Wikipedia talk:Six million articles

Hashing out the 6 millionth article

It will take some time and personnel to determine what the 6 millionth article is. This is a placeholder for that conversation. -- Fuzheado | Talk 18:58, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I'm ready for it to be mine] ... it was close. Daniel Case (talk) 19:27, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. An Indian footballer Subhonil Ghosh by SabyaC looks as if it was close too but don't get your hopes up yet Sabya!♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:29, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I think it was Saafir Rabb. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 19:43, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• I counted it being 2020 Supercopa Uruguaya. Hard to tell really, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 19:46, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I believe it was Ministry of Planning (Somaliland). I waited for 6,000,153 to go to 6,000,154 on the main page counter, then i immediately refreshed recent changes with a new pages filter, and went to the page corresponding with the 154th page in the list. The entry preceding the 154th was Smartgrids‎, and succeeding was Aiden Zhane‎. Koopinator (talk) 19:48, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Koopinator: Hmmm... could be. How did you go to the next set of 50 pages in the recent changes feed? Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 19:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Willbb234: there's a button that allows you to view a set of 500 pages, that's what i used. Koopinator (talk) 19:52, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Koopinator: if you are right, that would mean our 6 millionth article only has a single, primary reference! Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 19:57, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Around 6M+156 and 6M+178 I've refreshed NewPages and counted, and have gotten British Psychotherapy Foundation and Lamar Lyons. Should be somewhere on this page. 6M seems to have happened around 2020-01-23 1500 UTC.  Nixinova   T   C   19:54, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Don't you mean 1900 UTC? -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:11, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• (ec) I was in at the finish but my plans were disrupted by a browser crash so I only got 7 of my planned 12 articles created then. Everything seemed to go a lot slower than for the 5M milestone. It looked like the climax would happen sooner but then there was a big rollback from about 100 to 200 when it seemed that Missvain went through a stack of AfDs, deleting stuff. The 5M champion, Casliber was steadily releasing sea snakes for a while but it seemed that he flaked out at the finish because of the time zone he's in. I was expecting Blofeld to have a big stack of stuff too but didn't see anything from him this time. Is this Wikipedia's high water mark? I have still have more to do, so I hope not... Andrew🐉(talk) 19:55, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Just goes to show what is still missing, we should have had articles on that Somali ministry and British Psychotherapy Foundation ten years back! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:56, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

BWHAHAHAHA. I was just doing my morning maintenance work while sipping my cup of tea... Missvain (talk) 20:04, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I have a sneaking suspicion the 6 millionth is indeed one of Casliber's snakes, and specifically Little whip snake. I'm not sure whether to congratulate Casliber or trout him for gaming the system, yet again, five years later. :) Read times wrong! -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:13, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: I was there at the finish too (18:59 UTC) and when I counted back from 6,000,008 using the counter at WP:6M, it looked like SD0001 got the 6 millionth article with either Enno Dirksen or Giovanni Prodi (he sent 5 articles within milliseconds of each other). But minutes after that, the article count jumped by 200 with only 50 new entries at Special:NewPages. Dee03 20:22, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I watched Special:Statistics in real time as it hit 6M. I counted back from recent changes when there were 6M+8 articles. I think the article is David Notkin by User:SD0001 who created a couple more articles that minute. So I think he wins. Renata (talk) 20:27, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

How did we determine the 5 millionth article back then? Was it a count? Or did we get confirmation by some kind of bot or tool? Regards, Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 20:01, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• For the technical details of determining the article number, see the thread from last time. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:02, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Interesting quote: Because of creations with simultaneous deletions, vandalism or patent nonsense, it may take some time for the results to stabilize and sort out a 5 millionth article. It is perhaps more art than science in determining what the community deems the 5 millionth article Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 20:04, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Yup, because we are not trying to answer "what was the 6millioth article made" but rather which page caused the "current articles" counter to hit 6million. This isn't even necessarily a "new page" - it could have been a redirect changed in to an article for example. Not an easy thing to catch. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:07, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Do you want to hear something odd? The 6 millionth could very well be Little whip snake which was created just after the top of the hour (1900 UTC) when we saw the counter go over 6,000,000. That was by Casliber, who was... also the author of the 5 millionth article last time. -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:09, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fuzheado: that's just greedy! Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 20:10, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

where's the awards? ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSA^talk 20:12, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Fuzheado: Little whip snake was created at 16:01 UTC, which is definitely too early. SD0001 (talk) 20:18, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Fuzheado, Casliber hasn't edited since 16:53 today, and Little whip snake was created at 16:01 as far as I can tell. I submitted an article at 18:59, and the counter was over 6 million when I refreshed. I was on mobile and didn't take a screenshot, but I think I missed by less than 10 articles. —Kusma (t·c) 20:23, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

