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Wikipedia Reaches 1,000,000 Articles
AndrewRUK writes "At 23:09 UTC, the one-millionth article was created in the English-language Wikipedia. The milestone was reached with the creation of an article about Jordanhill railway station in Scotland. Congratulations to all the Wikipedians, especially Nach0king who wrote the millionth article and Mészáros András who in November 2004 correctly predicted that it would be created today."
Wikipedia's been doing a lot of good work for the last five years. It's nice to see the millionth article finally reached.
And to think that their original goal was 100,000 articles...
While a million sounds impressive, here's a game which puts the "1 million articles" into a more realistic perspective. From the main page, click on "random article" 10 times and analyze the content.
D enmark (~1 paragraph)a du (list of name links)l _El_Hakh (1 small paragraph)r d_of_Education (1 paragraph)n g_history (decent sized article)_ Earl_of_Chichester (1 paragraph plus table)
For example, my results...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Franklin (~1 paragraph + links)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederika_Amalia_of_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_The_Hague (1 paragraph + 1 sentence)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governors_of_Tamil_N
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja%E2%80%99afar_Abdu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones (decent sized article)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matte_Babel (1+ paragraph)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Boa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derbyshire_lead_mini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pelham%2C_2nd
Note: This is not a jab at Wikipedia, which I love reading/contributing to, but rather a demonstration of how much work is still needed to flesh out its body of articles. A million articles/stubs is a fun benchmark to celebrate, but let's not let that slow down our contributions any... we still need everyone's help than can!
Wikipedia is not trying to accomplish what Everything2 is. A lot of our problems stem from people thinking we are, in fact. The biggest difference is that original research is not allowed on Wikipedia but is encouraged and central to Everything2.
Well, at one point it actually was announced in the IRC channel that it would be the millionth non speedy deleted article. However, because Squidoo is a business it was decided that we should stick with the original one millionth, so as not to encourage people to use WP to promote their businesses. Which is fine with me.
I would note though that during the beta test all profits are being donated to charity, with over $4,000 raised so far. So if it was declared as the one millionth article it wouldn't have actually been a big deal, but I suppose perception is everything.
The point wasn't about vandalism or mistakes. The point was that larger and more heavily edited articles tend to have a deteriorating quality of STYLE, as they go from the contributions of (often) a few skilled writers who built most of the original article, to a mass of correct-but-ugly "written by committee" information.
That doesn't always happen, though, and popular articles tend to occasionally get someone who'll come through and do a major edit that restructures and rewords the article--refactoring, if you will.
Besides, even the somewhat poorly written articles on Wikipedia, in my experience, tend to hold their own against the writing in a lot of textbooks, periodicals, manuals, and other information-oriented nonfiction. There's a lot of very bad writing out there.
I prefer "may be true" over "I haven't got a clue". I wouldn't consider Wikipedia a definative guide to anything, but it can still be useful as long as you consider that the information there may not be correct. If I need more accurate information, I'll also look elsewhere.