Wikipedia blows past 3 million English articles
By Chris Gaylord | 08.17.09
Wikipedia, the upstart social experiment that trusts the online mob to steward world knowledge, has hit a major milestone.
The English volume of the Web encyclopedia reached its 3 millionth article. That massive number of whos, whats, wheres, and whens culminated with a profile on Norwegian soap opera actress Beate Eriksen. In the less than 24 hours since she marked the 3 millionth entry, more than 1,000 new articles have already flooded in.
Of course, there are far more posts, if you count the site’s 270 other languages. Eleven languages have collected more than 100,000 articles, with German nearing 1 million. Not bad for eight years of work.
The moment passed by on Wikipedia with little ado. There was just a single line saying “The English-language Wikipedia thanks its contributors for creating more than 3,000,000 articles!”
But some worry about this army of 146,209 active users that have added to, commented on, or edited the site in the last 30 days.
There’s a fight brewing between “deletionists” and “inclusionists,” reports the Guardian.
On one side stand the deletionists, whose motto is “Wikipedia is not a junkyard”; on the other, the inclusionists, who argue that “Wikipedia is not paper”.
Deletionists argue for a tightly controlled and well-written encyclopedia that provides valuable information on topics of widespread interest. Why should editors waste time on articles about fly-by-night celebrities or willfully obscure topics? Inclusionists, on the other hand, believe that the more articles the site has, the better: if they are poorly referenced or badly written, they can be improved – and any article is better than nothing. After all, they say, there is no limit to the size of the site, and no limit to the information that people may want.
Both see the other ruining Wikipedia, either by defeating the point of an open encyclopedia, or by expanding its “pages” until the site dies from irrelevance.
Which side do you come down on? More the merrier? Or quality over quantity? Let us know below, or join the conversation by following us on Twitter.
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2. Wiki admin | 08.17.09
Err, no. There isn’t a “fight brewing”, and deletionism/inclusionism is about as outdated as the 1800’s. For some reason this idea that it’s a current issue (and not one from 2003-04) got a toehold in the press.
These days there’s a very broad agreement that we include some things, exclude others; the grey area still exists round a couple of things, but broadly it would be a very “fringe” person, who was both an experienced Wikipedia editor, and also still believed in fighting about these “isms”.
Can the press note this? Raising it is a bit like asking a UK citizen how the Crimean War is going, and can we speak to a passionate believer in the Ottoman Empire 
3. mortimer snerd | 08.17.09
Tell you what, as far as factual information goes Wikipedia is accurate a vast majority of the time. Read a bit of a study that showed 50% of doctors had consulted wikipedia in making medical decisions.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327185.500-should-you-trust-health-advice-from-the-web.html
“Several studies, including one examining health information, another probing articles on surgery, and one focusing on drugs, found the online encyclopedia to be almost entirely free of factual errors.”
Entries that wander into opinion are obviously to be taken with a grain of salt, but…
4. Mousey | 08.17.09
“Wikipedia is a mix of misinformation, bad opinions, and biased. Suffers from credibility and objectivity issues.”
This is, in my experience, a typical remark from people who have tried to push their personal opinions as fact into Wikipedia, then got booted.
Wikipedia imposes a “neutral point of view” policy, which means that all notable opinions from identifiable personalities or groups are to be cited, and a “verifiability” policy, which means that all controversial, surprising etc. facts should be traced to a reputable source.
People who want to push their personal beliefs into Wikipedia often find these two policies unbearable, see their changes reverted by other users, and then vent their anger, alleging that Wikipedia is biased.
5. Addison | 08.18.09
““Wikipedia is a mix of misinformation, bad opinions, and biased. Suffers from credibility and objectivity issues.”
This is, in my experience, a typical remark from people who have tried to push their personal opinions as fact into Wikipedia, then got booted.”
Either that or they just don’t understand how it works. There is little point to putting anything incorrect in Wikipedia. Besides- do you really think that the people writing for Britannica or World Book are considerably more knowledgeable than the 140k+ Wikipedia users?
6. Seanny | 08.18.09
They just need a per-paragraph multidimensional ranking system that will effectively satisfy both deletionists and inclusionists, so that there’s no battle on where to place a hard threshold of quality. This will allow users to view formal (i.e. verifiable information only) versions of an article, informal versions, simplified versions (e.g. simple.wikipedia.org), expanded versions (e.g. detailed information/lists about obscure topics), and so on.
In other words the actual MediaWiki software is a little too simple for Wikipedia given its broad purpose. There are times I want to know everything there is to know about a silly pop art/culture topic, and it’s sad to see detailed articles on topics of negligible “importance” reduced for being “too” informative, or deleted entirely.
7. konnie ridout | 08.18.09
imo - this “experiment” is the best site on the internet. the information,linkages, verifications, challenges are facinating.
what a learning tool. its a total first stop go-to for everyone for every
subject. even if it doesn’t answer your question, it will send
you scampering thru other sources. its a world wide reference
library. a thousand years from now, some being will think its
the rosetta stone.
8. gerald aksherian | 08.19.09
I am an electrical power engineer, also interested in history of technology, working on very important and complex project for several years already. I was amazed on the scope, quality, depth, and reliability of the countless information I found in this great work. Anything, any technical term, any biography, any data on many subjects I looked for in this encyclopedia, invariably I found exhaustive explanations with graphical illustrations, equations, even masterful and beautiful animations, historical data, and everything is needed one can find in no encyclopedia. In my computer I have four other encyclopedias, several technical dictionaries. I stopped using them. Without Wikipedia, I would have been unable to work on my project. I am deeply appreciative for those who contribute diligently to this unmatched endeavor for the good of public.
9. KBC | 08.23.09
“This is, in my experience, a typical remark from people who have tried to push their personal opinions as fact into Wikipedia, then got booted.”
No, it’s also the opinion of people who worked hard to create factual, professional-reading articles only to be thrown into arguments with people who (a) wanted to push their own personal agendas, (b) racists, (c) fanboys/fangirls of particular entertainers who bombard the articles for those persons with irrelevant mush, (d) have no content development plan, leading to lopsided coverage of information (massive coverage of everything pop-culture related that interests Caucasian young men of college age rather than a balance of information). I edited Wikipedia for years before giving up in frustration.
Wikipedia also assumes far too much of humans to provide factual information most of the time. At best, it’s a large tag board full of writings backed by varying amounts of research (many, many editors research nothing, but write articles and then tag references of dubious quality once they’re done). I’ve never read a Wikipedia article that wasn’t in some way non-factual, poorly written, or suffered from serious grammatical errors. This includes articles on even science and medicine.
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1. Mark | 08.17.09
Wikipedia is a mix of misinformation, bad opinions, and biased. Suffers from credibility and objectivity issues. Be careful. Be very careful.