You're right. I read those times wrong. OK, I'm going to let the professionals do this part. :) -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:25, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

This could back up the idea that it is Ministry of Planning (Somaliland) (created at 18:39)? Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 20:28, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• The key to determining the article last time seemed to be a log of article creations with the article counter alongside them. ("There is an annotated creation log that contains article count next to newest article.") But that log file seems to have been for the five-million case and it's not clear that there's a six-million equivalent. Alternatives based on snapshots aren't so good because the article counter swung to and fro, reversing by as much as -100 when deletions exceeded creations. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:29, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  We should declare Scrap and the Pirates the winner by fiat. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:33, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• I see five articles around the time witnessed (19:00 UTC) that could be our 6th millionth: Videniškiai, Robert Francis Byrnes, Maria Elise Turner Lauder, Egon Hartmann, and Rhiannon King. I lean towards one of the first three there. — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:46, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• Reaching 6,000,000 articles is almost significant (hoping the count applies only to "real" articles and not redirects) though it abuts the "meaningless milestones" that Bart Simpson "will not celebrate" (see chalkboard gag #100). Nothing could possibly matter less than which dubious article is "addition number 6,000,000". Firstly, it cannot even be determined. To be fair, you must count the 6,000,000th article added inclusive of deleted articles, to make the result deterministic regardless of when the determination is attempted, and to preclude the possibility that the 6,000,000 threshold will be crossed multiple times, yielding multiple "6,000,000th" articles (though I would love to see that happen). Although it is fair, counting every addition can lead to other kinds of embarrassment, such as having only [like] 5,500,000 articles in existence at the moment the 6,000,000th addition occurs, and the risk that the 6,000,000th addition starts as a redirect, gets merged, or (best of all) gets speedily deleted. Multiprocessing MediaWiki almost surely does not serialize additions, so there is no counter that could equal 6,000,000 during one-and-only-one addition. The 6,000,000th addition could be determined after the fact using its time-stamp, but the time-stamps would have to be fine-grained enough to make ties unlikely. With a fine-grained time-stamp, time differences between processors can be larger than the time-stamp granularity, so near-ties will be incorrect. Also, fools will try to make the 6,000,000th addition by delaying serious additions or rushing trivial additions. The one-millionth Model T was a publicity prop; it surely was not number 1,000,000, even if they slowed the assembly lines to "make sure". Even if they used a strict "serial number" scheme that started from 1 and was never reset, serialized tags are pre-printed and handed out in batches (and there are mistakes). The "one-millionth customer" is only approximate as well, especially when the retailer has 100 stores. Customers are less interchangeable than Model-T Fords, and Wikipedia articles are even less interchangeable: consider a redirect of a misspelling versus The Cure For Cancer. Any "six-millionth" article is at best a random selection; it means as much as the last digit of the reading of a scale (weighing a random unweighed human, once, to 1/100 of a pound resolution). - A876 (talk) 19:04, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Updating number

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T128546

The number has not yet been achieved, has it? The main wikipedia article states we are some articles below 6 million ones at the english wikipedia. 2A02:8388:1641:8380:3AD5:47FF:FE18:CC7F (talk) 23:55, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi 2a02, Wikipedia has over 6million listed - where are you seeing otherwise? — xaosflux ^Talk 00:18, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Xaosflux, https://www.wiki.x.io hasn't been updated yet. —Kusma (t·c) 21:08, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Those numbers are usually updated every week or two (phab:T128546) but it seems to have not been done since mid-January. I would guess because of the WMF All Staff meeting and holidays getting in the way. I pinged the owner of that task to check. the wub "?!" 22:01, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

This was updated today. the wub "?!" 16:19, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations

• Congratulations to all English Wikipedians for 6,000,000 articles! --MmichaelDr. (talk) 20:14, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Was there a balloon drop? Did the ghost of Ed McMahon show up with a golden barnstar? -Ad Orientem (talk) 20:22, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

6,000,000 is a lot of articles... I wonder if it counts redirects? --Mullafacation (talk) 11:09, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Possible candidate - Maria Elise Turner Lauder

