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| URL | en.wikipedia.org |
|---|---|
| Slogan | The Free Encyclopedia |
| Commercial? | Charitable |
| Type of site | Internet encyclopedia project |
| Registration | Optional (required to create articles) |
| Content license | Creative Commons Attribution/ Share-Alike 3.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL) Media licensing varies |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Created by | Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger[1] |
| Launched | 15 January 2001 |
The English Wikipedia (enwiki) is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching three million articles by August 2009,[2] it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest, with almost three times as many articles as the next largest, the German Wikipedia. As of February 2012, nearly 20.4% of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English language edition. This share has gradually declined from more than 50% in 2003, due to the growth of Wikipedias in other languages.[3] There are currently 4,243,511 articles on the site (live count).[4]
The Simple English Wikipedia is a variation, with most of the articles using a simplified level of English sentences and vocabulary.
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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",[5] the neutral-point-of-view policy,[6] navigation templates,[7] the 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 smaller editions. 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.
| Number of users | Number of articles | Number of files | Number of administrators |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4,243,511 | 0 | 1 |
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]
About 250,000 new accounts are created every month, and these numbers are growing. About 300,000 editors have edited Wikipedia more than 10 times. Approximately the same number, 300,000 editors, edit Wikipedia every month; of these, about 50,000 perform more than 5 edits, and 5,000 perform more than 100 edits. By 24 November 2011, a total of 500 million edits had been performed on the English Wikipedia.
A 2008 survey provided some basic information on the demographics and motivations of Wikipedia editors.[14]
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 seek information from the English Wikipedia rather than the Wikipedia of their native language because the English Wikipedia tends to contain more information. Successful collaborations have developed between non-native English speakers who add content to 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.[15] 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.[16][17]
When initially founded, the Committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each.[16][18] Since then, the Committee has gradually expanded to its membership to 18 arbitrators.[19]
Like other aspects of the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia's sister projects have emulated the Arbitration Committee with their own similar versions. In 2007, an Arbitration Committee was founded on the German Wikipedia called the Schiedsrichter.[20]
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.[21] 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".[22] 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 the same national variant in which it was first created, or which first became discernible in the article's history.
There has been a similar issue in the Chinese language Wikipedia concerning regional differences in how the language is written, as well as in the Portuguese Wikipedia between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese.
Incidents of cyberbullying on Wikipedia have been reported in the mainstream press.[23][24][25] The Glen A. Wilson High School was 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]
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