Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:44, 19 September 2014

English Misplaced Pages

Screenshot The homepage of the English Misplaced Pages.
Type of site	Internet encyclopedia project
Owner	Wikimedia Foundation
Created by	Jimmy Wales, Larry Sanger
URL	en.wikipedia.org
Commercial	No
Registration	Optional (but required to create articles)
Users	48,453,706

The English Misplaced Pages is the English-language edition of the free online encyclopedia Misplaced Pages. Founded on 15 January 2001 and reaching four million articles by July 2012, it was the first edition of Misplaced Pages and, as of September 2014, remains the largest, with more than twice as many articles as the next largest, the Swedish Misplaced Pages. As of December 2024, nearly 10.8% of articles in all Wikipedias belong to the English-language edition. This share has gradually declined from more than 50% in 2003, due to the growth of Wikipedias in other languages. There are 6,929,361 articles on the site (live count). In December 2012, the combined text of the English Misplaced Pages's articles totaled roughly 9.7 gigabytes.

The Simple English Misplaced Pages is a variation, with most of the articles using a simplified level of English vocabulary. There are also two other "English" Wikipedias, the Scots Misplaced Pages (Scots Wikipaedia) which aims to preserve the vocabulary and grammar of the Scots language in all its forms over the past nine centuries, and the Old English (Ænglisc/Anglo-Saxon) Misplaced Pages.

Pioneering edition

The English Misplaced Pages was the first Misplaced Pages edition and has remained the largest. It has pioneered many ideas as conventions, policies or features which were later adopted by some of the other-language Misplaced Pages editions. 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.

The English Misplaced Pages has adopted features from the German Misplaced Pages, and from smaller editions. These features include verified revisions from the German Misplaced Pages (dewiki), and town population-lookup templates from the Dutch Misplaced Pages (nlwiki).

Although the English Misplaced Pages stores images and audio files, as well as text files, many of the images have been moved to Wikimedia Commons with the same name, as passed-through files. However, the English Misplaced Pages also has fair-use images and audio/video files (with copyright restrictions), most of which are not allowed on Commons.

Many of the most active participants in the Wikimedia Foundation, and the developers of the MediaWiki software that powers Misplaced Pages, are English Misplaced Pages users.

Users and editors

The English Misplaced Pages reached 4,000,000 registered user accounts on 1 April 2007, just a little over a year since it had crossed a threshold of 1,000,000 registered user accounts in late February 2006.

Over 800,000 editors have edited Misplaced Pages more than 10 times. 300,000 editors edit Misplaced Pages every month; of these, over 30,000 perform more than 5 edits per month, and a little over 3,000 perform more than 100 edits per month. By 24 November 2011, a total of 500 million edits had been performed on the English Misplaced Pages.

As the largest Misplaced Pages edition, and because English is such a widely used language, the English Misplaced Pages draws many users and editors whose native language is not English. Such users may seek information from the English Misplaced Pages rather than the Misplaced Pages of their native language because the English Misplaced Pages tends to contain more information about general subjects. Successful collaborations have developed between non-native English speakers who add content to the English Misplaced Pages and native English speakers who act as copyeditors for them.

Arbitration Committee

The English Misplaced Pages has an 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. The Committee 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 initially founded, the Committee consisted of 12 arbitrators divided into three groups of four members each. Since then, the Committee has gradually expanded to its membership to 18 arbitrators.

Like other aspects of the English Misplaced Pages, Misplaced Pages's sister projects have emulated the Arbitration Committee with their own similar versions. In 2007, an Arbitration Committee was founded on the German Misplaced Pages called the Schiedsrichter.

Controversies

Incidents of cyberbullying on Misplaced Pages have been reported in the mainstream press. The Glen A. Wilson High School was subject of such a threat in 2008, and a 14-year-old boy was arrested for making a threat against Niles West High School on Misplaced Pages in 2006.

