Misplaced Pages

English Misplaced Pages

Screenshot Main Page of the English Misplaced Pages in January 2023
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
URL	en.wikipedia.org
Commercial	No
Registration	Optional; required for certain tasks
Users	48,451,227 users and 846 administrators (as of 24 December 2024)
Launched	15 January 2001; 23 years ago (2001-01-15)
Content license	Creative Commons Attribution/ Share-Alike 4.0 (most text also dual-licensed under GFDL) Media licensing varies

The English Misplaced Pages is the primary English-language edition of Misplaced Pages, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Misplaced Pages's first edition.

English Misplaced Pages is hosted alongside other language editions by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American nonprofit organization. Its content is written independently of other editions in various varieties of English, aiming to stay consistent within articles. Its internal newspaper is The Signpost.

English Misplaced Pages is the most-read version of Misplaced Pages, accounting for 48% of Misplaced Pages's cumulative traffic, with the remaining percentage split among the other languages. The English Misplaced Pages has the most articles of any edition, at 6,928,972 as of December 2024. It contains 10.8% of articles in all Wikipedias, although it lacks millions of articles found in other editions. The edition's one-billionth edit was made on 13 January 2021.

English Misplaced Pages, often as a stand-in for Misplaced Pages overall, has been praised for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge, extent of coverage, unique structure, culture, and reduced degree of commercial bias. It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, particularly gender bias against women and ideological bias. While its reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s, it has improved over time, receiving greater praise in the late 2010s and early 2020s, having become an important fact-checking site. English Misplaced Pages has been characterized as having less cultural bias than other language editions due to its broader editor base.

Articles

The English Misplaced Pages surpassed six million articles on 23 January 2020. In November 2022, the total volume of the compressed texts of its articles amounted to 20 gigabytes.

The edition's one-billionth edit was made on 13 January 2021 by Ser Amantio di Nicolao (Steven Pruitt) who as of that date is the user with the highest number of edits on the English Misplaced Pages, at over four million. Currently, there are 6,928,972 articles created with 931,221 files. The encyclopedia is home to 10.8% of articles in all Wikipedias (down from more than 50% in 2003). The English Misplaced Pages currently has 48,451,227 registered accounts of which 846 are administrators.

Bureaucracy

Editors of the English Misplaced Pages have pioneered some ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by Misplaced Pages editions in some of the other languages. These ideas include "featured articles", the neutral-point-of-view policy, navigation templates, the sorting of short "stub" articles into sub-categories, dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation and arbitration, and weekly collaborations.

Wikipedians

The English Misplaced Pages reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007, over a year since the millionth Wikipedian registered an account in February 2006.

Over 1,100,000 volunteer editors have edited Misplaced Pages more than 10 times. Over 30,000 editors perform more than 5 edits per month, and over 3,000 perform more than 100 edits per month.

On 1 March 2014, The Economist, in an article titled "The Future of Misplaced Pages", cited a trend analysis concerning data published by the Wikimedia Foundation stating that "he number of editors for the English-language version has fallen by a third in seven years." The attrition rate for active editors in English Misplaced Pages was cited by The Economist as substantially in contrast to statistics for Misplaced Pages in other languages (non-English Misplaced Pages). The Economist reported that the number of contributors with an average of five or more edits per month was relatively constant since 2008 for Misplaced Pages in other languages at approximately 42,000 editors within narrow seasonal variances of about 2,000 editors up or down. The number of active editors in English Misplaced Pages, by "sharp" comparison, was cited as peaking in 2007 at approximately 50,000 and dropping to 30,000 by the start of 2014.

The trend analysis published in The Economist presents Misplaced Pages in other languages (non-English Misplaced Pages) as successful in retaining their active editors on a renewable and sustained basis, with their numbers remaining relatively constant at approximately 42,000.

The English Misplaced Pages has the Arbitration Committee (also known as ArbCom) that consists of a panel of editors that imposes binding rulings with regard to disputes between other editors of the online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales on 4 December 2003 as an extension of the decision-making power he had formerly held as owner of the site. When it was founded, the committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each.

In 2022, for English Misplaced Pages, Americans accounted for about 40% of active editors, followed by British and Indian editors accounting for about 10% of each, and Canadian and Australian at about 5%.

