Wikipedia talk:Five million articles

Two proposed messages
This is a combination of two messages proposed to be published once 5 million articles have been reached. The original two pieces are:


 * User:Jakec/sandbox by Jakec
 * User:Mz7/sandbox/5 million articles by Mz7

Spirit of Eagle (talk) 02:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Other languages
I think we should use the opportunity to highlight another aspect of "not done" : articles need to be translated into other languages in order to reach additional communities to those who need access to free knowledge. John Vandenberg (chat) 06:26, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Not just that, but also other Wikimedia projects as well. MER-C 18:35, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Feel free to add in language about this translation and to make any other edits you think will improve the page. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 17:42, 13 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That will probably be automated in a few years. Not worth the trouble to do it manually. John Nagle (talk) 21:55, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Another possibility
A (possibly simplified) version of the Wikipedia globe with '5 000 000' in different number systems replacing the letters: this can then be adapted for future million-points. Jackiespeel (talk) 16:15, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Making sure everyone knows...
About this: Requests for comment/5 millionth article logo. Eman 235 / talk 02:13, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Stop singling out individual people and articles
It's not the right thing to do - we have many valued contributors. The 10 millionth person to cross a bridge is NOT important. Samsara 17:19, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I'd support putting a link to the article itself, but singling out any particular editor gives them undue importance. It also encourages competition to be the creator of the article, which I don't think is a very good reason to be creating articles in the first place. &#160; Discant X  02:38, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I strongly believe that the 5 millionth article should be linked to in this message. The entire point of the upcoming logo change is to celebrate the creation of the 5 millionth article, so the identity of this article is pertinent information that should be included. As for the identity of the article creator, I honestly don’t see the harm. Yes, people will be jockeying to get the 5 millionth article, but I see this as a fun, harmless competition that’s good for community building (much like the Wikicup). I’m less adamant about the article creator getting named in this though, and would have no problem removing it if there is general consensus to do so. Spirit of Eagle (talk) 04:36, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * As the one who put that line in there, I don't entirely mind if someone wants to remove the username (though I still think it's a nice idea), but I think that linking to the article is important. FWIW, this letter's predecessor, WP:4MIL mentions both the 4-millionth article and its creator. --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  11:11, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That doesn't make it right. Samsara 14:48, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If the five millionth article is on some non-notable subject, the creator of the article him/herself, or even an attack page, and the new page patroller who patrolled that page patrolled it anyway despite those issues, or it is sent to AfD or PRODded, it would be an embarrassment. Esquivalience t 16:51, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If the article is speedily deleted, then it'll of course be the 5,000,001th article that is linked. --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  16:53, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * This is somewhat discussed in the Millionth article FAQ. The counting system for articles is somewhat hazy as it is, given page mergers and deletions. If it's immediately deleted, was it ever really an article in the first place? &#160; Discant X  01:58, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
 * How about we "play this one by ear"? If the 5,000,000th article is decent, let things stand. If it is speedily deleted, or otherwise kinda embarrassing, let's simply drop that info from the announcement. This page doesn't have to be publicised immediately upon 5 million right? --LukeSurlt c 15:30, 27 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree with LukeSurl's sentiment. If the article qualifies for deletion then we can go with the next article; this assumes that we're actually capable of identifying the 5 millionth article, which may be difficult. In case of ambiguity there may be multiple articles to mention, and/or we may decide to post a footnote with the details. --Pine✉ 20:07, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Won't the WMF make a press release saying what the "official" 5 millionth article is? And whatever the case, this is neither an argument for nor against including the username of the article creator: it's an argument around whether the article itself should be linked from this page. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 12:16, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, hadn't thought about the logo. Personally not fussed either way about how prominently a single article is singled out or not. I tried to have up my sleeve a bunch of articles that could be GA or FA - the main purpose is to highlight how much there is to be written (i.e. that the 5000000th article could have this much detail highlighting what still can be added...you get what I mean). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:59, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Actually have been thinking about this - one way for someone to write is to do it in a stream-of-consciousness way...from Persoonia terminalis to Persoonia to Persoon...or Lawrie Johnson or the little village of Torrington (damn...I drove this way once...). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Millions, not thousands on editors on Wikipedia en.
, there are over 125,000 active-editors on WP en. alone, and millions of registered-editors on en.

