Wikipedia Hits 10 Million Articles

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

On March 27th, Wikipedia reached a milestone: its 10 millionth article. The article, on 16th century painter Nicholas Hilliard, was entered at 00:07 UTC by user Pataki Márta. The count of articles is across all the Wikipedias, in 250 languages.

In an emailed press release, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation said,

“It’s incredible to think that we’ve grown from one Wikipedia in English to over 250 language Wikipedias. Ten million articles is something we could never have imagined happening so fast when we embarked on Wikipedia in 2001. This is a testament to the incredible dedication of our volunteers around the world.”

Despite the fact that some are concerned about the accuracy of Wikipedia due to the fact that anyone can edit any article, in December Germany’s Stern magazine announced in an independent study of 50 articles that the German version of Wikipedia was more accurate, complete and up-to-date than the print encyclopedia Brockhaus.

Congratulations, and let’s get started on the next 10 million articles.