English Wikipedia

Articles

The English Wikipedia surpassed seven million articles on 28 May 2025. In November 2022, the total volume of the compressed texts of its articles amounted to 20 gigabytes.

The edition's one-billionth edit was made on 13 January 2021 by Ser Amantio di Nicolao (Steven Pruitt) who was as of that date and remains as of January 2026 the user with the highest number of edits on the English Wikipedia, at over four million. (as of January 2026, this figure was more than 6.7 million, as per Wikipedia statistics). Currently, there are articles created with files. The encyclopedia is home to of articles in all Wikipedias (down from more than 50% in 2003). The English Wikipedia currently has registered accounts of which are administrators.

Bureaucracy

Editors of the English Wikipedia have pioneered some ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by Wikipedia editions in some of the other languages. These ideas include "featured articles", the neutral-point-of-view policy, navigation templates, the sorting of short "stub" articles into sub-categories, dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration, and weekly collaborations.

Wikipedians

Main article: Wikipedian

The English Wikipedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007, over a year since the millionth Wikipedian registered an account in February 2006.

Over 1,100,000 volunteer editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times. Over 30,000 editors perform more than 5 edits per month, and over 3,000 perform more than 100 edits per month.

On 1 March 2014, The Economist, in an article titled "The Future of Wikipedia", cited a trend analysis concerning data published by the Wikimedia Foundation stating that "[t]he number of editors for the English-language version has fallen by a third in seven years." The attrition rate for active editors in English Wikipedia was cited by The Economist as substantially in contrast to statistics for Wikipedia in other languages (non-English Wikipedia). The Economist reported that the number of contributors with an average of five or more edits per month was relatively constant since 2008 for Wikipedia in other languages at approximately 42,000 editors within narrow seasonal variances of about 2,000 editors up or down. The number of active editors in English Wikipedia, by "sharp" comparison, was cited as peaking in 2007 at approximately 50,000 and dropping to 30,000 by the start of 2014.

The trend analysis published in The Economist presents Wikipedia in other languages (non-English Wikipedia) as successful in retaining their active editors on a renewable and sustained basis, with their numbers remaining relatively constant at approximately 42,000.

The English Wikipedia has the 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. It 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. When it was founded, the committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each.

In 2022, for English Wikipedia, Americans accounted for about 40% of active editors, followed by British and Indian editors accounting for about 10% of each, and Canadian and Australian at about 5%.

Criticism

The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias.

Concerns have also been raised about systemic bias along gender, racial, political, corporate, institutional, and national lines. Conflicts of interest arising from corporate campaigns to influence content have also been highlighted. Further concerns include the vandalism and partisanship facilitated by anonymous editing, clique behavior (from contributors as well as administrators and other top figures), social stratification between a guardian class and newer users, excessive rule-making, edit warring, and uneven policy application.

Controversies

English varieties

A notable discussion within the English Wikipedia community concerns the preference for national variety of the English language, particularly American English and British English. Various suggestions have been made, ranging from standardizing a single form of English to creating separate versions of the English Wikipedia project. According to a style guideline, "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."

Disputed articles

A 2013 study from Oxford University found that the most disputed articles on the English Wikipedia tend to address broader, global issues. In contrast, articles on other languages' Wikipedias often focus on regional issues. This pattern is attributed to the status of English as a global lingua franca, leading to contributions from many editors for whom English is a second language. The study identified the most disputed entries on the English Wikipedia as George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity.

Research published in 2024 determined that several groups of connected accounts had coordinated to promote Russian propaganda narratives and state-controlled media sources in articles, related to Russian-Ukrainian relations and Russia's war with Ukraine.

Threats against high schools

There have been reports of threats of violence against high schools made on Wikipedia. In 2006, a 14-year-old was arrested for making a threat against Niles West High School on Wikipedia. In 2008, Glen A. Wilson High School was the subject of such a threat.

WikiProjects and assessment

Main article: WikiProject

A "WikiProject" is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Wikipedia. These groups may 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). As of August 2022, the English Wikipedia had over 2,000 WikiProjects, for which activity varied.

In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Wikipedia introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles. 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 quality classes: either "good article", "A" or the highest, "featured article". Of the about 6.5 million articles and lists assessed as of April 2022, more than 6,000 (0.09%) are featured articles, and fewer than 4,000 (0.06%) are featured lists. One featured article per day, as selected by editors, appears on the main page of Wikipedia.

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

Internal news publications

Community-produced news publications include The Signpost. Other 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 a number of publications from the Wikimedia Foundation and multilingual publications such as the Wikimedia Blog and This Month in Education.

