Wikipedia:Largest encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[This is a proposed article to link to on the Wikipedia main page]
Wikipedia currently has a total of 1,533,644 articles and over 320 million words in its English edition. The encyclopedia is only 5 years old (started Jan. 2001). Compared with the largest traditional English-language encyclopedia, Encyclopædia Britannica online, which has an estimated 120,000 articles and 77 million words (Dec. 2004), Wikipedia has more than 7.5 times the number of articles and more than four times as many words.
However, measurements such as these do not take into account article quality and authority. Some commentators have suggested that, because of Wikipedia's collaborative nature and lack of a formal and accountable editing process, for serious research Wikipedia is best used as a first resource, rather than a final resource, something for which an authoritative publication such as Encyclopædia Britannica or other encyclopedias may be more appropriate; however, an investigation by the respected scientific journal Nature which involved experts comparing Wikipedia and Britannica articles found that the average science article in Wikipedia had only one more inaccuracy than Britannica's average of three per article.
That said, many observers and Wikipedia contributors, of which there are currently 23,000 (April 2005), expect Wikipedia's quality and length of articles to continue to improve, bringing us closer to the overall excellent standard of traditional encyclopedias. Additionally, work has begun on a formal editorial process for Wikipedia in which an editorial board staffed with experts in various fields will stand behind the accuracy of articles' contents.