Criticism

The free online encyclopedia Misplaced Pages has been criticized since its creation in 2001. Most of the criticism has been directed toward its content, community of established volunteer users, process, and rules. Critics have questioned its factual reliability, the readability and organization of its articles, the lack of methodical fact-checking, and its political bias.

Controversies

This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. Please help rewrite or integrate negative information to other sections through discussion on the talk page. (July 2023)

English varieties

A notable discussion within the English Misplaced Pages community concerns the preference for national variety of the English language, particularly American English and British English. Various suggestions have been made, ranging from standardizing a single form of English to creating separate versions of the English Misplaced Pages project. According to a style guideline, "the English Misplaced Pages has no general preference for a major national variety of the language" and "an article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation."

Disputed articles

A 2013 study from Oxford University found that the most disputed articles on the English Misplaced Pages tend to address broader, global issues. In contrast, articles on other language Wikipedias often focus on regional issues. This pattern is attributed to the status of English as a global lingua franca, leading to contributions from many editors for whom English is a second language. The study identified the most disputed entries on the English Misplaced Pages as George W. Bush, anarchism, Muhammad, list of WWE personnel, global warming, circumcision, United States, Jesus, race and intelligence, and Christianity.

2024 research have determined that several groups of connected accounts have coordinated to promote Russian propaganda narratives and state-controlled media sources in articles, related to Russian-Ukrainian relations and Russia's war with Ukraine.

Threats against high schools

There have been reports of threats of violence against high schools made on Misplaced Pages. For instance, in 2008, Glen A. Wilson High School was the subject of such a threat. Additionally, in 2006, a 14-year-old was arrested for making a threat against Niles West High School on Misplaced Pages.

WikiProjects and assessment

A "WikiProject" is a group of contributors who want to work together as a team to improve Misplaced Pages. These groups may focus on a specific topic area (for example, women's history), a specific location or a specific kind of task (for example, checking newly created pages). As of August 2022, the English Misplaced Pages had over 2,000 WikiProjects, for which activity varied.

In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Misplaced Pages introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles. Articles are rated by WikiProjects. The range of quality classes begins with "Stub" (very short pages), followed by "Start", "C" and "B" (in increasing order of quality). Community peer review is needed for the article to enter one of the quality classes: either "good article", "A" or the highest, "featured article". Of the about 6.5 million articles and lists assessed as of April 2022, more than 6,000 (0.09%) are featured articles, and fewer than 4,000 (0.06%) are featured lists. One featured article per day, as selected by editors, appears on the main page of Misplaced Pages.

The Misplaced Pages Version 1.0 Editorial Team has developed a table (shown below) that displays data of all rated articles by quality and importance, on the English Misplaced Pages. If an article or list receives different ratings by two or more WikiProjects, then the highest rating is used in the table, pie-charts, and bar-chart. The software auto-updates the data.

Researcher Giacomo Poderi found that articles tend to reach featured status via the intensive work of a few editors. A 2010 study found unevenness in quality among featured articles and concluded that the community process is ineffective in assessing the quality of articles.

All rated articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
	Top	High	Mid	Low	???	Total
FA	1,581	2,512	2,422	1,971	182	8,668
FL	180	702	772	695	100	2,449
A	372	683	787	582	92	2,516
GA	3,262	7,420	14,875	19,847	1,767	47,171
B	17,151	33,229	55,011	70,930	23,748	200,069
C	17,156	54,814	137,178	317,275	93,085	619,508
Start	18,555	93,038	418,989	1,646,996	415,482	2,593,060
Stub	4,259	31,316	277,336	2,810,933	760,164	3,884,008
List	4,941	17,459	54,768	203,080	81,639	361,887
Assessed	67,457	241,173	962,138	5,072,309	1,376,259	7,719,336
Unassessed	112	400	942	16,308	392,899	410,661
Total	67,569	241,573	963,080	5,088,617	1,769,158	8,129,997

Internal news publications

Community-produced news publications include The Signpost. Other community news publications include the "WikiWorld" web comic, the Misplaced Pages Weekly podcast, and newsletters of specific WikiProjects like The Bugle from WikiProject Military History and the monthly newsletter from The Guild of Copy Editors. There are a number of publications from the Wikimedia Foundation and multilingual publications such as the Wikimedia Blog and This Month in Education.

