The English Wikipedia has reached5,000,000 articles with
Persoonia terminalis (a type of shrub),
created by Australian contributorCas Liber on 1 November 2015 at 12:27 UTC.
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.
— Jimmy Wales, co-founder
Wikipedia was founded in 2001 as a project to build an online,free-access,free-content encyclopedia entirely from scratch. Since then, it has grown to be the largest encyclopedia ever created, comprising more than five million articles in English, while still relying on the contributions of volunteers. TheEnglish Wikipedia community thanks the millions of users whose edits over the past fourteen-plus years have made this remarkable accomplishment possible.
Wikipediaofficially launched on 15 January 2001, withJimmy Wales andLarry Sanger as its leaders, on a single computer server as the successor toNupedia. Its first major mainstream media coverage was inThe New York Times on 20 September 2001. In the first year of its existence, more than 20,000 encyclopedia entries were created – a rate exceeding 1,500 articles per month. Today, there are Wikipedia editions in more than 200 languages, accompanied by a dozen additional free-content projects, such asWikimedia Commons. In March 2006, the English Wikipedia reachedone million articles. According toAlexa, Wikipedia is currently the world's sixth mostpopular website, receiving approximatelyeight billion pageviews per month. We reached five million articles on 1 November 2015.
While Wikipedia is an incredible success, it remainsa work in progress. There are stillgreat gaps in its coverage with millions ofimportant topics missing from its pages. Many articles – evenvital ones – are not yet considered high-quality. Of ourfive million articles, only a few tens of thousands have passed a vetting process forgood orfeatured status, and more than half areshort stubs orstart-class articles. There are also more than200 non-English-language editions of Wikipedia that need volunteers. In other words, there is still much work to be done –and you can help!
Wikipedia iswritten by the people who use it. Anyone, regardless of background, can contribute to building the encyclopedia. You don't even have to register an account (thoughthere are good reasons to do so). If you find an article you can improve,edit the article to make it more accurate and useful for others. Each page contains edit buttons for you to make those changes immediately. Any improvement, whether it's fixing a typo ordrafting a brand new article, is greatly appreciated.
Wikipedia valuesboldness and the pursuit ofconsensus. Don't be afraid or disillusioned if your first contributions are undone – Wikipedia is acollaborative project, which means that sometimes we disagree.That's okay. Each page on Wikipedia hasa talk page dedicated to discussing improvements, and fellow editors have a talk page where you can contact them individually.
If you're new here, firstly:welcome. We sincerely hope you like it here and decide to stay. Below are some helpful links to get you started:
If you want to find an article to improve, here are some pointers and areas to contribute:
If you get stuck, a variety of resources are available to assist you. The pageWikipedia:Questions lists locations where you can ask for help. The most valuable assets, however, are your fellowWikipedians. If you have any questions about editing Wikipedia, friendly Wikipedians atthe Teahouse will be more than happy to provide answers. You can also meet Wikipedians in person in many places around the world; seeWikipedia:Meetup for more information.
If you are already a Wikipedian, thank you for your contributions. We hope you continue to contribute to this amazing compendium of human knowledge.
Sincerely,
The Wikipedia community
Members of the press may contact the following for comments:
Any thoughts or tips on how we scale up to curating and maintaining all these articles?
Here are a few:
