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English Wikipedia
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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 2017, has the most articles of any of the editions. As of August 2017, 12%
of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English-language edition. There were
5,457,281 articles on the site at that time.
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In October 2015, the combined text of the English Wikipedia's articles totalled 11.5 gigabytes
when compressed. On 1 November 2015, the English Wikipedia announced it had reached
5,000,000 articles and ran a special logo to reflect the milestone.
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).
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", 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.
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).
Users and editors
Over 800,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times. 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. 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 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.
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. 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.
When initially founded, the committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of
four members each. Since then, the committee has gradually expanded its membership to 18
arbitrators.
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.
Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and quality
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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