27M may be fat because of some deadwood but it's closer than "thousands".

"Thousands" really downplays the numbers.

Ping me back. Cheers! 05:38, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Checkingfax: let me see if I can get one of the Analytics folks to tell me how many unique accounts, including IPs, have made at least one edit to ENWP since the beginning of time. --Pine✉ 05:43, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Checkingfax: changed to "millions" per discussion on the Analytics mailing list. The discussion there leads me to think that getting more precise numbers is going to be difficult, and would involve considerable discussion and explanations which are more detailed than we should include in the community announcement. So I'm going to leave the description at "millions". --Pine✉ 18:44, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Needs more of a celebratory intro
As it stands the message has one line that actually celebrates the accomplishment of 5 million articles ("The English Wikipedia community thanks the millions of anonymous and registered editors whose 796,651,464 edits over the past 14+ years to the English Wikipedia have made this remarkable accomplishment possible."), and the rest is information on how to start editing. I think the info on editing should stay, but we need to flesh out the celebratory paragraph(s) more. We could include more on previous achievements for example, or references to other milestones such as the millionth article, or give a brief History of Wikipedia and how that has led us to where we are. Doesn't need to be longer than a few sentences to a paragraph or two, but the initial focus of the message should be primarily celebratory, and then we should move on to how others can help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DiscantX (talk • contribs) 07:54, 28 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I added a bit of history, as well as the Prime objective quote from Wales, to the intro. I generally agree that more could be said about why we're actually celebrating, and I think it could potentially be expanded further. Mz7 (talk) 21:41, 28 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I've added a history section. Please take a look and let me know what you think. --<b style="color:#01796F;">Pine</b><sup style="color:#01796F;">✉ 22:20, 28 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Is there a way to mention how many edits we have without technically thanking vandals? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:22, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * That gets tricky. We can count the number of non-reverted edits, but even that won't catch all of the vandalism. I think it's understood by most people who are familiar with social media that there will be a certain amount of junk; hopefully the amount of good-faith content that endures is of a far greater quantity than the amount of junk that endures. --<span style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#008C3A 0.1em 0.1em 1.5em,#01796F -0.1em -0.1em 1.5em;"><b style="color:#01796F;">Pine</b><sup style="color:#01796F;">✉ 02:03, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
 * In this context, the counts of edits and registered users are irrelevant (and the latter is wildly misleading, given the enormous quantity of garbage accounts). This message's purpose is to explain the significance of the "5,000,000" number, not to impress readers with more big quantities (let alone those that are essentially meaningless).  —David Levy 00:42, 31 October 2015 (UTC)


 * That's some pretty neat history. I've gone ahead and boldly separated what you wrote into two paragraphs, as it felt like too long to approach enthusiastically for me. Mz7 (talk) 02:37, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

A brief history
I really think the page would look better without this section, or at least with the section trimmed down massively. This is a celebration for the English Wikipedia: mentioning Wikidata, de, VE, Commons copyright licenses (!) is tangential. My eyes glazed over and skipped past it, and I'm an established editor already. This section will bore too many people and obscure the overall message of the page, which is "How you can help". At most, I think the section should say:
 * Wikipedia officially launched on 15 January 2001 on a single computer server. In the first year of its existence, over 20,000 encyclopedia entries were created – a rate of over 1,500 articles per month. In March 2006, the English Wikipedia reached 1 million articles. In July 2012, we reached 4 million articles.
 * Today, the English Wikipedia gets 8 billion pageviews per month. We are the seventh-most popular website in the world. As well as the English Wikipedia, Wikipedia has 290 other language versions and a total of 36 million articles across all of these sites. The English Wikipedia is the first Wikipedia language to reach 5 million articles, and we did so on [date].

— Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 09:20, 29 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, I suppose it is a bit long for a "brief" history. I've boldly cut down a bit on the section. Mz7 (talk) 18:09, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Page style
The new font yells at me on my laptop. Everything looks bold and the bold no longer pops out. I preferred the crisper oversized font we started out with. Can we switch back? Other than that, it's looking great. We should hit 5M tonight or tomorrow morning. Great job, folks. Cheers! 20:53, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Press contacts section
Is there a reason • is used instead of flatlist? Eman 235 / talk 02:26, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I presume because the former contains a non-breaking space on the left side of the bullet while the latter doesn't. Opencooper (talk) 13:53, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Thread for determining 5 millionth article
Since we are probably hitting it soon, this thread is to discuss how to determine the 5 millionth article. Some notes to help: -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 11:47, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * There is an annotated creation log that contains article count next to newest article.
 * Both Special:NewPagesFeed and Special:NewPages have a list of new pages
 * However...
 * Because of creations with simultaneous deletions, vandalism or patent nonsense, it may take some time for the results to stabilize and sort out a 5 millionth article.
 * It is perhaps more art than science in determining what the community deems the 5 millionth article
 * Are the community 'choosing' the 5 millionth article? I assumed the WMF would say what the 'official' 5 millionth article was in a press release. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 11:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd assume the WMF will use whichever article we decide on. It's going to be hard because presumably the 5 millionth will change when any article created before now is deleted as well as any which might fill the 5 millionth slot? Sam Walton (talk) 11:53, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Er, I'd think the WMF press release would mirror what we are saying and not the other way around. -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 12:00, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I have added this, hope it helps. Don't close the tab without saving the log and the NUMBEROFARTICLES value in top ;-). emijrp (talk) 12:07, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Someone has a bot/script chugging through a database of towns in Turkey, so that's very likely going to be our 5M. We'll see. -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 12:14, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

This one Persoonia terminalis? File:English Wikipedia 5 million article log.png. emijrp (talk) 12:28, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * By my count, #5,000,000 was Church of St Andrew, Blagdon. —David Levy 12:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Going by this, if we assume that "5000008: Church of St Swithin, Bath" is accurate, counting back 8 places gives us the 5 millionth article of Olympus Zuiko Digital 11-22mm f/2.8-3.5. Not very catchy. Where did you two get those articles from? — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 12:33, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Ah, I've misunderstood how that tool works. Yep, Persoonia terminalis looks like #5,000,000. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 12:49, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I've been watching the countdown and was waiting for the sprint finish. Dr. Blofeld seemed to start first with about 250 to go and had a stack of villages in Turkey.  Then Casliber joined in soon with a stack of species.  The two them were then slugging it out for most of the final straight with dominance shifting as their buffers surged and flushed.  I had three articles prepared and was planning to snipe at the end, refreshing this page to judge the timing.  I jumped in with 21 to go and it seemed that others had a similar idea as there was a big surge at the end.  Figuring out the 5 millionth will be tricky - does the Wikimedia software not have an internal counter? Andrew D. (talk) 12:37, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Haha, honestly though I wasn't going for the 5 millionth article, I just wanted to display a positive outlook as we approached it. In fact it was only when you pinged me I realised we'd easily passed it! If I did get it it would be a bonus of course ;-)♦ Dr. Blofeld  12:41, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * In IRC (#wikipedia-en) we are hypothesizing that Persoonia_terminalis is the 5M. Can you folks check the math? Or drop by IRC #wikipedia-en -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 12:39, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I miscounted by one. Upon further review, I'm getting Persoonia terminalis as #5,000,000 as well.  —David Levy 12:43, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I believe it's not hard to figure out at all and whatever was the newest article the first time it reached 5,000,000 is the winner. Unless that gets deleted quickly in which case the next one that doesn't get deleted quickly wins. There's at least 5 articles centered on what I think was 5 million that don't look embarrassing to WP like a porn star or something so we might be 5 for 5 in not having a difficult choice to make. It can't keep changing for years into the future when one of those original 5 million get merged or something. WP:millionth article FAQ Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 12:40, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Also 100,000 500,000 and 1.5 and 2.5 million are known and not embarrassing so we're 9 for 9. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 12:47, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