A 2013 study from Oxford University concluded that the most disputed articles on the English Misplaced Pages tended to be broader issues, while on other language Wikipedias the most disputed articles tended to be regional issues; this is due to the English language's status as a global lingua franca, which means that many who edit the English Misplaced Pages do not speak English as a native language. The study stated that the most disputed entries on the English Misplaced Pages were: George W. Bush, Anarchism, Muhammad, List of WWE personnel, Global warming, Circumcision, United States, Jesus, Race and intelligence, and Christianity.

Varieties of English

One controversy in the English Misplaced Pages concerns which national variety of the English language is to be preferred, with the most commonly advocated candidates being American English and British English. Perennial suggestions range from standardizing upon a single form of English to forking the English Misplaced Pages project. A style guideline states, "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". An article should use spelling and grammar variants consistently; for example, color and colour are not to be used in the same article, since they represent American and British English, respectively. The guide also states that an article must remain in its original national variant.

There has been a similar issue in the Chinese language Misplaced Pages concerning regional differences in writing. Efforts at a language fork for Portuguese Misplaced Pages have failed, and succeeded for Norwegian Misplaced Pages.

Varieties of English

Andrew Lih wrote that the English Misplaced Pages "didn't have the chance to go through a debate over whether there should be a British English Misplaced Pages or an American English Misplaced Pages" because the English Misplaced Pages was the original edition. Editors agreed to use U.S. spellings for primarily American topics and British spellings for primarily British topics. In 2009 Lih wrote, "No doubt, American spellings tend to dominate by default just because of sheer numbers."

Quality-wise distribution of articles

Quality-wise distribution of over 4.6 million articles and lists on the English Misplaced Pages, as of 6 September 2014

In 2007, in preparation for producing a print version, the English Misplaced Pages introduced an assessment scale of the quality of articles. 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 highest quality classes: either "A", "good article" or the highest, "featured article". Of the total of about 4.4 million articles assessed as of 11 December 2013, approximately five thousand are featured articles (0.1%). One featured article per day, as selected by editors, appears on the main page of Misplaced Pages.

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.

Graphics

• Percentages of articles written in various language families. In March 2013, 16.76% of articles were in English.
• The countries in which the English Misplaced Pages is the most popular language version of Misplaced Pages are shown in red.
• Top 25 contributor countries to the English Misplaced Pages. Dark green: Native English speaking countries; light green: countries with English as a secondary language.
• In April 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation conducted a usability study on the English Misplaced Pages, questioning users about the editing mechanism.

Internal news publications

Community-produced news publications include The Signpost which has been published since January 2005 on English Misplaced Pages. Other past and present 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 also 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
• History of Misplaced Pages
• Reliability of Misplaced Pages
• Simple English Misplaced Pages
• Misplaced Pages for Schools
• Misplaced Pages community

References

• Lih, Andrew. The Misplaced Pages Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. Hyperion, New York City. 2009. First Edition. ISBN 978-1-4013-0371-6 (alkaline paper).

