The English Wikipedia reached 1,500,000 articles yesterday, following 1,000,000 on 1st March 2006. This is an amazing amount of growth for less than 9 months; the encyclopaedia’s increased 50% in size!
The 1,500,000th article was about Kanab Ambersnail, which is an endangered sub-species. A bit of an obscure article, but at least the 1,500,000th article wasn’t an article created against Wikipedian policy, such as vandalism or an article about a non-notable person.
The Wikipedia is probably one of the Web 2.0’s greatest success stories and is probably the best single collection of human knowledge. However, it also has a reputation for unreliability.
I mean take this 9rules Notes thread:
The question was: What have you learned from Wikipedia? and was asked by Rafael.
The answers seemed to run along two themes.
One user said:
Not to believe everything you read on the internet.
I love Wikipedia! I link to it’s articles a ton in my blog when I’m using a tech term that I know some people don’t know. I also use it to find answers for things that I used to use Google for. Like if I hear about dark matter, I would much rather ask Wikipedia what it means than Google.
Most people seem to have one of these two viewpoints. I believe your viewpoint is based on how much you trust others and whether you’d rather have quality over quantity. What’s yours?
So what, Uncyclopedia reached 150 mil!
I think I’d be more willing to Google for deep info on a subject if it would do more than provide 10 links to sites that simply use the keywords I entered. Like, if Google would ask me about a search query such as Mustang if I meant horses, a car, or the local pub. Wikipedia is just a better resource for deep info at the moment. I like that it’s user driven too.