We know the 6 million counter ticked over just at the top of the hour at 1900 UTC. The auto-patrolled article closest to this moment in time was [1] - a 19th-century Canadian school teacher and author. It is also a very complete and well-referenced article by User:Rosiestep. Open to other ideas, but sticking to the moment in time of when we crossed over is a decent course of action, and then filtering by content that is high quality. -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:38, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I am fairly sure that the new article was created at 18:59 UTC. New page feed gives me 15 articles created at that time, which was a sudden burst, (of folks trying to catch 6 million no doubt). I back that up by noting that I saw the counter hit 10 over, then sent a discord message at 19:09 UTC noting it had hit 6 million (though there was a slight delay in me seeing that and sending the message). Counting back 10 or so articles lands at 18:59, with my guess that Maria_Elise_Turner_Lauder, by Rosiestep, is 6 million. I wrote this before fuzheado wrote this section and edit conflicted it in. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 20:41, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. Perhaps An influx of editors does mean that 10 over comes in the same minute as the 6 millionth. Willbb234^Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 20:48, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

It appears to be the best article in the range of possibles. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:48, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

It definitely makes better PR than Auto-trolling as 6 millionth :) I also like Videniškiai, though, with its many Lithuanian sources. But should this really be a "best of the articles in the right minute" competition? (I thought it was a lucky draw...) —Kusma (t·c) 20:55, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Told you it was close Rosiestep and Ser Amantio di Nicolao! ;-)♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:54, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I found it to be one of the five potential candidates in my review... and all things considered it would look good for the project (it's decently sourced and lengthy), make the Foundation happy, make a good media story, and potentially cause more women to join the project. So, from where I'm standing, I think Rosiestep got this one! — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 20:56, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Not only do I find it very likely to have been the 6 millionth, within 3 articles by my count, I agree that it is the best sourced and written of the possibilities, and I think that its focus on an underrepresented Woman in Red, written by Rosiestep no less, makes it the perfect choice. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:00, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

We could declare all of these the winner:

• Raymonde Verlinden by ‎Dougal18
• ‎Andrei Bolocan by ‎Gikü
• ‎Maria Elise Turner Lauder by ‎Rosiestep
• ‎Lidia Kulikovski by ‎Gikü
• ‎Videniškiai by ‎Renata3
• ‎A. Nico Habermann Award by ‎SD0001
• ‎David Notkin by ‎SD0001
• ‎Giovanni Prodi by ‎SD0001
• ‎Enno Dirksen by ‎SD0001
• ‎Giovanni Ricci (mathematician) by ‎SD0001
• ‎Kalashree Seashell Museum by ‎Dee03
• ‎Egon Hartmann by ‎Kusma
• ‎Mysore Sand Sculpture Museum by ‎Dee03
• ‎Castle Folds by Andrew Davidson
• ‎Auto-trolling by ‎Andrew Davidson
• ‎2020 Women's Central American Cricket Championship by ‎Bs1jac
• ‎Ma Wenzhu by ‎Lugnuts Actually these two were at 18:58 UTC. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 21:28, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

... and highlight ‎Maria Elise Turner Lauder and ‎Videniškiai as the best among them. Both of these two articles are exemplary. I am sure the press would appreciate a collection of articles to talk about. Giovanni Prodi is also a nice article. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 21:14, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I like the basic idea, but I think it's too many items to digest. I propose we highlight Maria Elise Turner Lauder as the six millionth, and then we hand select ones you listed above to demonstrate the variety of what we cover. How does that sound? -- Fuzheado | Talk 21:17, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Fuzheado. We can put Maria Elise Turner Lauder as 6 millionth, but then in the body of the page make a note that in the minute that Lauder's page were made, all these other articles were made, and show off the diversity and excellence of the content on Wikipedia. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:23, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• Covering the final minute seems like a good way of sharing the glory and presenting it as a communal/team achievement. There was something similar last time: The 12:27 articles. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:27, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  We should choose the best article for those editors with multiple. So for SD0001, we would choose Giovanni Prodi and so on. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 21:31, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  ‎Lidia Kulikovski for ‎Gikü, Castle Folds for Andrew Davidson. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 21:34, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  We're adding descriptions for all the sub entries, should we do the same for Lauder? Such as "(Canadian teacher)"? It was done for five million, but the title was also less obvious, being a convoluted scientific name CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:38, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  Good point! Done. -- Fuzheado | Talk 21:40, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I like the idea of covering multiple articles but listing the one in the bold. Good way to recognize multiple articles while also giving a "6 millionth article". QueerFilmNerd^talk 21:41, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Uncross my contribution and make mine the 6 millionth article NOW, otherwise I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger! Seriously, nice one to Rosie for hitting the 6m and I genuinely didn't realise how close it was to reaching the milestone last night. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 06:03, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Nice to see Wikipedia crossing 6 million articles but it would have been nice if it would have reached on Wikipedia's 19th anniversary. Just missed out the coincidence but kudos to Rosie for creating a quality C class article. She has been a sensational contributor at Women in Red campaign which focus on increasing the number of women biographies. She has created a number of women related bios and has encouraged newbies to step up for the good cause. I just went through TechCrunch website which mentioned Maria Elise Turner Lauder as six millionth entry in en wiki. So it would be great to announce Maria Elise Turner Lauder as the milestone article and it would be nice to award a barnstar for the experienced veteran editor Rosie. Abishe (talk) 06:23, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Draft of announcement

