English Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 English Wikipedia |
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| URL | http://en.wikipedia.org/ |
| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Internet encyclopedia project |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Created by | Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger[1] |
| Launched | 15 January 2001 |
.svg/180px-English_Wikipedia_contributors_by_country_(1).svg.png)
The English Wikipedia is the English language edition of Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching two million articles by September 2007,[3] it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with more than three times the size of the next largest, the German Wikipedia. As of 2007, approximately one-quarter of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English language edition, this share having gradually declined from over half in 2003, due to growth of Wikipedias in other languages.[4]
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[edit] Pioneering edition
The English Wikipedia was the first-established Wikipedia edition and has remained the largest. It has pioneered many conventions, policies and features that have been adopted by other Wikipedia editions. These include "featured articles",[5] the neutral point of view policy,[6] navigation templates,[7] sorting of short "stub" articles into sub-categories,[8] dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration,[9] and weekly collaborations.[10] In turn, the English Wikipedia has adopted features from the German Wikipedia, and from other smaller editions as well.
Many of the most active participants in the Wikimedia Foundation, and developers of the MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia, are also English Wikipedia users.
[edit] Controversies
- See also: Seigenthaler incident and Essjay controversy
Among the controversies in the English Wikipedia is a debate over which national variety of the English language is to be preferred, with the most commonly advocated candidates being American English and British English.[11] There has been a similar issue in the Chinese language Wikipedia, although with a different solution. Many suggestions have been proposed by editors, ranging 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."[12] An article should use spelling and grammar variants consistently; for example, center and centre are not to be used in the same article. The guide also states that an article must remain written in whichever dialect the article was initially created, or which first became discernible in the article's history.
[edit] Users and editors
English Wikipedia reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007,[13] just a little over a year since it has crossed a threshold of 1,000,000 registered user accounts in late February 2006.[14] The number of individual persons who are active editors (either registered or anonymous) at Wikipedia on any given month is much less than these figures.
As the largest Wikipedia edition, and because the English language is such a widely used language, the English Wikipedia draws many users and editors whose native language is not English. Such users seek information from the English Wikipedia rather than the Wikipedia of their native language simply because the English Wikipedia contains more information. Many successful collaborations have developed between non-native English speakers who add content to English Wikipedia and native English speakers who act as copy editors for those adding content.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ There is some controversy over who founded Wikipedia. Wikipedia's official personnel page from September 2001 states Wales and Sanger were the two co-founders, and that there was no editor-in-chief. Wales considers himself to be the sole founder of Wikipedia and has told the Boston Globe that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder. However, Sanger strongly contests that description. He was identified as a co-founder of Wikipedia at least as early as September 2001 and referred to himself that way as early as January 2002.
- Jonathan Sidener. "Everyone's Encyclopedia", San Diego Union Tribune, December 6, 2004. Retrieved on 2006-10-15.
- Peter Meyers. "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You", New York Times, 2001-09-20. Retrieved on 2006-10-15.
- Sanger, Larry. What Wikipedia is and why it matters. Retrieved on 2006-04-12.
- ^ m:Edits by project and country of origin
- ^ Rego, Anjali. "Wikipedia Reaches 2 Million Articles", Tech2, 2007-09-13. Retrieved on 2007-09-23.
- ^ Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (2007-01-30). List of Wikipedias. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ English Wikipedia (2007-01-30). Featured articles. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ English Wikipedia (2007-01-25). Neutral point of view. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (2007-01-29). Help:Template. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ English Wikipedia (2007-01-19). WikiProject Stub sorting. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ English Wikipedia (2007-01-27). Resolving disputes. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ English Wikipedia (2007-01-30). Article Creation and Improvement Drive. Retrieved on 2007-01-30.
- ^ English Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Manual of Style (spelling). Retrieved on 2006-02-25.
- ^ English Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Retrieved on 2007-10-10.
- ^ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-02/News and notes. Retrieved on 20 April 2007
- ^ Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-02-27/News and notes. Retrieved on 20 April 2007
