Wikipedia:Milestones/2006

December 2006

December 26

Wikipedia's Alexa 3-monthly average traffic rank hit a new high of 12, hitting daily rank of 10 twice during December.

November 2006

November 24

The English language edition of Wikipedia reaches 1,500,000 articles, exactly two months after reaching 1,400,000.

November 17

Wikipedia reported to be reblocked again in China.

November 13

Wikipedia's one-day Alexa ranking has reached an all-time high of 10. Yesterday, our overall three-monthly traffic ranking reached a new high of 13.[1]

November 1

In October 2006 the English Wikipedia made a net gain of 49,220 articles, the lowest performance in the past 12 months. The total project (250 languages) gained just over 237,000 articles, the lowest result since April.

October 2006

October 10

Widespread reports from People's Republic of China indicate the block on Wikipedia has been partially lifted. English and other language Wikipedias are becoming more accessible, though the Chinese version (zh:) is still largely blocked. Reports from news outlets have been inaccurately reporting it [2] as a complete "lifting" of the block. See the Wikipedia Signpost article for more information.

October 6

Wikipedia's Alexa ranking reached an all-time high of 11.

October 1

The Multilingual statistics for September recall former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's quote, "If I had my druthers, I'd outlaw Septembers in the future." September resulted in the English Wikipedia gaining 54,441 new articles, the least since April. The total 229-language project gained 253,219 articles, some 40,000 down on the August result. It's hard to tell, but perhaps a focus on quality has resulted in less new articles.

The Criteria for Speedy Deletion have been expanded to cover advertising ("spam") of otherwise non-notable business, including such on user pages of single-purpose accounts, as well as articles on websites (including forums, blogs etc.) that do not assert the notability of their subject. See the talk page for details.

September 2006

September 24

The English language edition of Wikipedia reaches 1,400,000 articles.

September 1

The month of August will go down as another record-breaking month. The total Wikipedia project in 229 languages gained an unprecedented 289,885 new articles, of which 68,388 were in the English Wikipedia - another record. This means that Wikipedia now has a total of more than 5,000,000 articles.

The Polish, German, French, Slovak, Portuguese, Japanese and Italian editions of Wikipedia all gained in excess of 10,000 articles. Full statistics will be posted in the next 48 hours.

August 2006

August 18

Wikipedia suffered serious routing problems, now fixed by renumbering to a different IP address block.

August 6

The English language edition of Wikipedia reaches 1,300,000 articles.

August 1

July was a blowout for the English Wikipedia, gaining 64,331 new articles - the first time we've had a gain of over 60,000. This was out of a total of 241,401 in 229 languages - slightly down on June, but the French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Portuguese editions of Wikipedia all gained in excess of 10,000 articles. Full statistics are now available.

July 2006

July 26

Dutch Wikimedia will have a conference on 2 September, which is especially interesting if you're in Europe but can't get to Wikimania. Sign on now if you want to come!. The main language was intended to be Dutch, but there will also be some English language speakers.

July 12

AOL has announced that they will be sending XFF headers for traffic proxied to Wikimedia sites. [3] As soon as the AOL proxies are added to the XFF list and the system is known to be working properly, this should be a major advance in the effort to reduce vandalism.

July 1

Special thanks to Ganeshbot for helping spur the English Wikipedia to its highest-ever one-month gain of 57,875 articles. This was out of a total of 245,035 new articles for the project as a whole. Statistics are available now.

June 2006

June 19

The English-language edition of Wikipedia reaches 1,200,000 articles.

June 12

The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the hiring of Brad Patrick as legal counsel and interim executive director. See the official press release and Executive Director FAQ. (Note: This is an organization position rather than a community position, so as Jimbo explained, "now is not the time to start leaving 'please unblock me' messages on Brad's talk page.")

June 8

The English Wikipedia reaches a total of 1,000 featured articles with the promotion of Iranian peoples to featured status. See also the Wikimedia press release.

June 1

The month of May saw 237,644 new articles project-wide, of which 57,813 were in English. The English figure is an all-time record, while the total for the whole project was bettered only in January of this year, when a number of bots went on a rambotpage. Statistics will be available soon.

May 2006

May 23

The latest update to stats.wikimedia.org reveals that Wikipedia projects reached a combined total of one billion words around December 2005/January 2006.

May 13

Wikipedia's three-month Alexa traffic ranking reaches 16. (See also meta:Wikipedia is more popular than....)

May 11

Category:Living people reached 90,000 biography articles.

