It’s taken almost 14 years, but Wikipedia now has over five million English-language articles.
That means that there’s just 100 million more to go to meet site founder Jimmy Wales’ goal of providing ”free access to the sum of all human knowledge.” By one estimate, the sum of human knowledge would require some 104 million articles—for now.
But first things first. The five-million article milestone was set by an entry about a rare Australian shrub called Persoonia terminalis. It was written by Cas Liber, an Australian editor who alone has created almost 1,500 articles.
The English Wikipedia community has called for volunteers to help fill the gaps in its coverage. Out of the current 5 million articles, only tens of thousands are considered high quality by the site’s guidelines. “In other words, there is still much work to be done,” according to a community statement.
The community is also worried that too many of these articles are biased towards Western content. While initiatives like the Wikiproject Women Scientists and Wiki Loves Africa are trying to address the imbalance in knowledge, many more people around the world need to get involved to make a difference.