The English Wikipedia has reached 6,000,000 articles with
Maria Elise Turner Lauder,
19th-century Canadian school teacher, writer and philanthropist,
created by Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight (User:Rosiestep) on 2020-01-23 at 18:59 UTC.

Articles created at the same time included:

‎Lidia Kulikovski, a Moldovan librarian and bibliographer‎, by User:Gikü

Videniškiai, a historic village in Lithuania, by ‎User:Renata3

Giovanni Prodi, an Italian mathematician, by ‎User:SD0001

Mysore Sand Sculpture Museum, a museum in India, by ‎User:Dee03

Egon Hartmann, a German architect, by User:Kusma

Castle Folds, a Romano-British walled settlement, by User:Andrew Davidson

See more articles

• I have notified Rosiestep of her achievement on her talk page! I feel we can add the clear runner ups into the body of the WP:6M page, and we should definitely give all those editors recognition too! — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 21:42, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Thanks for doing that. I'll go ahead and modify the main page. -- Fuzheado | Talk 21:46, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

    I will go ahead and start notifying the other winners. I will check them off here once I have done so, to ensure that there aren't duplicates. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:53, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

    I have sent notifications to Giku, Renata3, SD0001, Dee03, Kusma, and Andrew Davidson. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 22:14, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• Excellent, very happy about this. I made a slight copyedit to the announcement. —Kusma (t·c) 21:48, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for all the great collaboration and work to roll this out so smoothly and quickly! I wish all interactions on Wikipedia were this pleasantly cooperative. -- Fuzheado | Talk 22:00, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Gratulations from de.wikipedia! In your Preferences you can change the preferences for the time. Therefore you could see the exact second of the creation:

• 18:59:05 ‎Auto-trolling
• 18:59:17 ‎Castle Folds
• 18:59:19 ‎Mysore Sand Sculpture Museum
• 18:59:23 ‎Egon Hartmann
• 18:59:23 ‎Kalashree Seashell Museum
• 18:59:25 ‎Giovanni Ricci (mathematician)
• 18:59:25 ‎Enno Dirksen
• 18:59:25 ‎Giovanni Prodi
• 18:59:25 ‎David Notkin
• 18:59:25 ‎A. Nico Habermann Award
• 18:59:29 ‎Videniškiai
• 18:59:35 ‎Lidia Kulikovski
• 18:59:40 ‎Maria Elise Turner Lauder
• 18:59:48 ‎Andrei Bolocan
• 18:59:48 ‎Raymonde Verlinden

Habitator terrae (talk) 22:14, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

How is it possible (from a technical standpoint) for the same user to submit 5 articles the exact same second? Clicking save and having the software process the request takes longer than a second? Renata (talk) 01:11, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Renata: By parallelizing the process. Five open tabs with the cursor in the edit summary field, Shift+(Tab, Return, Tab, Return, Tab, Return, Tab, Return, Tab, Return). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Renata: The user who submitted those articles mentioned that they did so programmatically with the help of the MediaWiki API—all in the same second may be beyond a human, but heh, it's not beyond a computer. Mz7 (talk) 19:49, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

I love Rosie and admire her work as much as any Wikimedian does, but I thought we were above creating fake news like this. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:27, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Andy, as a veteran you should know that article count is in no way scientific and there is no way to have a true single pinpointed six millionth article. Ask Erik Zachte (former Wikimedia stats master), academics, or anyone on Wiki-research-L and they'll confirm the problem of measuring creations, deletions, file moves, Draft space moves, redirects, stubs, vandalism, duplicates, all happening in parallel and at high speed. They all contribute to a state of flux that makes any kind of exact answer impossible. Scholarly study of Wikimedia's numbers, be it editor count, articles created, retention, production, et al., all define some type of highly variable arbitrary framework. Consider this unsatisfying dynamic our own version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. What you deride as "fake news" is nothing of the sort – it is an imperfect solution for an imperfect world. -- Fuzheado | Talk 23:41, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

