The English Wikipedia is the English-language edition of the free online

encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching four million articles during

July 2012, it is the first edition of Wikipedia and, as of September 2014, has the most articles of

any of the editions(more than twice as many as the next in rank, the Swedish Wikipedia).[2] As

of August 2015, nearly 13.8% 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 4,954,547 articles on the site (live count).[4] In December 2012, the combined text of the English Wikipedia's articles totaled roughly

9.7 gigabytes.[5][needs update]

The Simple English Wikipedia is a variation, with most of the articles using a basic level of

English vocabulary. There is also the Old English (Ænglisc/Anglo-Saxon) Wikipedia (angwiki).

Contents

  [hide] 

1 Pioneering edition 2 Users and editors

o 2.1 Arbitration Committee 3 Controversies

o 3.1 Varieties of English 4 Varieties of English 5 Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and quality 6 Graphics 7 Internal news publications 8 See also 9 References 10 Notes 11 External links

Pioneering edition[edit]

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",[6] the neutral-

point-of-view policy,[7] navigation templates,[8] the sorting of short "stub" articles into sub-

categories,[9] dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration,[10] and weekly

collaborations.[11]

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[edit]

English Wikipedia statistics

Number of user accounts Number of articles Number of files Number of administrators

26,050,452 4,954,547 865,900 1,342

The English Wikipedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007,[12] just a

little over a year since it had crossed a threshold of 1,000,000 registered user accounts in late

February 2006.[13]

Over 800,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times.[14] 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.[15] 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 developed between non-native English speakers who

add content to the English Wikipedia and native English speakers who act as copyeditors for

them.[citation needed]

Arbitration Committee[edit]

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.[16] 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.[17][18]

When initially founded, the Committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of

four members each.[17][19] Since then, the Committee has gradually expanded to its membership

to 18 arbitrators.[20][not in citation given]

Like other aspects of the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia's sister projects have emulated the

Arbitration Committee with their own similar versions.[21] For instance, in 2007, an Arbitration

Committee was founded on the German Wikipedia called the Schiedsgericht.[22]

Controversies[edit]

Main article: Criticism of Wikipedia

See also: Wikipedia biography controversy and Essjay controversy

Incidents of cyberbullying on Wikipedia have been reported in the mainstream press.[23][24]

[25] The Glen A. Wilson High School was the subject of such a threat in 2008,[23][24][25]and a 14-

year-old boy was arrested for making a threat against Niles West High School on Wikipedia in

2006.[26]

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.[27]

Varieties of English[edit]

One controversy in the English Wikipedia concerns which national variety of the English

language is to be preferred, with the most commonly advocated candidates beingAmerican

English and British English.[28] 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".[29] 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.

Varieties of English[edit]

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.[30][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."[31]

Wikiprojects, and assessments of articles' importance and quality[edit]

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.[32]

In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Wikipedia introduced an

assessment scale of the quality of articles.[33] 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.[34][35]

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.[36] A 2010 study found unevenness in quality among featured articles and

concluded that the community process is ineffective in assessing the quality of articles.[37]

Quality-wise distribution of over 4.8 million articles and lists on the English Wikipedia, as of 3

April 2015[38]

  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%)

Importance-wise distribution of over 4.8 million articles and lists on the English Wikipedia, as of 5

April 2015[38]

  Top (0.91%)

  High (3.21%)

  Medium (12.29%)

  Low (49.37%)

  ??? (34.22%)

All rated articles by quality and importance

Quality

Importance

Top High Mid Low ??? Total

 FA 1,087 1,698 1,593 941 178 5,497

 FL 142 534 621 570 115 1,982

 A 192 386 542 313 73 1,506

 GA 1,836 4,265 8,381 8,444 1,614 24,540

B 11,251 21,517 32,487 24,718 13,166 103,139

C 9,060 26,142 57,828 74,426 38,920 206,376

Start 16,209 70,097 281,538 676,334 266,467 1,310,645

Stub 4,145 29,090 209,301 1,655,765 826,252 2,724,553

List 2,741 10,054 29,392 78,816 57,271 178,274

Assessed 46,663 163,783 621,683 2,520,327 1,204,056 4,556,512

Unassesse

d114 339 1,629 17,413 485,413 504,908

Total 46,777 164,122 623,312 2,537,740 1,689,469 5,061,420

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