9ec X 2) Surely it is a matter of aligning the log of new pages with deletions...oh and those pesky drafts.....and userfied articles...and....(I didn't even get a chance to fire off all the damn Eucalypts of New South Wales yet :P....damn)


 * I tried to pick articles I could get to FA status at some point...to sho the world that we could FAC the 5000000th....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:41, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Showing my math, going by which showed Venezuela Municipal Museum at 4999994:
 * 94 - Venezuela Municipal Museum
 * 95 - Hışıroğlu, Devrek
 * 96 - Margit Johnsen
 * 97 - The long march through the institutions
 * 98 - Tamron SP 45mm F1.8 Di VC USD
 * 99 - Church of St Andrew, Blagdon
 * 5M - Persoonia terminalis by 
 * 01 - Tamron SP 35mm F1.8 Di VC USD
 * 02 - Sigma 24-35mm F2 DG HSM Art
 * 03 - Swale Brook

-- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 12:42, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * You're right. I came to the same conclusion (though by counting back from 08). --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  12:43, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I counted back from 5,000,004. And on my second attempt (I never was mathematically minded), I arrived at that result as well.  Way to go, Cas!  —David Levy 12:50, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations !♦ Dr. Blofeld  12:45, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Heh, thanks folks.... :)))). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:47, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations to all :-) emijrp (talk) 12:56, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * When I counted back just now, I made it the Tamron SP 35mm F1.8 Di VC USD but it's not clear to me that a camera lens is going survive deletionist attack so it might be best to pick something more defensible and we can rely on Casliber to nuture his pub shrub. My long march through the institutions was quite close so I'm happy to be in the photo-finish.  Roll on the next million as that was lots of fun.  Well done everyone. Andrew D. (talk) 12:58, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I had to count back only two and got the shrub so maybe no need to snub the lens, it didn't win (maybe). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:07, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Meh, I miscounted by two. Though I was counting back from 5,000,166. TVShowFan122 (talk) 13:13, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

It's worth noting that both Dr. Blofeld and Casliber were busy with the mass creation of stubs (on villages in Turkey, and species of shrubs, respectively) three years ago as well, in the run up to the four millionth article. 223.227.116.203 (talk) 17:21, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Amazing!
I fortunately woke up just in time to watch the exponential growth start and to finish off the last draft. I've got to say, it was amazing to watch the exponential growth, especially in the last 30 or 40 articles. Things really picked up; looks like we were doing 2-3 per second. And in the second when it happened, it looks like 14 articles were created! Spectacular. --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  13:03, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Well done all. Now only if all the one-line articles created in those frenetic minutes could be expanded. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.192.184.248 (talk) 13:15, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * As much as I love photography, I'm glad the 5M article was not a free ad for Tamron or Sigma lenses. :) -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 13:48, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅ Must dust of my Tamron 80-210 & SLR film camera, which I haven't used since .... (can't remember!)  220  of  Borg 15:08, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

