From the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikipedia Hits Milestone of Ten Million Articles Across 250 Languages
Nicholas Hilliard, subject of the 10 millionth article
Hungarian biography of 16th century painter Nicholas Hilliard declared ten millionth article
San Francisco, California, March 28, 2008
Earlier this week the Wikimedia Foundation reached a significant new milestone: on Thursday, March 27, at 00:07 UTC the official article count for all Wikipedias combined reached 10 million. The ten millionth article, a short biography of 16th century English goldsmith and painter Nicholas Hilliard, was created in the Hungarian Wikipedia by user Pataki Márta.
Wikipedia now boasts articles in more than 250 languages, with the English Wikipedia having the largest number, followed in descending order by the German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish Wikipedias. The project is also experiencing rapid growth in many young Wikipedias, including Marathi, Tagalog, and Cantonese.
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, remarked on the occasion of this milestone, "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."
In December 2007, the German magazine Stern announced in an independent study of 50 articles that the German Wikipedia was more accurate, complete and up-to-date than the longstanding print encyclopedia Brockhaus. In April 2007, a study conducted by the Hewlett Packard Information Dynamics Laboratory found that the best articles on the English Wikipedia are those that have been edited the most frequently, by the largest number of people. It concluded that the correlation between article quality and the number of edits validates Wikipedia as a successful collaborative effort.
Similar studies around the world continue to point to the increasing accuracy and quality of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that is written, edited and maintained by a global community of thousands of volunteers.
Wikipedia is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, a charitable, non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California.
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The goal of the Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia in history, is to create free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Anyone with Internet access is free to contribute by writing new articles and editing existing articles. Wikipedia is consistently ranked one of the top ten most visited websites in the worldby Alexa, serving billions of page views every month.
Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers over ten million articles in over 250 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than 2.2 million articles; followed by the German and French editions, each of which contain more than six hundred thousand articles. Nine other language editions contain 200,000+ articles, and more than 150 other languages contain 1,000+ articles. Wikipedia is entirely created and maintained by a community of active volunteers.
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Wikipedia Hungary press contact Peter Gervai press@wikipedia.hu
Nicholas Hilliard, le sujet du dix millionième article.

La publication du dix millionième article sur l'encyclopédie en ligne Wikipédia a été célébrée le 27 mars 2008 à 0h07 UTC avec ''Nicholas Hilliard'' sur la version en hongrois de wikipédia, selon un communiqué de presse du responsable de la communication de la Wikimedia Foundation, Jay Walsh.  

Dans le même communiqué, Jimbo Wales, le fondateur de l'encyclopédie déclare . Il a dédié cette réussite à l'ensemble des bénévoles à travers le monde.

Ce chiffre global de 10 millions d'articles masque toutefois de grandes disparités entre les articles, au niveau de leur qualité, de leur exhaustivité, de leur fiabilité ou encore de leur pertinence.

L'encyclopédie Wikipédia existe en 253 langues différentes, dont la plus importante est la version anglophone avec 2,3 millions d'articles. Le tableau ci-dessous récapitule les cinq plus importantes encyclopédies : 







 Rang

 Langue

 Articles



 1

 Anglais 

2 308 922




 2

 Allemand 

729 856



 3

 Français 

640 411



 4

 Polonais 

484 829



 5

 Japonais 

480 726