So if someone really wanted to go hard-core into this. I guess the way would be to convince someone in WMF's SRE team to look at the MariaDB binlogs, and see what the last insert into the page table was prior to ss_good_articles getting updated to be 6,000,000. Bawolff (talk)

btw, if you really want to order them with more precision than a second, you could use the revision or page id, as those increase monotonically. Bawolff (talk) 04:10, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Linking to here

Clicking the red banner top left leads to the Main Page, because it's part of the logo. Will there be a link into this page (WP:Six million articles) once it's ready? Certes (talk) 20:49, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Certes: that is probably not a good idea for a bunch of technical and accessibility reasons. If we want wide spread link advertisement something like the Sitenotice may be more appropriate. This could be targeted to logged in users, or everyone. For a lower visibility link the MediaWiki:Watchlist-messages that editors see above their watchlist could be used. In terms of how strong of a consensus there should be for a change (Weakest to highest) I'd say: watchlist->logged in notice->all notice->actual logo link change. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:58, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• I like the watchlist idea, its pretty quick and easy, and not too obtrusive. Making the logo link is not workable, but I would also be a fan of a sitenotice if a nice looking one could be drawn up quickly. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:08, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  Drop an edit request at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages - for a short notice (<1 week) I can't see any harm in this. It needs to have one bolded link that will go to where you want people to click, and the destination needs to be ready to read. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:10, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  Xaosflux, How does "English Wikipedia has reached six million articles!" sound? Could also do a two sentence version, such as "English Wikipedia has reached six million articles! Check out the winning article." I do prefer the single sentence version though. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:29, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  I like the former, sounds better as one sentence. QueerFilmNerd^talk 21:47, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  I like that one as well. I'd go with that personally. I like the thanks as well, a good touch. QueerFilmNerd^talk 21:58, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  (mock up below) - very short ones don't stand out as well on WLN usually - how about something along the lines of:

• The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles; thank you for your contributions!

  ? — xaosflux ^Talk 21:51, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  @CaptainEek and QueerFilmNerd:. — xaosflux ^Talk 21:55, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  Xaosflux, I like that! CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:58, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  @CaptainEek: is Wikipedia:Six million articles ready? — xaosflux ^Talk 23:25, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  Xaosflux, The draft above showing the runner-ups might also need inclusion (read the above. I would include it, but I'm commutting home and don't have my computer). But it should be good to add the watchlist notice at this point, as we at least have Rosie's article up. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 00:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Mock up:

The English Wikipedia has reached six million articles; thank you for your contributions!

Copyedit; I'd use a semicolon instead of a comma. = paul2520 (talk) 21:54, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

•  Done watchlist notice added (we have a fairly low bar for inclusion there). — xaosflux ^Talk 00:22, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
• Noting here that last time we used Template:Main page banner, which is transcluded on the Main Page if any text is included on it. See permalink from last time. Mz7 (talk) 00:16, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

  @Mz7: probably should have talked about that a bit first - perhaps now? Noting, this is reader facing. I don't really "object" to it in principal - just that it should have a modicum of support established. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:22, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

  @Xaosflux: I haven't done anything yet. Just throwing the idea out there to discuss. The permalink I included was from 2015. Mz7 (talk) 00:23, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I favor a sitenotice, because this information is of interest to lay users. We're already displaying a special logo for it, which will cause confusion if lay users can't easily find out more about the milestone. It was hard for me to find - I visited the community portal and scrolled down to find this page, and wouldn't have thought to look on my watchlist page for an announcement. I would be satisfied with a main page banner as an alternative to a sitenotice. Qzekrom (she/they • talk) 03:00, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Note also, I left out of the list above is the main page banner option as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 03:25, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Potential "main page banner" option (it would be in a box near the top of Main Page):

---

The English-language Wikipedia thanks its contributors for creating more than six million articles! Learn how you can take part in the encyclopedia's continued improvement.

