English Wikipedia

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Favicon of Wikipedia English Wikipedia
83%
Logo of the English Wikipedia
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Screenshot
The homepage of the English Wikipedia
The homepage of the English Wikipedia celebrating its 5,000,000th article in November 2015
Web address en.wikipedia.org
Slogan The free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Commercial? No
Type of site
 Internet encyclopedia
Registration Optional, but required for certain tasks including
  • • protected page edit 
  • • page creation 
  • • file upload 
Users 2,635
Content license
 Creative Commons Attribution/
Share-Alike 3.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL)
Media licensing varies
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Created by Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger[1]
Launched 15 January 2001

The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001, it is the first edition of Wikipedia and, as of June 2022, has the most articles of any of the editions, at 6,508,050.[2] As of November 2024, nearly 5.9% of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English-language edition. This share has gradually declined from more than 50 percent in 2003, due to the growth of Wikipedias in other languages.[3] There are 2,385,406 articles on the site (live count).[4] In October 2015, the combined text of the English Wikipedia's articles totalled 11.5 gigabytes when compressed.[5] On November 1, 2015, the English Wikipedia announced it had reached 5,000,000 articles[6] and ran a special logo to reflect the milestone.[7]

The Simple English Wikipedia is a variation in which most of the articles use only basic English vocabulary. There is also the Old English (Ænglisc/Anglo-Saxon) Wikipedia (angwiki).

Pioneering edition

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See also: Wikipedia:Milestones

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",[8] the neutral-point-of-view policy,[9] navigation templates,[10] the sorting of short "stub" articles into sub-categories,[11] dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration,[12] and weekly collaborations.[13]

The English Wikipedia has adopted features from Wikipedias in other languages. 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

English Wikipedia statistics
Number of user accounts Number of articles Number of files Number of administrators
2,635 2,385,406 1,775,205 27

The English Wikipedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007,[14] just a little over a year since it had crossed a threshold of 1,000,000 registered user accounts in late February 2006.[15]

Over 800,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times.[16] 300,000 editors edit Wikipedia every month; of these, over 30,000 perform more than 5 edits per month, and a little over 3,000 perform more than 100 edits per month.[17] By 24 November 2011, a total of 500 million edits had been performed on the English Wikipedia.

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 the English Wikipedia and native English speakers who act as copyeditors for them.

Arbitration Committee

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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.[18] 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.[19][20]

When initially founded, the Committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each.[19][21] Since then, the Committee has gradually expanded to its membership to 18 arbitrators.[22]

Like other aspects of the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia's sister projects have emulated the Arbitration Committee with their own similar versions.[23] For instance, in 2007, an Arbitration Committee was founded on the German Wikipedia called the Schiedsgericht.[24]

Controversies

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Main article: Criticism of Wikipedia

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See also: Wikipedia biography controversy and Essjay controversy

Incidents of cyberbullying on Wikipedia have been reported in the mainstream press.[25][26][27] The Glen A. Wilson High School was the 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]

A 2013 study from Oxford University concluded that the most disputed articles on the English Wikipedia tended to be broader issues, while on other language Wikipedias the most disputed articles tended to be regional issues; this is due to the English language's status as a global lingua franca, which means that many who edit the English Wikipedia do not speak English as a native language. The study stated that the most disputed entries on the English Wikipedia were: George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity.[29]

In May 2020, Larry Sanger stated that the English Wikipedia had abandoned its claimed "Neutral Point of View" policy and that it was now "badly biased." As one of several examples, he pointed to and contrasted biases regarding the entries for former President of the United States, Barack Obama, and his successor, Donald Trump. Sanger's criticisms also extended to scientific-based articles. He stated that: "In any event, when the Establishment (or maybe just the Establishment left) is unified on a certain view of a scientific controversy, then that is the view that is taken for granted, and often aggressively asserted, by Wikipedia." Sanger also stated that: "It is time for Wikipedia to come clean and admit that it has abandoned NPOV (i.e., neutrality as a policy). At the very least they should admit that that they have redefined the term in a way that makes it utterly incompatible with its original notion of neutrality, which is the ordinary and common one. Of course, Wikipedians are unlikely to concede any such thing; they live in a fantasy world of their own making."[30]

Varieties of English

One controversy in the English Wikipedia concerns which national variety of the English language is to be preferred, with the most commonly advocated candidates being American English and British English.[31] Perennial suggestions range 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".[32] 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 its original national variant.

There has been a similar issue in the Chinese language Wikipedia concerning regional differences in writing. Efforts at a language fork for Portuguese Wikipedia have failed, and succeeded for Norwegian Wikipedia.