Notes

1. There is some controversy over who founded Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages's official personnel page from September 2001 states Wales and Sanger were the two co-founders, and that there was no editor-in-chief. Wales considers himself to be the sole founder of Misplaced Pages and has told the Boston Globe that "it's preposterous" to call Sanger the co-founder. However, Sanger strongly contests that description. He was identified as a co-founder of Misplaced Pages at least as early as September 2001 and referred to himself that way as early as January 2002.
   • Jonathan Sidener (6 December 2004). "Everyone's Encyclopedia". San Diego Union Tribune. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
   • Peter Meyers (20 September 2001). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". New York Times. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
   • Sanger, Larry. "What Misplaced Pages is and why it matters". Retrieved 12 April 2006.
2. https://meta.wikimedia.org/List_of_Wikipedias#All_Wikipedias_ordered_by_number_of_articles
3. Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (21 September 2008). "List of Wikipedias". Retrieved 21 September 2008.
4. The number of articles on the English Misplaced Pages is shown by the MediaWiki variable {{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}, with all Wikipedias as total {{NUMBEROF|ARTICLES|total}} = 64,166,139.
5. "Download Misplaced Pages In English – All 9.7GB Of It". 9 April 2012. Retrieved 2012-04-10.
6. English Misplaced Pages (30 January 2007). "Featured articles". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
7. English Misplaced Pages (25 January 2007). "Neutral point of view". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
8. Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (29 January 2007). "Help:Template". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
9. English Misplaced Pages (19 January 2007). "WikiProject Stub sorting". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
10. English Misplaced Pages (27 January 2007). "Resolving disputes". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
11. English Misplaced Pages (30 January 2007). "Article Creation and Improvement Drive". Retrieved 30 January 2007.
12. Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2007-04-02/News and notes. Retrieved 20 April 2007
13. Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages Signpost/2006-02-27/News and notes. Retrieved 20 April 2007
14. "Misplaced Pages Statistics - Tables - English". Stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
15. "Misplaced Pages Statistics - Tables - English". Stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
16. Schiff, Stacy (2 December 2006). "Know-alls". The Age. Australia: Fairfax Digital Network. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
17. ^ Wales, Jimmy (4 December 2003). "WikiEN-l Wikiquette committee appointments". Misplaced Pages. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
18. Hoffman, David A.; Salil Mehra (2010). "Wikitruth Through Wikiorder". Emory Law Journal. 59 (2010). SSRN 1354424.
19. Hyatt, Josh (1 June 2006). "Secrets of Greatness: Great Teams". Fortune. Time Warner. Retrieved 15 June 2009.
20. Wales, Jimmy (20 December 2008). "ArbCom Appointments". Misplaced Pages. Retrieved 14 June 2009.
21. Kleinz, Torsten (30 April 2007). "Misplaced Pages sucht Schiedsrichter" (in German). heise online. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
22. ^ Hennessy-Fiske, Molly (29 April 2008). "Misplaced Pages threats went unchecked – Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times.
23. ^ "Hacienda Heights school receives possible threat | abc7.com". Abclocal.go.com. 18 April 2008. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
24. ^ "Student arrested for violent threats on Misplaced Pages". Los Angeles Times. 29 April 2008. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
25. "Teen charged after threat to school on Misplaced Pages". Bloomington, IL: Pantagraph.com. Associated Press. 31 October 2006. Retrieved 26 January 2011.
26. Gross, Doug. "Wiki wars: The 10 most controversial Misplaced Pages pages." (Archive) CNN. July 24, 2013. Retrieved on July 26, 2013.
27. English Misplaced Pages. "Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style (spelling)". Retrieved 25 February 2006.
28. English Misplaced Pages. "Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style". Retrieved 10 October 2007.
29. Lih, p. 135.
30. Lih, p. 136.
31. Misplaced Pages:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Statistics – Misplaced Pages, the 💕
32. "Misplaced Pages:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment". Retrieved 28 October 2007.
33. "Comparing featured article groups and revision patterns correlations in Misplaced Pages". First Monday. Retrieved 13 July 2010.
34. Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, and Matthew M. McKeon (22 July 2007). "The Hidden Order of Misplaced Pages" (PDF). Visual Communication Lab, IBM Research. Retrieved 30 October 2007. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
35. Poderi, Giacomo, Misplaced Pages and the Featured Articles: How a Technological System Can Produce Best Quality Articles, Master thesis, University of Maastricht, October 2008.
36. David Lindsey. "Evaluating quality control of Misplaced Pages's featured articles". First Monday.
37. Erik Zachte (14 November 2011). "Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report – Misplaced Pages Page Views Per Country – Trends". Wikimedia Statistics. Retrieved 19 January 2011.
38. Erik Zachte (14 November 2011). "Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report – Page Edits Per Misplaced Pages Language – Breakdown". Wikimedia Statistics. Retrieved 19 January 2011.
39. "Usability and Experience Study". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 19 January 2012.
40. "Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report - Page Edits Per Misplaced Pages Language - Breakdown". Stats.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 28 July 2014.

External links

• English Misplaced Pages
• English Misplaced Pages mobile
• English Misplaced Pages on Meta-Wiki

• Use dmy dates from September 2012
• Internet properties established in 2001
• English-language encyclopedias
• Wikipedias by language
• English-language websites
• 2001 establishments in the United States