English Wikipedia Reaches 3 Million Articles

FunPika writes "It has taken more than eight years and the work of vast numbers of people around the world, but the English version of Wikipedia has finally amassed more than three million articles. The site broke through the 3 million barrier early on Monday morning UK time, with the honors taken by a short article about Norwegian actor Beate Eriksen — a 48-year-old cast member of a popular local soap opera."

Comments

And then it was proptly deleted

[Anonymous Coward]

The site broke through the 3 million barrier, with the honors taken by a short article about Norwegian actor Beate Eriksen

And then the Wiki editors quickly deleted this article for being not important enough.

Re:And then it was proptly deleted

[FlyingSquidStudios]

Fun from the talk page. A Wiki language geek "honored" the article by translating it into Anglo-Saxon for the Anglo-Saxon language version of Wikipedia. Because if there's one language that Wikipedia needs to be translated in, it's one that no one actually speaks anymore. http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beate_Eriksen

Re:And then it was proptly deleted

[A. B3ttik]

What's even funnier is comparing the relative lengths of related articles:

For instance:

Pokemon compared to Animal
Wizard compared to Scientist
Afghan Civil War compared to Marvel Civil War
Emperor Palpatine compared to Emperor Charles IV
Klingon Language compared to Mandarin Chinese

And that's...

[MyLongNickName]

And for those of you keeping track, that's roughly 50,000 non-Manga/anime/Simpson's related articles.

Re:And that's...

[mcgrew]

[citation needed]

Crazy but true.

[grub]

Beate Eriksen (who?) will be more famous for being the 3,000,000th wiki article than for his acting skills.

Re:Crazy but true.

[hansamurai]

Especially when you can't even get her gender right.

Re:The "3 million barrier"

[SilverHatHacker]

And no, you can't go to Wikipedia and count, because that would be "original research." Wait for someone to tweet about it - THERE's your proof.
;)

What's special about three million?

[line-bundle]

I am personally waiting for it to reach 3294199.

(For those of you mathematically illiterate that number is pi*(2^20).)

Wake me up when we get there.

Holding out for the 30 millionth article...

[Lev13than]

Congratulations to Wikipedia for celebrating this historic ***ERIC IS A FAG*** milestone, only 750 years in the making!

Re:Ebonics, etc

[Fujisawa Sensei]

True, but I would argue that Ebonics is a more valid and complete language/dialect, being that it arose naturally.

For those who haven't studied linguistics, yes, every dialect has its own grammatical rules. Those who speak a dialect learn the rules by example rather than from books - the same way you know (if you're a native English speaker) that "the big red ball" is correct and "the red big ball" is incorrect. Nobody taught you that. Most of the rules of language, in fact, are embedded in your brain before you ever go to school - how else could you talk?

I suggest you go to Columbus, Ga and try to order something more complicated than "number 7 with Coke" from the drive-through.