English Wikipedia
Encyclopedia : E : EN : ENG : English Wikipedia
The English Wikipedia is the English language edition of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. Founded on 15 January 2001 and having a million articles by March 2006, it was the first edition of Wikipedia and remains the largest. As of 2005, approximately one-third of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English-language edition, this share having gradually declined from over half in 2003.
Pioneering edition
The English Wikipedia was the first-established Wikipedia edition and has remained the largest Wikipedia edition. As such, it has pioneered many Wikipedia conventions and features that have been adopted by other Wikipedia editions. These include:
- [Featured Articles] and [Featured Images]
- [the neutral point of view policy]
- navigation templates
- sorting of stubs into sub-categories
- dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration
- [Collaborations of the week]
Controversies
National stylistic conventions
Among the controversies specific to the English Wikipedia is a debate over which national variety of the English language is to be preferred, with the most common candidates being American English and British or International English. Many suggestions have been proposed by editors, ranging from standardizing upon a single form of English to forking the English Wikipedia project. The policy, however, is to prefer an appropriate form of English for articles of regional scope (e.g., Canadian English for subjects related to Canada) but otherwise to allow the use of any variety of English, as long as the variety of English is consistent throughout the text of an article. A related but distinct controversy arose over the use of Imperial units and the metric system.Edit wars over content and the neutral point of view
As the largest Wikipedia edition, the English Wikipedia has been the site of some of the fiercest and most prolonged edit wars of any Wikipedia projects. Edit wars often take place over issues that many English-speaking users regard as controversial, such as:
However, prolonged edit wars have also taken place between users whose native languages are not English: among the most well-known early edit wars in the English Wikipedia took place between German and Polish users, centering on such articles as Gdańsk.The English Wikipedia has been accused of systemic bias resulting from most of its editors being technologically-competent English-speaking people living in developed countries.
Users and editors whose native language is not English
As the largest Wikipedia edition, and because the English language is such a widely-used language, the English Wikipedia draws many users and editors whose native language is not English.
Users whose native language is not English may nevertheless seek information from the English Wikipedia rather than the Wikipedia of their native language simply because the English Wikipedia contains more information. This is especially often true for obscure topics which may not have articles at all in Wikipedia editions for other languages.
Sometimes, editors whose native language is not English have been criticized by editors whose native language is English for making edits with poor grammar or other language mistakes.
Usage of Encyclopædia Britannica
One advantage of the English Wikipedia over other versions is the public domain availability of the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition that has been used as a starting point for many articles in spite of claims of biased content and obsolete information on certain topics.Wikipedia Signpost
The English Wikipedia has a newspaper known as the [Wikipedia Signpost], established to detail various events and happenings of the now very large site. It is a community-written and community-edited newspaper, covering events and stories related to the English Wikipedia. Major news from other Wikimedia Foundation projects is also included as occasion permits. It is published weekly on Mondays, being first published on 10 January 2005 by Wikipedia editor Michael Snow.See also
References
External links
| Editions of Wikipedia with over 50,000 articles |
| English en: - German [de] - French [fr] - Polish [pl] - Japanese [ja] - Dutch [nl] - Swedish [sv] - Italian [it] - Portuguese [pt] - Spanish [es] - Russian [ru] - Chinese [zh] - Finnish [fi] - Norwegian (Bokmål) [no] - Esperanto [eo] |
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.