Notes

References

References

1. Harrison, Stephen. (2021-09-01). "Wikipedia Is Trying to Transcend the Limits of Human Language". [[Slate (magazine).
2. Sato, Yumiko. (19 March 2021). "Non-English Editions of Wikipedia Have a Misinformation Problem".
3. (14 January 2016). "Wikipedia at 15: Millions of readers in scores of languages". [[Pew Research Center]].
4. ((A455bcd9)). (8 February 2021). "Wikipedia page views by language over time".
5. Gault, Matthew. (15 January 2021). "The English Language Wikipedia Just Had Its Billionth Edit".
6. (9 January 2021). "Happy Birthday, Wikipedia". [[The Economist]].
7. Harrison, Stephen. (9 June 2020). "How Wikipedia Became a Battleground for Racial Justice". [[Slate (magazine).
8. (9 January 2021). "Wikipedia is 20, and its reputation has never been higher". [[The Economist]].
9. (17 February 2020). "Wikipedia Is the Last Best Place on the Internet".
10. (2018-04-03). "Helping People Better Assess the Stories They See in News Feed with the Context Button".
11. Cohen, Noam. (7 April 2018). "Conspiracy videos? Fake news? Enter Wikipedia, the 'good cop' of the Internet". [[The Washington Post]].
12. "Wikipedia:Seven million articles". Wikimedia Foundation.
13. See size of downloads at [[Wikipedia:Database download]] and a list of historical sizes [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_article_size_in_gigabytes.png#Summary here] {{Webarchive. link. (1 April 2019)
14. {{#expr:{{NUMBEROF. articles. en-{{NUMBEROF. articles. ceb (about {{#expr:({{NUMBEROF. articles. en/{{NUMBEROF. articles. ceb*100)-100 round 0%) more than the next in rank, the [[Cebuano Wikipedia]]. See [[metawiki:List of Wikipedias. m:List of Wikipedias]].
15. Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. (21 September 2008). "List of Wikipedias".
16. English Wikipedia. (30 January 2007). "Featured articles".
17. English Wikipedia. (25 January 2007). "Neutral point of view".
18. Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. (29 January 2007). "Help:Template".
19. English Wikipedia. (19 January 2007). "WikiProject Stub sorting".
20. English Wikipedia. (27 January 2007). "Resolving disputes".
21. English Wikipedia. (30 January 2007). "Article Creation and Improvement Drive".
22. [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-02/News and notes]]. Retrieved 20 April 2007
23. [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-02-27/News and notes]]. Retrieved 20 April 2007
24. "Wikipedia Statistics – Tables – English". Stats.wikimedia.org.
25. "Wikipedia Statistics – Tables – English". Stats.wikimedia.org.
26. (1 March 2014). "The future of Wikipedia: WikiPeaks?". The Economist.
27. Schiff, Stacy. (2 December 2006). "Know-alls". Fairfax Digital Network.
28. Wales, Jimmy. (4 December 2003). "WikiEN-l Wikiquette committee appointments". [[Wikimedia Foundation]].
29. Hoffman, David A.. (2010). "Wikitruth Through Wikiorder". [[Emory Law Journal]].
30. Hyatt, Josh. (1 June 2006). "Secrets of Greatness: Great Teams". Fortune.
31. "Wikistats - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects".
32. (January 15, 2014). "Wikipedia: Articles for deletion/Klee Irwin (3rd nomination)".
33. English Wikipedia. "Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling)".
34. "Are English Wikipedia articles written in British English (BrE) or American English (AmE)?".
35. English Wikipedia. "Wikipedia:Manual of Style".
36. Gross, Doug. (24 July 2013). "Wiki wars: The 10 most controversial Wikipedia pages". [[CNN]].
37. Boichak, Olga. (2024-10-07). "How Russia Invaded Wikipedia".
38. "Identifying Sock-Puppets on Wikipedia: A Semantic Clustering Approach".
39. Hennessy-Fiske, Molly. (29 April 2008). "Wikipedia threats went unchecked – Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times.
40. (18 April 2008). "Hacienda Heights school receives possible threat". Abclocal.go.com.
41. (29 April 2008). "Student arrested for violent threats on Wikipedia". Los Angeles Times.
42. (31 October 2006). "Teen charged after threat to school on Wikipedia". Pantagraph.com.
43. "Wikipedia: Wikiprojects".
44. "Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment".
45. "Comparing featured article groups and revision patterns correlations in Wikipedia". [[First Monday (journal).
46. (22 July 2007). "The Hidden Order of Wikipedia".
47. Poderi, Giacomo, ''Wikipedia and the Featured Articles: How a Technological System Can Produce Best Quality Articles'', Master thesis, [[University of Maastricht]], October 2008.
48. Lindsey, David. (5 April 2010). "Evaluating quality control of Wikipedia's featured articles". First Monday.
49. (2008). "How Wikipedia Works: And how You Can be a Part of it". No Starch Press.