Editing Encyclopedia:Size comparisons (section)

== Wikipedia ==
[[File:Wikipedia printed size in volume using encyclopaedia britannica 2022.png|thumb|350px|left|An image estimating the size of a printed version of Wikipedia as of February 2022. ([[Wikipedia:Size in volumes|Up-to-date image]] using volumes of ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]'')]]
Currently, the [[Main Page|English Wikipedia]] alone has over [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} articles]] of any length, and the combined Wikipedias for all other languages greatly exceed the English Wikipedia in size, giving more than '''29 billion words in 55 million articles in 309 languages'''.<ref name="wikistatsall">[http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm Wikipedia Statistics All languages] (11.9 billion words estimate from 6 billion in Nov 2009 plus 1 billion every 9 months)</ref> The English Wikipedia alone has over '''4.3 billion words''',<ref name="wikistatsen">[http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm Wikipedia Statistics English]</ref> and has [[User:Drbogdan/STATS|over '''95 times''']] as many words as the 120-volume English-language ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] (online),'' and more words than the enormous 119-volume Spanish-language ''[[Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana]]''. 

In 2005, the English-language Wikipedia more than doubled in size, and many smaller Wikipedias have grown by a higher multiple.

In June 2011, there were more than '''11 million''' articles in all Wikipedias and '''3.6 million''' in the English version.<ref name="wikistatsall" /><ref name="wikistatsen" />

Wikipedia is still in need of much [[:Category:All articles to be expanded|expansion]] and [[Wikipedia:Maintenance|improvement]]. Many of the articles are of poor quality and some mainstream encyclopedia topics are not covered adequately. In addition, the average article length is only a little over half the size of that in ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', although many major articles are considerably longer.{{cn}} Over time the balance of the editorial effort is expected to slowly tilt towards a greater emphasis on increasing the quality, scope, classification and interlinkage of existing articles. However, new articles will probably always be created in large numbers, as Wikipedia's conventions on acceptable article topics incorporate huge numbers of potential [[Special:Newpages|new articles]] every year (newly prominent people, current events, media products, physical products, etc.). In mid-2006, the rate of new article creation was still rising, but only slowly. {{As of|2007|1}}, it looked as if the rate of article creation may have peaked in mid-2006, though subsequent analysis may show otherwise. See [[Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth]] for more on Wikipedia's growth rate and expected future size.