---

— xaosflux ^Talk 03:27, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• Would want to make sure Wikipedia:Six million articles is really really ready before adding something like that to MP (finish deciding if you want the runners up, etc in the above discussion). — xaosflux ^Talk 03:29, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Xaosflux: From where I stand we've completed our work on the WP:6M page itself. If you want to put your banner on the Main Page, I say we're good to go (runners up have been added, copyedit completed, and don't expect it to be met with any controversy). (This would be good especially since there is no current way on mobile devices to even see that we've reached the milestone yet) — Coffee // have a ☕️ // beans // 04:06, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Where else can we publicize this?? how about Main page?? this is awesome!!! well done!! but can we PLEASE post a link to this page, at the Main Page??!!! Please do so!! thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 03:25, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Sm8900: good point, this is being discussed right above (where I moved your comment to here). — xaosflux ^Talk 03:31, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• @Coffee: OK I posted it using the same verbiage as 5M - a bit of a problem about your comment though, nothing appears for mobile users still - the mobile page is very very feature-less (mobile web Main Page) — xaosflux ^Talk 04:24, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

  @Jon (WMF): - before we try hacking something together - do you have any good suggestions for this? — xaosflux ^Talk 04:25, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• The main page banner link to this article suggests it will help people contribute to Wikipedia, yet the article doesn't really contain any good links for that. Can we add a prominent link to something like Help:Getting started or Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Adventure? SFB 10:17, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

How

So how is it possible that the edit counter on the main page says there are 6,000,577 articles while when going to https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&offset=&limit=500 it goes back all the way to 2:28 as if there are articles missing? Coldbolt (talk) 22:27, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

You can manually manipulate the URL to go further https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&offset=&limit=1000 --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 22:32, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I did not realize what you were asking. You have to consider deletions. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 22:41, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Also redirects that have been converted to articles or disambiguation pages. These have old creation dates but increase the total number of articles. --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 22:50, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

... or pages in Draft namespace being moved to mainspace. According to Wikipedia:What is an article?, dab pages are included in the 6M count. Renata (talk) 01:08, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

What is an article? says that disambiguation pages are "not counted" because they are "not ... considered to be articles" but then it explains what the statistics actually count:

The automatic definition used by the software at Special:Statistics is: any page that is in the article namespace, is not a redirect page and contains at least one wiki link. The statistics software currently has no method of detecting disambiguation pages, however; nor does it disregard stubs (but in any case, many articles tagged as stubs are quite substantial) or stublists (lists templates with little or no content).

It's interesting that a page without wikilinks doesn't get counted. Perhaps that's a technical way of excluding blank pages and other corner cases.

The difficulty of getting an accurate count is like the legend of the countless stones.

Neere Wilton sweete, huge heapes of stones are found,
But so confusde, that neither any eye
Can count them just, nor Reason reason trye,
What force brought them to unlikely ground.

— Sir Philip Sidney, The Seven Wonders of England

Andrew🐉(talk) 14:41, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I fell asleep

Goddamn...it was getting onto 4am Sydney time and I had to be up at 630am...congrats..was feeding articles early in case I could induce a bum rush earlier than when it happened. I had to sleep :P. Congrats to @Rosiestep:...let's make it another FA :) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:10, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• I didn't get much sleep last night as my experience last time made me expect a big bot surge at some point and so I woke at intervals to check. When it was about 400 to go, I got up and started preparing but the anticipated surge never happened. It was then like a slow bicycle race, waiting for others to set the pace so you could conserve energy and sprint finish. I thought your snakes were going to start the rush but then you stopped to fiddle with them and so I wasn't sure that it wasn't just a normal editing session. And I nearly fell off my chair when the counter went back about a hundred places. I had visions of a deletionist cabal trying to hold back the tide so that we might never reach six million. After all this excitement, at least we can get a good night's sleep now! Andrew🐉(talk) 23:40, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• #metoo - I woke up in the middle of the night, and, unable to get right back to sleep, got up and wrote what you see as the first edit of the Maria Elise Turner Lauder article but did not click 'Save' ("Publish changes"). I knew that today was the day we'd get to 6,000,000 but I was too tired to stay up and watch the numbers change, so I went back to sleep. After I woke up again, I saw that we hadn't reached 6,000,000 yet, so I kept an eye on the number progression, and when it got to 5,999,996, I clicked 'Save'. But *argh* it wouldn't accept my 'Save' (because of the too long delay since I started the article in the middle of the night), so I clicked 'Save' a second time, and hoped for the best. Then I worked on expanding/improving the article, e.g. my usual way of doing things. --Rosiestep (talk) 23:54, 23 January 2020 (U TC)

