,000 perform more than 100 edits.[citation needed] By 24 November 2011, a total of 500 million edits had been performed on the English Wikipedia.[citation needed]

A 2008 survey provided some basic information on the demographics and motivations of Wikipedia editors.[15]

As the largest Wikipedia edition, and because English is such a widely-used language, the English Wikipedia draws many users and editors whose native language is not English. Such users may seek information from the English Wikipedia rather than the Wikipedia of their native language because the English Wikipedia tends to contain more information about general subjects. Successful collaborations have developed between non-native English speakers who add content to English Wikipedia and native English speakers who act as copyeditors for them.

English Wikipedia statistics
Number of users Number of articles Number of files Number of administrators
47,370,057 6,821,351 916,869 859

Arbitration Committee

Main article: Arbitration Committee (English Wikipedia)

The English Wikipedia has an Arbitration Committee (also known as ArbCom) that consists of a panel of editors that imposes binding rulings with regard to disputes between other editors of the online encyclopedia.[16] The Committee was created by Jimmy Wales on 4 December 2003 as an extension of the decision-making power he had formerly held as owner of the site.[17][18]

Top 25 countries from which Wikipedians contribute. Countries in which the majority of the population are native English speakers are in dark green; countries with English as a mostly second language are in light green. However, people in many other nations also contribute to the English Wikipedia.[19]

When initially founded, the Committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each.[17][20] Since then, the Committee has gradually expanded to its membership to 18 arbitrators.[21]

Like other aspects of the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia's sister projects have emulated the Arbitration Committee with their own similar versions. In 2007, an Arbitration Committee was founded on the German Wikipedia called the Schiedsrichter.[22]

Controversies

See also: Wikipedia biography controversy and Essjay controversy

Among the controversies in the English Wikipedia is a debate over which national variety of the English language is to be preferred, with the most commonly advocated candidates being American English and British English.[23] Many suggestions have been proposed by editors, ranging from standardizing upon a single form of English to forking the English Wikipedia project. A style guideline states, "the English Wikipedia has no general preference for a major national variety of the language" and "an article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation".[24] An article should use spelling and grammar variants consistently; for example, color and colour are not to be used in the same article, since they represent American and British English, respectively. The guide also states that an article must remain in the same national variant in which it was first created, or which first became discernible in the article's history.

There has been a similar issue in the Chinese language Wikipedia concerning regional differences in how the language is written, as well as in the Portuguese Wikipedia between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese.[citation needed]

Incidents of cyberbullying on Wikipedia have been reported in the mainstream press.[25][26][27] The Glen A. Wilson High School was subject of such a threat in 2008,[25][26][27] and a 14-year-old boy was arrested for making a threat against Niles West High School on Wikipedia in 2006.[28]

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ There is some controversy over who founded Wikipedia. Wikipedia's official personnel page from September 2001 states Wales and Sanger were the two co-founders, and that there was no editor-in-chief. Wales considers himself to be the sole founder of Wikipedia and has told the Boston Globe that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder. However, Sanger strongly contests that description. He was identified as a co-founder of Wikipedia at least as early as September 2001 and referred to himself that way as early as January 2002.
    • Jonathan Sidener (6 December 2004). "Everyone's Encyclopedia". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
    • Peter Meyers (20 September 2001). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". New York Times. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
    • Sanger, Larry. "What Wikipedia is and why it matters". Retrieved 12 April 2006.
  2. ^ Johnson, Bobbie (17 August 2009). "English Wikipedia hits three million articles". The Guardian. UK. Retrieved 17 August 2009.
  3. ^ Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (21 September 2008). "List of Wikipedias". Retrieved 21 September 2008.
  4. ^ The number of articles on the English Wikipedia is shown by the MediaWiki variable {{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}, with all Wikipedias as total {{NUMBEROF|ARTICLES|total}} = 62,947,387.
  5. ^ "Download Wikipedia In English – All 9.7GB Of It". April 9, 2012. Retrieved 2012-04-10.
  6. ^ English Wikipedia (30 January 2007). "Featured articles". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  7. ^ English Wikipedia (25 January 2007). "Neutral point of view". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  8. ^ Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (29 January 2007). "Help:Template". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  9. ^ English Wikipedia (19 January 2007). "WikiProject Stub sorting". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  10. ^ English Wikipedia (27 January 2007). "Resolving disputes". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  11. ^ English Wikipedia (30 January 2007). "Article Creation and Improvement Drive". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
  12. ^ "Usability and Experience Study". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
  13. ^ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-02/News and notes. Retrieved on 20 April 2007
  14. ^ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-02-27/News and notes. Retrieved on 20 April 2007
  15. ^ New Reports from November 2008 Survey Released, Wikimedia Blog, 2 April 2010
  16. ^ Schiff, Stacy (2 December 2006). "Know-alls". The Age. Fairfax Digital Network. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
  17. ^ a b Wales, Jimmy (4 December 2003). "WikiEN-l Wikiquette committee appointments". Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
  18. ^ Hoffman, David A. (2010). "Wikitruth Through Wikiorder". Emory Law Journal. 59 (2010). SSRN 1354424. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  19. ^ Erik Zachte (14 November 2011). "Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report - Page Edits Per Wikipedia Language - Breakdown". Wikimedia Statistics. Retrieved 19 January 2011.
  20. ^ Hyatt, Josh (1 June 2006). "Secrets of Greatness: Great Teams". Fortune. Time Warner. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
  21. ^ Wales, Jimmy (20 December 2008). "ArbCom Appointments". Wikipedia. Retrieved 14 June 2009.
  22. ^ Kleinz, Torsten (30 April 2007). "Wikipedia sucht Schiedsrichter" (in German). heise online. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
  23. ^ English Wikipedia. "Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling)". Retrieved 25 February 2006.
  24. ^ English Wikipedia. "Wikipedia:Manual of Style". Retrieved 10 October 2007.
  25. ^ a b Hennessy-Fiske, Molly (29 April 2008). "Wikipedia threats went unchecked – Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times.
  26. ^ a b Hacienda Heights school receives possible threat | abc7.com
  27. ^ a b "Student arrested for violent threats on Wikipedia". Los Angeles Times. 29 April 2008. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
  28. ^ "Teen charged after threat to school on Wikipedia". Bloomington, IL: Pantagraph.com. Associated Press. 31 October 2006. Retrieved 26 January 2011.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to English Wikipedia.
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