Wikipedia:Five million articles

The English Wikipedia has reached 5,000,000 articles!
The five millionth article was [[Article]], created by [[User:Example]].

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Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

— Jimmy Wales, co-founder

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger as a project to build an online, free-access, free-content encyclopedia entirely from scratch. Since then, Wikipedia has grown to be the largest encyclopedia ever created, now comprising more than five million articles in English, nonetheless still relying on contributions by the people who use it. The English Wikipedia community thanks the millions of users whose edits over the past fourteen-plus years have made this remarkable accomplishment possible.

Placeholder for congratulatory message from our co-founder Jimmy Wales

A brief history

Wikipedia officially launched on 15 January 2001 on a single computer server as the successor to Nupedia. Its first major mainstream media coverage was in the New York Times on 20 September 2001. In the first year of its existence, more than 20,000 encyclopedia entries were created – a rate exceeding 1,500 articles per month. Since then, Wikipedias have been created in 290 other languages, along with twelve sister projects like the Wikimedia Commons. In March 2006, the English Wikipedia reached one million articles. By July 2012, we had four million articles. According to Alexa, Wikipedia is currently the world's seventh most popular website, receiving approximately eight billion pageviews per month. We reached five million articles on DATE.

A work in progress

Wikipedia remains a work in progress, and there are still great gaps in its coverage. Millions upon millions of important topics are entirely missing from the encyclopedia. Many articles—even vital ones—are not yet rated high-quality. Of our 6,917,431 articles, only a few tens of thousands have been nominated for and passed our vetting process for good or featured status, and more than half are stubs or start-class articles. There are also 290 non-English-language editions of Wikipedia, which are even more incomplete. There is still much work to be done. And you can help!

How you can help

Video of Wikipedians from around the world who contribute to a variety of Wikipedia's language editions

Wikipedia is written by the people who use it. Anyone, regardless of background, can contribute to building the encyclopedia. You don't even have to register an account (though you might want to). If you find an article in need of improvement, you can edit the article to make it more accurate and useful for everyone else. Each page and section contains an edit link for your convenience. Any improvement, whether it's fixing a typo or drafting a brand new article, is greatly appreciated.

Wikipedia values boldness and the pursuit of consensus. Don't be afraid or disillusioned if your first contributions are undone—Wikipedia is a collaborative project, and that means that sometimes we get into disagreements. That's okay. Each page on Wikipedia has a talk page dedicated to discussing improvements, and each of your fellow editors has a talk page where you can contact them individually.

Welcome

If you're new here, firstly: welcome. We sincerely hope you like it here and decide to stay. Below are some helpful links to get you started:

• Five pillars of Wikipedia – the fundamental principles that guide our decision-making
• Tutorial – a simple nine-page guide on the basics of Wikipedia editing
• The Wikipedia Adventure – an interactive one-hour tour that will help you engage in the basics of editing
• Contributing to Wikipedia – a one-hour comprehensive outline of the basics of contributing

If you want to find an article to improve, here are some pointers and areas to contribute:

• Wikipedia:Community portal – collaborations, tasks, and news about the English Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory – A directory of WikiProjects, which are groups of editors working to improve articles within each project's scope
• Wikipedia:Vital articles – Topics on which the English Wikipedia should have corresponding high-quality articles
• This week's article for improvement is Coffee production in Cuba

If you get stuck, a variety of resources are available to assist you. The page Wikipedia:Questions lists locations where you can ask for help. The most valuable assets, however, are your fellow Wikipedians. If you have any questions about editing Wikipedia, friendly Wikipedians at the Teahouse will be more than happy to provide answers. You can also meet Wikipedians in person in many places around the world; see Wikipedia:Meetup for more information.

If you are already a Wikipedian, thank you for your contributions. We hope you continue to contribute to this amazing compendium of human knowledge.

Sincerely,
The Wikipedia community

• 
  The Wikimania international conference at
  Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2013
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  Wikimedia Australia presentation for the Australian Library and Information Association, 2014
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  Wikimedia UK tour of the Royal Greenwich Observatory at the National Maritime Museum, 2015
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  Wikimedia India meetup in Bangalore, 2015
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  WikiConference USA in Washington, D.C. at the
  U.S. National Archives building, 2015

Press contacts

Members of the press may contact the following for comments:

Wikimedia Australia • Wikimedia Canada • Cascadia Wikimedians User Group (United States (WA and OR) and Canada (BC)) • Wikimedia District of Columbia (United States) • Wikimedia Hong Kong • Wikimedia India • Wikimedia Community Ireland • Wikimedia New York City (United States) • Wikimedia User Group Nigeria • Wikimedia South Africa • Wikimedia U.K. • Wiki Learning Tec de Monterrey  • The Wikimedia Foundation (hosts Wikipedia's technical infrastructure, and provides legal and financial services)