From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
[This is a proposed article to link to on the Wikipedia main page]
[Can anybody help create a function for {NUMBEROFWORDS}, similar to {NUMBEROFARTICLES} (as used below)?]
Wikipedia currently has a total of 420701 articles and 135 million words in its english edition, which is not bad for an encyclopedia that is only 4 years old (started Jan. 2001)! Compared with the largest traditional digital English-language encyclopedia, Encyclopædia Britannica online, which has an estimated 120,000 articles and 77 million words (Dec. 2004), Wikipedia has 3.5 times the amount of articles and nearly 2 times as many words.
However, measurements such as these do not take into account article quality and authority. As many journalists have pointed out, because of Wikipedia's collaborative nature and lack of a formal and accountable editing process, for serious research Wikipedia is best used as a first resource, rather than a final resource, something for which an authoritative publication such as Encyclopædia Britannica or other encyclopedias are more appropriate.
That being said, many observers and Wikipedia contributors, of which there are currently 14350 (Nov. 2004), expect Wikipedia's quality and length of articles to continue to improve, bringing us closer to the excellent standard of traditional encyclopedias. Additionally, work has begun on a formal editorial process for Wikipedia in which an editorial board staffed with experts in various fields will stand behind the accuracy of articles' contents.
(http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm) . For explanation and technical analysis, see This graph is based on October 30th 2004 figures from Wikipedia: Statistics . For explanation and technical analysis, see Wikipedia:Words_per_article
See also
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The English version of Wikipedia has reached 865,835 articles, 220 million words, 389,591 illustrations and pictures since January, 2001.. 

Compared to the Spanish language Encyclopedia ESPASA, which has 117 volumes, 175,000 pages, 200 million words, 197,000 black and white illustrations, 4,500 color illustrations, 5 million bibliographic references and 100,000 biographies , the English Wikipedia is now larger, in terms of number of articles and number of words, than the largest encyclopedia of the Spanish language. Note that this is just a quantitative comparison. No judgement is made about the quality of the above-mentioned encyclopedias.

The project to write ESPASA was founded in 1860 by José Espasa Anguera and continued in 1926 by Editorial Espasa-Calpe, which today belongs to Grupo Planeta. The main works were published in 1905 and consisted of 72 volumes. In 1931 a 10 volumes appendix was published which includes an update of the previous volumes. 

The reference work has been periodically updated by the biannual ''Suplementos'' since 1935. The latest ''Suplemento'' was published in 2005. In 1997 the work included a World Atlas. It has taken ESPASA 145 years to get to the point where it is today. In less than 5 years Wikipedia has reached a similar point.

An average of 1500 new articles are created on Wikipedia every day  with around 23.4 edits per article.