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English Wikipedia reaches five million articles

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By Gamaliel

The English Wikipedia reached five million articles on November 1 with the article Persoonia terminalis, a shrub native to eastern Australia. The article was created by Cas Liber, an Australian Wikipedian who has been editing since 2006. He has created and edited a number of Featured Articles on similar topics and is active in projects like WikiProject Fungi and WikiProject Plants. Liber was one of a number of editors submitting articles around the same time to try to hit the milestone. He wrote "I tried to pick articles I could get to FA status at some point...to show the world that we could FAC the 5000000th." No free image of Persoonia terminalis is currently available, but a number of Wikipedians have independently contacted an Australian photographer who posted copyrighted images of the shrub's two subspecies to Flickr.

The event has been marked by a Wikimedia blog post and a letter from the community, which is reproduced here.

Previous milestones Date Article
1 million 1 March 2006 Jordanhill railway station
2 million 9 September 2007 El Hormiguero
3 million 17 August 2009 Beate Eriksen
4 million 13 July 2012 Ezbet el-Borg


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Wikidata is three years old.
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It's remarkable you managed to squeeze in mention of the 5,000,000 millionth article into this issue, especially considering that it only occurred an hour or two before publication time. Bravo! Liz Read! Talk! 18:40, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I spent a lot of time anxiously watching the countdown this weekend. Gamaliel (talk) 19:53, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is extraordinarily unfortunate that such an otherwise celebratory occasion must also bear the sad news of a Wikimedian no longer with us. Rest in peace, Kahlid Mahmood. My condolences to their loved ones. Mz7 (talk) 18:52, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll bet 50% of those articles are sports articles, obscure villages, railway stations, little known bugs, and entertainment trivia. Praemonitus (talk) 22:56, 5 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • It is only a small sample, but I looked at the last ten articles he created, between June and July this year. Thanks to interwiki links and google translate, I was able to discover that the article topics were stamen and pollen, a 19th century Polish poet, a city in Israel, a desert shrub found in India and Pakistan, and five articles on United States geographical features, including Lake Michigan and the Chicago River. If Praemonitus or anyone else is curious in exploring Khalid's contributions further, his list of articles created is here. He also contributed 61 articles to the English Wikipedia. I'll let the reader decide whether a World War I battle falls within the category of entertainment trivia. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 07:06, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note the indentation: I was not referring to Khalid's contributions, but rather to the net total of 5,000,000 articles. Sorry for any confusion. Praemonitus (talk) 19:57, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ah yes, so you were. I am equally sorry for the ill-aimed jab. If talking about the net total, I think your 50% may be an underestimation. AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 02:07, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Images now available

As a result of the initiative mentioned here, images of Persoonia terminalis' two subspecies are now available on Commons.

  • Persoonia terminalis ssp recurva, Australian National Botanic Garden, Canberra
    Persoonia terminalis ssp recurva, Australian National Botanic Garden, Canberra
  • Persoonia terminalis ssp terminalis, Australian National Botanic Garden, Canberra
    Persoonia terminalis ssp terminalis, Australian National Botanic Garden, Canberra

Thanks to the photographer, Russell Cumming, for kindly relicensing his images. Andreas JN466 12:33, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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