English Wikipedia

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English Wikipedia

Logo of the English Wikipedia

Screenshot
Type of site Internet encyclopedia
Owner Wikimedia Foundation
Created by Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger[1]
Website en.wikipedia.org
Commercial No
Optional, but required for certain
tasks including

Registration  • protected page edit 

 • page creation 
 • file upload 

36,435,869 users, 1,172

Users
administrators as of 31 May 2019
Launched 15 January 2001; 18 years ago
Creative Commons Attribution/
Content Share-Alike 3.0 (most text also dual-
license licensed under GFDL)
Media licensing varies

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
April 2019, has the most articles of any of the editions.[2] As of May 2019, 12% 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] As
of 31 May 2019, there are 5,862,904 articles on the site,[4] having surpassed the 5 million
mark on 1 November 2015.[5] In October 2015, the combined text of the English Wikipedia's
articles totalled 11.5 gigabytes when compressed.[6]
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). Community-produced news publications include The Signpost.[7]

Contents
 1 Pioneering edition
 2 Users and editors
o 2.1 Arbitration committee
 3 Controversies
o 3.1 Threats against high schools
o 3.2 Disputed articles
o 3.3 Varieties of English
 4 Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and quality
 5 Graphics
 6 Internal news publications
 7 See also
 8 Footnotes
 9 References
 10 External links

Pioneering edition
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
Wikipedia editions in some of the other languages. 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 users.

Users and editors

Steven Pruitt, as of May 2019, has made more edits on the English Wikipedia than any other
editor.

English Wikipedia statistics

Number of user Number of Number of Number of

accounts articles files administrators

36,435,869 5,862,904 883,046 1,172

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;[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]

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 been developed between non-native English
speakers who successfully add content to the English Wikipedia and native English speakers
who act as copyeditors for them.[citation needed]

Arbitration committee

Main article: Arbitration Committee

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 its membership
to 18 arbitrators.[22][not in citation given]

As with other aspects of the English Wikipedia, some of 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 [de].[24]

Controversies
Main article: Criticism of Wikipedia
See also: Wikipedia Seigenthaler biography incident and Essjay controversy

Threats against high schools

Several incidents of threats of violence against high schools 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 was arrested for making a threat against Niles West
High School on Wikipedia in 2006.[28]

Disputed articles

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.[clarification needed] 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]

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.[30] 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".[31] 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 toward a language fork for Portuguese Wikipedia have failed,
but those regarding Norwegian Wikipedia succeeded.

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.[32][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."[33]

Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and

quality
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.[34]

In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Wikipedia introduced an
assessment scale of the quality of articles.[35] 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 "good article", "A" or the highest, "featured article". Of the
about 4.4 million articles and lists assessed as of March 2015, a little more than 5,000
(0.12%) are featured articles, and fewer than 2,000 (0.04%) are featured lists. One featured
article per day, as selected by editors, appears on the main page of Wikipedia.[36][37]

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/uncertain 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.[38] A 2010 study found unevenness in quality among featured articles
and concluded that the community process is ineffective in assessing the quality of articles.[39]

Quality-wise distribution of over 5.5 million articles and lists on the English Wikipedia,
as of 29 January 2017[40]

Featured articles (0.11%)

Featured lists (0.04%)
 A class (0.03%)
Good articles (0.50%)
B class (2.00%)
C class (4.32%)
Start class (26.41%)
Stub class (53.01%)
Lists (3.65%)
Unassessed (9.94%)

Importance-wise distribution of over 5.5 million articles and lists on the English
Wikipedia, as of 29 January 2017[40]

Top (0.91%)
High (3.20%)
Medium (12.21%)
Low (51.68%)
??? (32.00%)
All rated articles by quality and importance
Importance
Quality Top High Mid Low ??? Total
FA 1,303 1,999 1,927 1,294 180 6,703
FL 146 556 620 528 105 1,955
A 253 475 634 422 87 1,871
GA 2,431 5,447 10,773 12,308 1,790 32,749
B 13,172 25,170 38,933 34,181 15,592 127,048
C 12,114 36,283 82,663 124,162 53,140 308,362
Start 18,250 83,109 342,663 993,144 354,526 1,791,692
Stub 4,345 32,011 247,121 2,182,351 874,598 3,340,426
List 3,567 12,948 40,273 117,854 74,177 248,819
Assessed 55,581 197,998 765,607 3,466,244 1,374,195 5,859,625
Unassessed 125 553 1,748 17,249 496,249 515,924
Total 55,706 198,551 767,355 3,483,493 1,870,444 6,375,549
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).]

Automatic quality assessment of Wikipedia articles is a known and wide scientific

problem.[41] For example, as measures for assessing quality, it can be taken into the account
number of the references, text length, number of images, sections, articles popularity and
others.[42]