1 million entries in Wikipedia

On 17 September 2004, the experimental free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia reached 1 million (approved) entries. Every internet user can write entries, and suggest improvements for any other entry. This idea has proven extremely viable in the last 4 years. Wikipedia now provides information in 100 languages, 14 of which offer more than 10.000 articles each. With 140.000 articles, Germany is the second biggest contributor to the encyclopaedia after the UK.

To improve co-ordination among all the volunteers, Wikipedia launched a quarterly newsletter in 12 languages. The first edition mentions the initiative to put the German Wikipedia on a CD, and distribute it via the publishing house Directmedia Publishing. The publisher has announced it wants to distribute 30.000 CDs for free to all involved people in Germany, packaged with promotion for the commercial software DigiBib. Under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL) all third parties can reuse Wikipedia articles as long as they pass on that right to others.

30 volunteers are now meticulously checking all the facts, details and copyright issues in the German Wikipedia before it will be stored on the CD. This will take them approximately 1 month.

Wikipedia press release (20.09.2004) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_press_releases/One_million_Wikipedia_articles_%28int%27l%29

Eine Million Artikel in Wikipedia (in German, 20.09.2004) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/51243