• And it's live. GMG^talk 00:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• Tell you what, folks, I have a slightly different story. I logged in to WP last night and was surprised to see that there were just 200 articles to go (a decidedly fast jump from the >1000 remaining 1-2 days back). I realised that it's about time. I had 4 articles drafted in my sandbox page over the past 2-3 days. The rate of new creations was still quite slow (<1 every 10 seconds), so I had just enough time to add to a 5th draft I had started. I then wrote a script to query the Wikipedia API continuously over regular intervals and show me the live article count. Even towards the very end, I didn't see any surge as expected (still <1 per second). So I finally decided to post them when the count became >= 5,999,995. And yeah, it did go as planned. I saw an API response announcing the 5,999,995th article, and I saved my articles in rapid succession using the API, and got to see another API response with count 6,000,002, after my articles were all saved. I then saw via Special:NewPages that all 5 were created in succession (with no one having created one in between). Since it isn't possible to have fit 5 numbers b/w 5,999,995 and 6,000,002 without including 6,000,000, I am pretty sure that the 6 millionth one (according to the article counter) was by me (though I am not sure which one).

But of course, like last time, we did not have any official tool to give an authoritative answer, and as noted above by User:Dee03, the count soon after spiked unexplainedly by about 200 with just 50 articles appearing in the feed (I don't see how this can be explained even by article undeletions, page moves into draftspace, or even redirects becoming articles). I think it's great to choose a well referenced and quality article as 6 millionth. Good job, Rosiestep! It was fun. Congratulations to everyone involved! SD0001 (talk) 08:26, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Someone should get to work on creating a tool like the 5 Million tool that was mentioned earlier that we can activate every time we get close so there’s no argument. Just to be clear I am not volunteering myself as I have no clue how we would do that. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 13:39, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

pythoncoder, I have created T243696 to potentially deal with this. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:14, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Celebrating the number 6,000,000 just 3 days away from Holocaust Memorial Day

Well, it's just 3 days out from International Holocaust Memorial Day in many countries (the 27th is associated with the liberation of the death camp at Auschwitz), given the very strong association between the number 6 million, and the typically cited number of jewish Holocaust victims, it might just be seen as being in poor taste to so publicly flaunt the number? I mean it's kinda fine (I guess) today, but maybe the banner should be muted somehow on the 27th? TJmichael (talk) 15:14, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@TJmichael: the big red banner on the logo will be coming off this weekend. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:31, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• One of the topics that I prepared for this occasion was Edda Tasiemka. She had associations with Germany in the Second World War and her husband was Jewish. But she is mainly known for her library of press cuttings which happened to have about 6 million items. When I worked on the topic it did not occur to me to make any association between this number and the Holocaust and the sources I have consulted did not do so either. We should not look for associations where they do not exist – that would be a superstitious numerology. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:22, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: Since this according according to xaosflux this won't be relevent tommorow (International Holocaust Memorial Day), I think it's more of a moot point right now, and an ernest disscussion on this sort of subject be reserved for that time where it actually becomes relevent again. TJmichael (talk) 08:44, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• I shall be continuing to work on Edda Tasiemka and the other topics that I prepared – expanding, polishing, DYK, &c. As I do this, I shall be highlighing their part in this event. Such records are interesting to look back on. I made similar records of my work for the 5M milestone and found this very helpful when the next milestone came around. If other people are doing other things in parallel then that's fine too. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:39, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

6M articles -- 12M more to go!

There are almost 52M content pages across all languages of Wikipedia. Apparently, about 18.5M of those articles are unique. So, English Wikipedia could easily triple by just translating the content from smaller wikis. Just some food for thought. Renata (talk) 20:43, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Very interesting! Well keep doing your Lithuanian articles Renata, It's a delight to see such good quality articles on smaller localities!♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:03, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Dr. Blofeld: thanks for the compliment! Renata (talk) 01:27, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

@Renata3 and Dr. Blofeld: Of course, there are issues with notability not being uniform over all Wikipedias, especially with pornography. ミラP 01:11, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

@Miraclepine: there are all kinds of issues with notability, bot-created garbage, sourcing, copyright violations, nationalist POV, etc. etc. No one is suggesting to go on a translation rampage. It's just an interesting factoid to put the current and potential size of English Wikipedia in perspective. Renata (talk) 01:27, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki is there if anybody is interested, it would be good to see Charles getting some support and more people listing articles each month to transwiki. Wikipedia:WikiProject Intertranswiki/Lithuanian exists but is empty. Feel free to list articles there to transwiki.♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:41, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

The next milestone coming up?

