March 28, 2008 3:05 PM PDT

Wikipedia hits 10 million total articles

This is the 10 millionth article created on Wikipedia. It is an article about a 16th century goldsmith named Nicholas Hilliard, and was created in the Hungarian version.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

Ten million articles.

That's how many Wikipedia has now, if you count all the articles in the 250-plus languages the encyclopedia is available in.

According to a release from the Wikimedia Foundation, the 10 millionth article was created at 5:07 p.m. PDT on Wednesday. It is a "short biography of 16th century English goldsmith and painter Nicholas Hilliard" and was created in Hungarian by a user called Pataki Marta.

The largest version of Wikipedia, the English version, has 2.3 million articles. But when counting all the others, the number swells quickly to the more than 10 million now found in the entire database.

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Add a Comment (Log in or register) 3 comments (Page 1 of 1)
Love Wikipedia
by allstar919 March 28, 2008 4:25 PM PDT
I would like to ask my old college professors what they think of Wikipedia. I do know that many bristle at its concept, but we can all agree it has improved. Personally, I think it is the best invention since the Internet itself. There is so much more information in there than any ink and paper encyclopedia and it is designed to whet your appetite for knowledge. To me, that seems like the Internet's highest calling.
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Helpful, but flawed.
by Bob_Katopolis March 30, 2008 10:46 PM PDT
Wikipedia is often helpful...but the design of the site is fundamentally flawed. One or more persistent amateurs will overrule an expert the subject of an article. Experts don't want to waste their time when they are shouted down by persistent amateurs (who are not experts, but think they are). Articles are therefore driven by those with time on their hands, and some motivation to edit the articles, rather than by the people most qualified to contribute. Wikipedia is a great start to the concept of user contributed content, but I hope that better designed web encyclopedias will render wikipedia obsolete in the coming years.
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