More prominent link
Five million articles is linked to from the main page, but it's not actually hugely noticeable. If we can't get the link from clicking on the logo to lead here, is there any other way of helping readers to find their way here? Maybe some redirects like 5,000,000 articles (or hatnotes from pages like 5 Million that already exist)? I'm not really sure many people will get to this page from Main page banner. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 13:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki:Sitenotice is shown in the top of all pages. Not sure if we should use it. emijrp (talk) 13:33, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I would if it was my choice alone, but there's not really been any consensus to use it. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 13:38, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Glitch with the milestone template
Template:Million milestones has already been edited to reflect the five-millionth article, but the only milestone article talk pages where it shows up are the talks of Forced settlements in the Soviet Union and Beate Eriksen. It doesn't show up on the talks of the other milestone articles. TVShowFan122 (talk) 13:34, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Purging the talk pages fixes this. — Bilorv(talk)(c)(e) 13:39, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Vital articles
Is it really a good idea to direct new editors to our vital articles? These articles are usually larger in scope, require knowledge of what constitutes a reliable source, need a good grasp of writing from a neutral point-of-view, and are much more likely to be reverted on. I propose that we instead replace that link with a link to our stubs. Opencooper (talk) 14:05, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Press contacts
Are all of those affiliates listed at the bottom skilled at dealing with the press? Tony  (talk)  14:10, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Logo duration
Is there a consensus somewhere as to how long the celebratory logo should stay? Sam Walton (talk) 15:45, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The WMF doesn't want us to keep it up for more than a day, I think, so I guess it would be 24 hours. --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  15:48, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd say it'd be a shame to have it only be up from Sunday morning (US time) to Monday morning. We should have it on for at least a whole weekday workday so people see it. I'd say we should keep it up until at least Tuesday noon (East coast US time). Let's not be too deferential to some notion of what the "proper" logo is, whatever that means. -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 22:15, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Yeah given when its fallen extending it to a full working day seams reasonable.©Geni (talk) 22:50, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

How was it done to show the logo on there? Seems this one does not reflect in File:Wiki.png. Shinjiman ⇔ &#9832; 00:45, 2 November 2015 (UTC)


 * It's using a CSS property and not changing the PNG. See this section for more: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/5_millionth_article_logo -- Fuzheado &#124; Talk 01:32, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Shall we call it a day then? Sam Walton (talk) 14:55, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations!
Congratulation to you all from Italy! Great job, we're now ready for the next 5,000,000 articles! The English Wikipedia is a beacon of hope in this world of overflowing information and yet widespread ignorance, and a guiding light for each other Wikimedia project. Let's celebrate this November 1 the millions "saints" who donated part of their time, thus their very life, in the creation of this tool of freedom, and gave it to future generations. :-) --Phyrexian ɸ 17:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Whoooah!! Happy Hallowmas!! -- SzMithrandir (talk) 18:03, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Congratulation form Russia! Keep the good work! --Slb nsk (talk) 18:10, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * And congratulations also from Italy (again) :-) --Yiyi (Dimmi!) 19:11, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Félicitations, chers amis ! KiwiNeko14 (Meow) 19:33, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * My congratulations to the whole Wikipedia community that has given all their time and dedication to make this encyclopedia even better than ever before. What a great start to the beginning of another month! Tropicalkitty (talk) 19:54, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations form Cyprus. You are the best!! Xaris333 (talk) 20:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Warmest wishes from el-wikiedia --FocalPoint (talk) 20:31, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations from Norway as well! --Tarjeimo (talk) 23:52, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulation to you all from Cek, in the Quba Rayon of Azerbaijan! Great job, we're now ready for the next 5,000,000 articles! Keep the good work! --► Cekli 829  05:04, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Can't get the top video to play
Whether on Firefox, Chrome or Edge, the video just won't start, although on Chrome I can get the audio. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 21:23, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * which operating system are you using? --<span style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#008C3A 0.1em 0.1em 1.5em,#01796F -0.1em -0.1em 1.5em;"><b style="color:#01796F;">Pine</b><sup style="color:#01796F;">✉ 21:32, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Windows 10. Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 21:49, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I am surprised that Firefox isn't working for you. Are you using Noscript? --<span style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#008C3A 0.1em 0.1em 1.5em,#01796F -0.1em -0.1em 1.5em;"><b style="color:#01796F;">Pine</b><sup style="color:#01796F;">✉ 21:53, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Nope. I can view videos on other sites with no issue.  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 21:57, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Try downloading it from Commons and playing it locally in Firefox. --<span style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#008C3A 0.1em 0.1em 1.5em,#01796F -0.1em -0.1em 1.5em;"><b style="color:#01796F;">Pine</b><sup style="color:#01796F;">✉ 22:03, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * That's funny. It plays on that page. So I won't have to download it. Thanks!  Stevie is the man!  Talk • Work 22:21, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations and a request for something
Congrats on 5 million articles, everybody. We made it.