I just noticed at Special:Statistics that we are at 932,738,102 "page edits since Wikipedia was set up"...that's awfully close to 1 billion! I'm not sure if that is ALL pages (Talk, User, Wikipedia, Template, etc.) or just article pages but that's a helluva lot of edits. How long do you think it will take to log 68 million more edits? Six months? A year? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:47, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Have you see the Billionth edit pool? It's already closed, but you can still see the predictions. --User101010 (talk) 04:06, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

• This is best measured using the ID field, so we'll be looking for this diff. It is not in sync wth the number of edits statistic which presumably leaves out revision deletions and other anomalies. The difference seems to be about a month's worth of edits so it would be best to agree on the method before it happens.

Another milestone which be coming up sooner is the number of pages which is currently reported as 49,460,251. That will reach the round number of 50 million in about 6 months, I reckon. That will be more difficult to track than the number of articles so again it would be best to prepare a method of measuring it now. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:39, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Ahh, I should have known that some folks were already tracking these things. Thanks for the details. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:38, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

I remember when there were 65 million edits! Showing my wiki age!♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:02, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, it won't (relatively) take too long before we described 1 million Category:Living people. Coldbolt (talk) 21:57, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Just fyi, looking for http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/?diff=1000000000 may or may not be what you want for billionth edit, because there are gaps in the diff number for deleted pages (In principle there can be arbitrary gaps, e.g. for transactions that are rolled-back in db). That said, arbitrary numbers be arbitrary, and its still a great milestone. Bawolff (talk) 04:22, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Accurately determining 7M

It shouldn't be too hard to add code to Wikimedia so when a new page is created, the page name and number that shows up in Special:Statistics for "Content Pages" are logged somewhere.

For performance reasons this feature would usually be turned off, but it could be turned on as we get within a few minutes of hitting a major milestone. This will also show if a milestone was hit twice, due to deletions causing the article count to temporarily drop below the milestone.

Remember though, just because a new page is created doesn't mean it's a "real article." If someone creates a page with REDIRECT foo instead of #REDIRECT foo, I think it counts as a Content Page in the statistics. Likewise, a page which is speedily-deleted might hit the milestone number. In either case, the next-highest "real" article should be the one that counts. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 17:09, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem is, because deleted pages are not part of the count, the "true" seven millionth article will be in flux all the time, not just in the minutes before and after the milestone. We delete dozens of articles from the encyclopedia every day, meaning if a week after the milestone is hit, we delete the 1000th article in the list of articles ordered by creation date, then that means that article #1001 now becomes article #1000, and what was previously the seven millionth article is now article #6,999,999. For this reason, choosing an article by technical means is just as arbitrary, if not more arbitrary, as choosing an article by looking at the general time the milestone was crossed and selecting it based on the merits (how likely an article is to survive and become a good article). I think it should be understood that this whole process is largely ceremonial, and there is no "accurate" method of determining the 7-millionth article. Mz7 (talk) 20:01, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

For the purposes of "crossing a finish line," it's either going to be the first article which causes the current number of articles to be "the magic number" except those which are deleted before "a winner is declared," or "the set of all such articles" which, barring very unusual circumstances where the count goes to 7,000,000, then 6,999,999, and back many times, will be a set of no more than 2 or 3, probably just one. It's not like the Olympics, where if you get a medal and are disqualified years later, everyone else "moves up." "Moving up" (or more accurately, "moving down") only occurs if a "winner" is deleted or turned into a redirect during the short period of time before it is "declared the winner." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 20:28, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Note that statistic updates happen in a separate database transaction then edits do (In theory, multiple site stats updates can even be merged together, but I don't see how someone could create 2 pages in a single request). This means in principle you could have multiple pages being created in the time it takes to update the statistics (e.g. Person A makes a page, then person B makes one, then site stats get updated for person B, then site stats get updated for person A). So that all adds confusion to this. Bawolff (talk) 04:20, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

so what

Quality is better than quantity you fools. There are a lot of shit articles and shit edits.

• We also have lots of similar posts. See Sturgeon's Law. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:51, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

There is no denying the the WP model produces some good stuff but the model also means that the stuff that no one wants to do does not get done. Check out the backlog of stuff to do. And if you go to a set of random articles a high percentage will have at least one edit needed to get it up top scratch.

The WP community does not want to fix it up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.189.98.226 (talk) 01:05, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Six million

This is move (from Wikipedia_talk:Milestones).

How it feel , how it feel, how it feel , 19 years and six mill. Yo, now back to the extended wikibreak. Ema--or (talk) 19:30, 8 February 2020 (UTC)