Andrew Lih wrote that the English Wikipedia "didn't have the chance to go through a debate over whether there should be a British English Wikipedia or an American English Wikipedia" because the English Wikipedia was the original edition.[33][clarification needed] Editors agreed to use U.S. spellings for primarily American topics and British spellings for primarily British topics. In 2009 Lih wrote, "No doubt, American spellings tend to dominate by default just because of sheer numbers."[34]

Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and quality

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Main article: WikiProject

A "WikiProject" is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. These groups often focus on a specific topic area (for example, women's history), a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). The English Wikipedia currently has over 2,000 WikiProjects and activity varies. [35]

In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Wikipedia introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles.[36] Articles are rated by Wikiprojects. The range of quality classes begins with "Stub" (very short pages), followed by "Start", "C" and "B" (in increasing order of quality). Community peer review is needed for the article to enter one of the highest quality classes: either "A", "good article" or the highest, "featured article". Of the about 4.4 million articles and lists assessed as of March 2015, a little more than 5000 (0.12%) are featured articles, and a little less than 2000 (0.04%) are featured lists. One featured article per day, as selected by editors, appears on the main page of Wikipedia.[37][38]

In association with the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, members of the English Wikipedia created a WikiProject associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.[39] One administrator stated upon joining the group that: “You can be one of three things: ally, enemy, or collaborator.”[40] Though supported by the mainstream political left and far-left, the project was heavily criticized by those to the right, including former editors of the English Wikipedia who had been banned from the site, who criticized administrators, as well as the Wikimedia Foundation itself, for promoting far-left social and political viewpoints within the highly influential website.[41]

The articles can also be rated as per "importance" as judged by a Wikiproject. Currently, there are 5 importance categories: "low", "mid", "high", "top", and "???" for unclassified/unsure level. For a particular article, different Wikiprojects may assign different importance levels.

The Wikipedia Version 1.0 Editorial Team has developed a table (shown below) that displays data of all rated articles by quality and importance, on the English Wikipedia. If an article or list receives different ratings by two or more Wikiprojects, then the highest rating is used in the table, pie-charts, and bar-chart. The software regularly auto-updates the data.

Researcher Giacomo Poderi found that articles tend to reach featured status via the intensive work of a few editors.[42] A 2010 study found unevenness in quality among featured articles and concluded that the community process is ineffective in assessing the quality of articles.[43]



Circle frame.svg

Quality-wise distribution of over 4.8 million articles and lists on the English Wikipedia, as of 3 April 2015[44]

  Featured articles (0.11%)
  Featured lists (0.04%)
  A class (0.03%)
  Good articles (0.48%)
  B class (2.05%)
  C class (3.99%)
  Start class (25.73%)
  Stub class (54.08%)
  Lists (3.50%)
  Unassessed (9.99%)






Circle frame.svg

Importance-wise distribution of over 4.8 million articles and lists on the English Wikipedia, as of 5 April 2015[44]

  Top (0.91%)
  High (3.21%)
  Medium (12.29%)
  Low (49.37%)
  ??? (34.22%)



500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
2,500,000
3,000,000
Top
High
Medium
Low
???
  •   Featured articles
  •   Featured lists
  •   A-class articles
  •   Good articles
  •   B-class articles
  •   C-class articles
  •   Start-class articles
  •   Stub articles
  •   Lists
  •   Unassessed articles and lists

[Note: The table above (prepared by the Wikipedia Version 1.0 Editorial Team) is automatically updated daily by User:WP 1.0 bot, but the bar-chart and the two pie-charts are not auto-updated. In them, new data has to be entered by a Wikipedia editor (i.e. user).]

Graphics

  • Percentages of articles written in various language families. In March 2013, 16.76% of articles were in English.

  • The countries in which the English Wikipedia is the most popular language version of Wikipedia are shown in red.[45]

  • Top 25 contributor countries to the English Wikipedia. Dark green: Native English speaking countries; light green: countries with English as a foreign language.[46]

  • In April 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation conducted a usability study on the English Wikipedia, questioning users about the editing mechanism.[47]

  • Video marking English Wikipedia's milestone of five million articles on 1 November 2015

Internal news publications

Community-produced news publications include The Signpost which has been published since January 2005 on English Wikipedia. Other past and present community news publications include the "Wikiworld" web comic, the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, and newsletters of specific WikiProjects like The Bugle from WikiProject Military History and the monthly newsletter from The Guild of Copy Editors. There are also a number of publications from the Wikimedia Foundation and multilingual publications such as the Wikimedia Blog and This Month in Education.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ There is some controversy over who founded Wikipedia. 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 as early as September 2001 and referred to himself as being founder as early as January 2002.
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    • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
    • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ more than twice as many as the next in rank, the Swedish Wikipedia. See m:List of Wikipedias.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ The number of articles on the English Wikipedia is shown by the MediaWiki variable {{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}, with all Wikipedias as total {{NUMBEROF|ARTICLES|total}} = 40,144,348.
  5. ↑ See size of downloads at Wikipedia:Database download and a list of historical sizes here
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-02/News and notes. Retrieved 20 April 2007
  15. ↑ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-02-27/News and notes. Retrieved 20 April 2007
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Gross, Doug. "Wiki wars: The 10 most controversial Wikipedia pages." (Archive) CNN. 24 July 2013. Retrieved on 26 July 2013.
  30. ↑ https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lih, p. 135.
  34. ↑ Lih, p. 136.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  37. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Black_Lives_Matter
  40. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Black_Lives_Matter&diff=prev&oldid=960441007
  41. ↑ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/06/30/wikipedia-pushes-black-lives-matter-agenda-following-activist-campaign/
  42. ↑ Poderi, Giacomo, Wikipedia and the Featured Articles: How a Technological System Can Produce Best Quality Articles, Master thesis, University of Maastricht, October 2008.
  43. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Statistics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  45. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  46. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  47. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  48. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

References

External links

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