Now I know there's some "Congratulations on 5 million" barnstars going around. Are there any left for me, by any chance? I think I feel honored. ;) epic genius (talk) 03:17, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe Casliber will share some of those 20-ish barnstars he got :p --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  03:28, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Ooh, could I get one too? This is an amazing accomplishment and I kinda want it commemorated. Origamiteⓣⓒ 04:03, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, this accomplishment is cool and I want a special edition barnstar before they stop issuing them. Did they stop? I think they stop when the tally reaches 5,001,000 articles. (Completely facetious, BTW. ) epic genius (talk) 04:28, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I've been using "Logo X" as a banner image. Example. Eman 235 / talk  05:02, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Cool. And since no one will congratulate me, I did it to myself. Yay. *blows party horn flatly* epic genius (talk) 23:57, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

The 12:27 articles
All of the following pages were created at 12:27, 1 November 2015 (UTC), the minute that saw the creation of the 5 millionth article.

103.6.159.67 (talk) 14:19, 2 November 2015 (UTC)


 * See, maybe that would make a good story, if each of us chose one or two of them to buff up and maybe do a profile on. What say you, , , , , ? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:54, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a work in progress, so it just depends on the time frame. Samsara 23:35, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe someone counted the second it was made in deciding which was 5,000,000th. Makes for a good Signpost story, at nearly 1 article per second. Especially Samsara, who created articles at a rate of one about every 2 seconds. Impressive. epic genius (talk) 23:59, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * For my part, I made my articles as complete as I could before dumping them into mainspace. But South Branch Tunkhannock Creek and Swale Brook are the best two out of my four. --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  00:07, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I am continuing to develop the articles – both mine and some of the others – and could say quite a lot about how they came to be chosen. I'm not sure what the framework for this would be though. Where I can, I'll be expanding the articles to qualify for DYK and so expect to complete the work this week, as that's the usual window for submission. Andrew D. (talk) 00:11, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I had created them (20+ articles) in my sandbox in advance & included infoboxes, pictures & as good an overview as sources would allow & then manually hit the save button as the 5 million approached. They are part of my ongoing project to get rid of red links in the sub lists of Grade II* listed buildings in Somerset (all Grade I listed buildings in Somerset already have an article). I believe, based on the one which got the 5 million, that Church of St Andrew, Blagdon was 4,999,999 & Church of St Swithin, Bath was 5,000,003ish, but I was given a barnstar naming Church of St Mary, Compton Dando as being "nearly" the 5 millionth. Some of them wouldn't need too much more work to reach DYK criteria, but for some of these old churches there aren't really enough sources to get to GA.&mdash; Rod talk 06:58, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Good that none of these people are bots! Maybe we Wikipedians ain't that sensitive about this, but you know, when it comes to media delivery and public image, this is quite crucial. -- SzMithrandir (talk) 07:50, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Wait a minute, are you folks able to see the transclusions of relevant parts of Special:Contributions within those collapsed boxes above? When I posted this section, I was able to see them well, but now they are just rendering as links, which are quite less useful. 103.6.159.89 (talk) 14:46, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Working for me. Samsara 15:00, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Can see, positive. -- SzMithrandir (talk) 17:08, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * For me, it seems to vary – sometimes I see the detailed contributions, sometimes I just see a link to Special:Contributions. I've not quite figured out what causes it to refresh. Andrew D. (talk) 18:50, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

My miscellania
While I remember, here are some notes on mine. I warmed up on the previous day by creating several fresh articles:


 * Harry the Hermit – I'd read about him in a local newspaper that week. He'd been deleted previously but seemed worth bringing back as his story is the basis for a Hollywood movie now.
 * Histoire des Ouvrages des Savans – I saw this mentioned in a list of significant journals in an amusing story: Which philosopher would fare best in a present-day university?. I checked to see if we had them and found one was missing.  This then led to a couple of supporting articles:
 * Reinier Leers – publisher of the journal
 * Henri Desbordes – publisher of its predecessor. Having finished with these articles inspired by the press, I then turned to a book about fish and chip shops which I'd picked up at the bookshop of the Wellcome Collection, after an editathon there.  I've been meaning to write about some of my favourites for some time and this seemed a good opportunity to get started.
 * Seashell of Lisson Grove – patronised by numerous celebs and usually rated the top fish and chip shop in London.