See also

• English Misplaced Pages blackout
• Deletionpedia

Notes

1. The other edition is Simple English Misplaced Pages, which uses Basic English.
2. ^ The number of articles on the English Misplaced Pages is shown by the MediaWiki variable {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}, with all Wikipedias as total {{NUMBEROF|ARTICLES|total}} = 64,163,347.
3. Despite this praise, Misplaced Pages does not recognize itself as a reliable source.

References

1. ^ Harrison, Stephen (1 September 2021). "Misplaced Pages Is Trying to Transcend the Limits of Human Language". Slate. Archived from the original on 30 July 2023. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
2. ^ Sato, Yumiko (19 March 2021). "Non-English Editions of Misplaced Pages Have a Misinformation Problem". Slate. Archived from the original on 25 August 2023. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
3. Anderson, Monica; Hitlin, Paul; Atkinson, Michelle (14 January 2016). "Misplaced Pages at 15: Millions of readers in scores of languages". Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on 11 August 2023. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
4. A455bcd9 (8 February 2021). Misplaced Pages page views by language over time (PNG). Retrieved 25 June 2021.
5. ^ "The English Language Misplaced Pages Just Had Its Billionth Edit". Vice. 15 January 2021. Archived from the original on 15 January 2021. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
6. ^ "Happy Birthday, Misplaced Pages". The Economist. 9 January 2021. Archived from the original on 1 January 2023. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
7. Harrison, Stephen (9 June 2020). "How Misplaced Pages Became a Battleground for Racial Justice". Slate. Archived from the original on 10 February 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
8. "Misplaced Pages is 20, and its reputation has never been higher". The Economist. 9 January 2021. Archived from the original on 31 December 2022. Retrieved 25 February 2021.
9. Cooke, Richard (17 February 2020). "Misplaced Pages Is the Last Best Place on the Internet". Wired. Archived from the original on 17 December 2022. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
10. Hughes, Taylor; Smith, Jeff; Leavitt, Alex (3 April 2018). "Helping People Better Assess the Stories They See in News Feed with the Context Button". Meta. Archived from the original on 11 January 2023. Retrieved 23 January 2023.
11. Cohen, Noam (7 April 2018). "Conspiracy videos? Fake news? Enter Misplaced Pages, the 'good cop' of the Internet". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 14 June 2018.
12. "Misplaced Pages:Six million articles". Misplaced Pages. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on 6 June 2020. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
13. See size of downloads at Misplaced Pages:Database download and a list of historical sizes here Archived 1 April 2019 at the Wayback Machine
14. 812091 (about 13%) more than the next in rank, the Cebuano Misplaced Pages. See m:List of Wikipedias.
15. Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (21 September 2008). "List of Wikipedias". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 21 September 2008.
16. English Misplaced Pages (30 January 2007). "Featured articles". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 30 January 2007.
17. English Misplaced Pages (25 January 2007). "Neutral point of view". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 30 January 2007.
18. Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (29 January 2007). "Help:Template". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 30 January 2007.
19. English Misplaced Pages (19 January 2007). "WikiProject Stub sorting". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 30 January 2007.
20. English Misplaced Pages (27 January 2007). "Resolving disputes". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 30 January 2007.
21. English Misplaced Pages (30 January 2007). "Article Creation and Improvement Drive". Archived from the original on 3 November 2015. Retrieved 30 January 2007.
22. Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2007-04-02/News and notes. Retrieved 20 April 2007
23. Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2006-02-27/News and notes. Retrieved 20 April 2007
24. "Misplaced Pages Statistics – Tables – English". Stats.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on 2 August 2008. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
25. "Misplaced Pages Statistics – Tables – English". Stats.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on 2 August 2008. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
