Traditional encyclopedia topics

You can find all the types of content that you might expect from a general encyclopedia such as Encyclopaedia Britannica. Articles about science, historical events, geography, the arts, and literature are all included.

People

No occupations or groups are restricted or emphasized, although in order to qualify for an article, the person must be notable, that is, well known within his or her major field of endeavor. Once this criterion is met, you may write an article about anyone: artists, musicians, scientists, historical figures, authors, athletes, politicians, monarchs, and on and on. (People are discouraged from writing about themselves, however.) The Wikipedia biography project ([[Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography]]) keeps track of biographical articles; by the end of 2007, there were nearly 400,000 articles listed as biographies, or nearly 20 percent of Wikipedia (see Figure 1.2, “A representation of content in Wikipedia from August 2007: 7.2 percent of articles are about places; 3.4 percent about albums and singles; 3.0 percent about tree-of-life zoology; 1.6 percent about films; 10.8 percent about living people; and 8.9 percent about other biographies. Disambiguation (dab) pages comprise 4.2 percent of Wikipedia. Twenty thousand articles represent 1 percent of Wikipedia. These numbers were compiled by Dutch Wikipedian Eugene van der Pijll.”).

Places

There are articles not just on countries, provinces, and major geographical features but also about cities and towns worldwide. For instance, there is an article about every city or hamlet in the United States (approximately 40,000 are recognized by the US Census Bureau).

Rambot

Most of the 40,000 articles about American towns were not created by hand; instead, they were created automatically with freely available census data. (The automated user account that created the pages is affectionately called Rambot.) For some time after Rambot made its initial efforts in 2002 and 2003, some community members complained that these census-based articles made up too much of the total article count. Now, however, it's not an issue because local residents and others have improved nearly all of the bot's articles, and the increase in other content means these articles now comprise only about 2 percent of the site.

Fictional characters

Want to read up on the personal history of Frodo or Darth Vader? While articles about real people are certainly included on Wikipedia, articles about well-known fictional characters are included as well.

Media—movies, books, albums, songs, television shows (and their episodes), videogames, and more

Work in almost any medium can be considered for its own article.

Companies and organizations

There are factual articles about most well-known corporations. The field of technology is covered particularly well. For example, the articles about Microsoft and Apple, Inc., are both comprehensive; these two articles reference roughly 100 outside sources apiece. Companies can be included in Wikipedia if there is enough reliable information and independent reporting available to support a useful article (simple existence of the company is not enough to qualify, and promotional material is not welcome). As with biographies, writing about your own organization or company is discouraged.

Figure 1.2. A representation of content in Wikipedia from August 2007: 7.2 percent of articles are about places; 3.4 percent about albums and singles; 3.0 percent about tree-of-life zoology; 1.6 percent about films; 10.8 percent about living people; and 8.9 percent about other biographies. Disambiguation (dab) pages comprise 4.2 percent of Wikipedia. Twenty thousand articles represent 1 percent of Wikipedia. These numbers were compiled by Dutch Wikipedian Eugene van der Pijll.

Computer software and hardware

Considering the way Wikipedia is authored, you might expect a few articles about computers, and you'd be right—there are thousands of articles about programming languages, software, hardware, and computer science theory.

Transport

Wikipedia has been a hit with transportation enthusiasts. There are thousands of articles about railway stations, canals, airports, and other minutiae of transport networks. For instance, the article [[I-35W Mississippi River bridge]], about the interstate highway bridge in Minnesota that collapsed on August 1, 2007, was created well over a year before that event.

Current events

Though the site does not support original reporting, Wikipedia is updated rapidly when major stories break. Current events coverage has had a major profile ever since the up-to-the-minute coverage of the [[2004 Indian Ocean earthquake]] and related tsunami (this article alone had well over 1,000 edits in its first 48 hours). Finding out more about current events on the site is described in Chapter 3, Finding Wikipedia's Content.

Lists

Linked lists are a defining feature of Wikipedia. Want to find a list of songs about Elvis Presley? No problem—it's at [[List of songs about or referencing Elvis Presley]]. Lists can be about nearly about any topic; though like any content, they should ideally be referenced. In fact, [[List of female tennis players]] was one of the earliest pages created on Wikipedia. Lists are browsable; start from [[List of topics]] to find lists of … well, nearly anything. (See Chapter 3, Finding Wikipedia's Content for some of our favorites.)

Disambiguation pages

These pages include a whole list of links to possible articles that have similar names. For example, the Wikipedia page [[Orange]] links to articles on the color orange, the fruit, the Orange Bowl, the Dutch royal house of Orange, and numerous other pages (see Figure 1.3, “The disambiguation page [[Orange]]”). Because it is not possible to anticipate which meaning you may be searching for when different topics share a name, these disambiguation pages pull together all the possible options. These pages are especially useful for biographical names: If in the course of some research, you come across a surname only, try the Wikipedia page for that name. It may quickly offer you a range of individuals to choose from.

Figure 1.3. The disambiguation page [[Orange]]

Redirects

These pages simply push you from one page title to another automatically. You won't actually see these pages directly, but they are used extensively for alternate spellings, variations on names, and any other situation where confusion might exist over the precise article title. Redirects are not included in the official article count, but lists and disambiguation pages certainly are.

Further Reading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics The auto-generated statistics page that gives the current article count

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics A page with other statistics and interpretations

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Milestones A list of historical milestones for the projects

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_an_article? An FAQ page that describes what an article is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia's_oldest_articles A list of some of Wikipedia's oldest articles