At that time there were about 700 articles to go and I supposed that there might be a big surge at any time. By creating articles throughout this period, I hoped to strike lucky but the surge didn't happen that day. As the pace still seemed quite slow – about one a minute – I went to bed as usual. The following morning the pace still seemed slow. I had brunch while browsing around and it was during this session that I found this page (WP:5MILLION) This seemed useful for tracking progress so I watched it while wondering whether I could go out, as planned. I had several drafts prepared offline and so started to get them ready. I then noticed Dr. Blofeld start his batch of Turkish villages and we were off to the races.

Blofeld's bot didn't seem as fast as I'd feared so I had plenty of time to get ready. I had three drafts prepared


 * Kerbisher & Malt – my favourite fish and chip shop
 * Brush pot – an object I'd seen on Antiques Road Show on the previous Sunday. A good antique example might be worth a million dollars.
 * The long march through the institutions – a spinoff from the big deletion debates about Cultural Marxism. In browsing around that topic, I came across an article about this on the German Wikipedia and so thought it would stand up as a topic over here.

Cas Liber then joined in with his shrubs but the pace was still quite moderate and so I had time to add another fish and chip shop to my batch, cloning it from one of the others. These were set up in separate browser tabs where I previewed them to check the format so that they just needed saving. I expected the rate to spike as it did and so started saving when there was about 21 articles to go. My batch then bracketed the 5 million mark quite nicely. Close but no cigar...

Andrew D. (talk) 18:50, 4 November 2015 (UTC)


 * , congratulations for bracketing 5M. I put a counter on this page that updated in real time with a page purge but other editors kept taking it off and putting up a static number. Then WFL made a cool countdown link and they posted that. The advantage was that it told you which articles were spooling in the queue. That was fun to watch. I agree things got slow for a while and then I missed the crescendo but then as soon as P. terminalis was announced as article 5M I was up so I started editing the little stub of an article. It has now blossomed quite nicely. I'll check on your articles later. Cheers!  22:19, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Jakec's notes
My four articles weren't anything special: just the next four in my endeavor to create articles on all named streams in Pennsylvania (there are more than 60,000 streams, but only 800 articles!). I did try to time my work so that I'd be writing articles on creeks not completely in the wilderness, in case one of them happened to be the 5,000,000th and someone happened to want to do a meetup at the article's location. (So, for instance, Swale Brook was right in Tunkhannock.)

When I woke up on the morning of the 1st, Dr. Blofeld was starting his string of Turkish village stubs, and there were about 280 articles to go. It seemed that articles were already coming in fast, so I scrambled to finish South Branch Tunkhannock Creek and finally got it into a mainspace-able state at 7:25 AM (12:25 UTC). I then copy-pasted my articles into the edit mode in mainspace and obsessively five million counter, until it went to 4,999,950, at which point I began refreshing Special:Statistics about once a second. (I know, I was a bit obsessed...but it was fun to see the article count rising so fast.)

I made my move after 4,999,990 and started hitting the 'save page' button. Seems I was too late, though: Persoonia terminalis was written at 7:27:37/38 (EST) and my first one (Swale Brook) was saved at 7:27:40/41 and became the 5,000,003rd. And the other three I had written got saved within ten seconds of that.

I guess for the 6,000,000th article race (In June 2019, I predict), I'll try to have more articles ready to go (perhaps a dozen or so?), though I'm not sure how to hit "save page" fast enough. --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  19:06, 4 November 2015 (UTC)


 * , Did you have each article ready to save in a separate browser tab?