26. ^ "The future of Misplaced Pages: WikiPeaks?". The Economist. 1 March 2014. Archived from the original on 8 April 2014. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
27. Schiff, Stacy (2 December 2006). "Know-alls". The Age. Australia: Fairfax Digital Network. Archived from the original on 21 April 2016. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
28. ^ Wales, Jimmy (4 December 2003). "WikiEN-l Wikiquette committee appointments". Misplaced Pages. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on 17 September 2020. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
29. Hoffman, David A.; Salil Mehra (2010). "Wikitruth Through Wikiorder". Emory Law Journal. 59 (2010). SSRN 1354424.
30. Hyatt, Josh (1 June 2006). "Secrets of Greatness: Great Teams". Fortune. Archived from the original on 13 April 2010. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
31. "Wikistats - Statistics For Wikimedia Projects". stats.wikimedia.org. Archived from the original on 11 July 2020. Retrieved 28 January 2022.
32. "Misplaced Pages: Articles for deletion/Klee Irwin (3rd nomination)". Misplaced Pages. 15 January 2014.
33. English Misplaced Pages. "Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (spelling)". Archived from the original on 15 December 2005. Retrieved 25 February 2006.
34. English Misplaced Pages. "Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style". Archived from the original on 25 September 2007. Retrieved 10 October 2007.
35. Gross, Doug (24 July 2013). "Wiki wars: The 10 most controversial Misplaced Pages pages". CNN. Archived from the original on 12 April 2016. Retrieved 26 July 2013.
36. Boichak, Olga (7 October 2024). "How Russia Invaded Misplaced Pages". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 5 October 2024.
37. "Identifying Sock-Puppets on Misplaced Pages: A Semantic Clustering Approach". ISD. Retrieved 5 October 2024.
38. ^ Hennessy-Fiske, Molly (29 April 2008). "Misplaced Pages threats went unchecked – Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 11 August 2011. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
39. ^ "Hacienda Heights school receives possible threat". abc7.com. Abclocal.go.com. 18 April 2008. Archived from the original on 24 July 2013. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
40. ^ "Student arrested for violent threats on Misplaced Pages". Los Angeles Times. 29 April 2008. Archived from the original on 13 November 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
41. "Teen charged after threat to school on Misplaced Pages". Bloomington, IL: Pantagraph.com. Associated Press. 31 October 2006. Archived from the original on 22 June 2013. Retrieved 26 January 2011.
42. "Misplaced Pages: Wikiprojects". Archived from the original on 19 March 2015. Retrieved 16 March 2015.
43. "Misplaced Pages:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment". Archived from the original on 20 April 2021. Retrieved 28 October 2007.
44. "Comparing featured article groups and revision patterns correlations in Misplaced Pages". First Monday. Archived from the original on 6 May 2012. Retrieved 13 July 2010.
45. Fernanda B. Viégas; Martin Wattenberg; Matthew M. McKeon (22 July 2007). "The Hidden Order of Misplaced Pages" (PDF). Visual Communication Lab, IBM Research. Archived from the original (PDF) on 31 October 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2007.
46. Poderi, Giacomo, Misplaced Pages and the Featured Articles: How a Technological System Can Produce Best Quality Articles, Master thesis, University of Maastricht, October 2008.
47. Lindsey, David (5 April 2010). "Evaluating quality control of Misplaced Pages's featured articles". First Monday. 15 (4). Archived from the original on 24 November 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2017.
48. Phoebe Ayers; Charles Matthews; Ben Yates (2008). How Misplaced Pages Works: And how You Can be a Part of it. No Starch Press. pp. 345–. ISBN 978-1-59327-176-3. Archived from the original on 10 October 2019. Retrieved 17 October 2016.

Further reading

• Ayers, Phoebe; Matthews, Charles; Yates, Ben (2008). "12. Community and Communication §§ Communicating with Other Editors". How Misplaced Pages Works: And how You Can be a Part of it. No Starch Press. pp. 345–362. ISBN 978-1-59327-176-3.
• Hoffman, David A.; Mehra, Salil (2010). "Wikitruth Through Wikiorder". Emory Law Journal. 59 (2010).
• Hyatt, Josh. "Secrets of Greatness: Great Teams". Fortune. 1 June 2006.
• Lih, Andrew (2009). The Misplaced Pages Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia (First ed.). New York City: Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-4013-0371-6. (alkaline paper).

External links

• Official website
• English Misplaced Pages on Meta-Wiki

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