April 2006

April 27

The English Wikipedia reaches 1.1 million articles, adding an extra 100,000 articles only two months after reaching the one million milestone. This is only a twelfth of the time taken to create Wikipedia's first 100,000 articles. Also, the month of April saw the Wikipedia project pass the total of four million articles.

April 4

SOS Children has produced a 2006 CD version of the English Wikipedia with a cleaned up selection (see 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection) of 3.5 million words and 8000 images in 2006 articles aimed at UK school children. This is available for free from SOS (on CD) or for free download off their website at Wikipedia CD Download. The selection can be viewed here: 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection. Permission to use the Wikipedia logo has been applied for.

March 2006

March 31

• 50,000 more articles have been created in the English-language Wikipedia in just thirty days since it hit the million-article milestone on February 28. This is only a ninth of the time it took to create the first 50,000 articles on the en: Wikipedia.

March 25

• Category:Living people indexes 80,000 biography articles.

March 19

• The English-language Wikipedia's Main Page is updated from its old design to the new design created by the Wikipedia Usability Project, after its acceptance by the community in a two-week-long consultation. Over 600 votes were in favor of the new design.

March 13

• Wikipedia's three-month Alexa traffic ranking has reached a record high of 18.

March 8

• Wikipedia's three-month Alexa traffic ranking has reached a record high of 19.

March 4

• Wikipedia's three-month Alexa traffic ranking has reached 20, while daily traffic reaches 12, also a record high. (See also: meta:Wikipedia.org is more popular than...)

March 1

• Jordanhill railway station becomes the 1 millionth article on the English Wikipedia. This article total greatly surpasses the original goal of 100,000 articles set when Wikipedia was begun.

February 2006

February 28

• The number of registered users in the English Wikipedia reaches 1 million.

February 20

• The average traffic ranking for the past three months reaches a record high of 22.

February 14

• Observant fans of the CBS Evening News may have noticed a brief screenshot of a Wikipedia article during the story about Chinese censorship of the internet.

February 12

• The average traffic ranking for the past three months reaches a record high of 23.

February 3

• The average traffic ranking for the past week reaches a record high of 15.

February 2

• We're now on the last lap of our 7-figure marathon. Shortly after midnight (GMT), we crossed 950,000 articles in the English Wikipedia. As an aside, it will be interesting to see what we achieve first - one million articles or a single-digit Alexa ranking.

February 1

• Traffic continues to climb, with Wikipedia's one day Alexa traffic rank reaching a record of 13.
• More than 55,000 new articles were created in the English Wikipedia in the month of January, an all-time record. The total 200-language project gained over 280,000 articles, with numerous languages breaking records. Statistics are now available.

January 2006

January 31

• Wikipedia's amazing traffic spike continues, as its Alexa traffic rank hits a record weekly rank of 17; the daily rank reaches a record 15. Remarkably, the servers still seem to be holding up under the load.

January 28

• Wikipedia's one day Alexa traffic rank momentarily hits a record high of 16, before falling back to 18 again. The weekly rank is now also 18.

January 21

• Wikipedia's one day Alexa traffic rank hits a record high of 18.

January 15

• Today is Wikipedia Day, and Wikipedia is now five years old!
• Wikipedia's one week average on Alexa hits 19.

January 14

• Wikipedia's three-month average on Alexa hits 31.

January 10

• Wikimedia Foundation is granted registration for the Wikipedia mark at the United States Patent and Trademark Office authorizing use of the registration mark, Wikipedia®.

January 9

• Wikipedia's one day Alexa traffic rank hits a record high of 19.

January 8

• Wikipedia's one week average on Alexa hits 20.

January 4

• The English Wikipedia reaches 900,000 articles, at 20:43, 4 January 2006 (UTC).
• Google links a search for "Louis Braille birthday" from a Braille version of its logo: the top hit for this is the Wikipedia article Louis Braille.

January 3

• The English Wikipedia reaches 3 million total pages.
• The 3-month average rank goes up to 32, and the daily traffic rank enters the top 20 for the first time, reaching #20.

January 1

• 2005, and the month of December 2005, were both record-breaking for Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia more than doubled its body of articles in 2005, to almost 900,000, just over 50,000 of these were added in December alone - the first time we've grown by 50,000 articles in a single month. The Wikipedia project as a whole added almost 1.8 million new articles in 201 languages, 200,000 of them in December. With the exception of September, when the Italians and Poles went on a bot-rampage, December was the first time that the project gained 200,000 new articles.