 * I edited article 5M (P. terminalis) right after it was announced as 5M and now it's up for G.A. already and article launcher graciously bestowed me with co-authorship during the G.A. process. He's a G.A. machine. He is also a DYK and F.A. machine. Ping me back. Cheers!   22:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I did, in fact. But still, I could only save one every three seconds or so, unfortunately. I'd probably need some kind of script to do it any faster. --Jakob (talk)  aka Jakec  22:13, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I had 5 emails in my email program - one had 49 species of persoonia, another had 66 species of Eucalypt native to NSW, another had about 20 species of grevillea and a had a few mushrooms and mosses. I saw start to rev up and I started dumping. If I hadn't I figured it'd be around 2am Sydney time so by dumping brought it forward an hour or two. I just went to the genus pages (Persoonia and List of Eucalyptus species and hit the redlinks and created away from my email document where I had everything formatted. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:54, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Samsara's thoughts
Article creation is a critical activity for registered users to carry out, for several reasons. The first and most trivial of these is that for several years now, only autoconfirmed users have been able to create articles. Another major reason is that in some subjects, article creation activity has been moved away from Wikipedia and towards Wikia or entirely independent wikis. For instance, for information about notable photographic cameras, lenses and other apparel, there are now no fewer than two non-Wikipedia wikis whose coverage is more comprehensive than ours (Camerapedia and Camera-wiki.org). Two things are true about this. Firstly, it's good to have information redundantly stored in independently maintained wikis. However, fragmentation of knowledge across different sites runs counter to the original idea of the wikilink as the unifying principle of all knowledge. Therefore we should ensure that we attract relevant topic editors to Wikipedia. One essential way of doing this is giving them a starting point for an article that can be expanded - thus they can contribute even as an IP or newly registered user. Evidence so far shows that there is some take-up for this, and vandalism is minimal in this topic area (knock on wood). Recruitment campaigns on relevant forums will be a necessary second step once the current article creation backlog has been cleared to a reasonable extent.

The article creation backlog I'm referring to is actually a "neat" example of systemic bias. In terms of lens articles, Canon is very well covered, with Nikon a clear second place in spite of their similar market share. Until I focused some of my attention on this problem, there were very few articles on lenses by Olympus, Pentax, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Sigma, Tamron, Zeiss and others. This echoes situations in other areas of consumer products, such as laptops, where any brand other than Apple is extremely poorly covered - Apple being the absolute exception and being rather well covered - even long before they clearly dominated the market!

This is why the proximate objective of the lens article drive is not to create a small number of fully formed articles that do not need further improvement, but rather to create a large number of stub articles that could engage new editors and interest them in contributing to Wikipedia on a regular basis. Given strong brand loyalties among photographers, getting them interested should not be too hard, but I expect WP:NPOV and WP:V/WP:RS to be principles occasionally requiring attention.

Notwithstanding the above focus on lens articles, the single article topic I would like to draw attention to in this write-up is current DYK nominee Operation Eikonal - very topical given the WMF's recent court action against the NSA over just this kind of internet surveillance, and part of a range of topics of high contemporary relevance that we've been far too reluctant to adequately tackle. Given Wikipedia's position as a top electronic medium and central element of the internet revolution, I find our sometimes patchy coverage of such subjects hard to accept. If half the editors dedicating their time to Middle Eastern politics would divert their energy towards questions of the eletronic frontier, Wikipedia as a whole would be a much more interesting and balanced read.

Insofar as this is the opportunity to publicise a wishlist, it would have those two items: (1) more balanced coverage across a greater range of commercial products, and (2) better coverage of the electronic frontier, particularly issues relating to electronic security and privacy. Thank you for reading.

Samsara 18:37, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
 * , I heard the NSA suit was dropped? Cheers!  22:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks - is this the latest as of now? Samsara 22:15, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, my thoughts align with 's. I also chose articles that could be expanded to GA and possibly FA. To illustrate that the 5000000th article could still be significant. Incidentally I forgot I predicted this back in July...I must have clairvoyance... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:56, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Archived logo
Here's an archived link to Wikipedia's Main Page on November 1, sporting the logo and Main Page banner. Mz7 (talk) 01:36, 21 November 2015 (UTC)