When did Wikipedia launch and who founded it?
Wikipedia launched on the 15th of January 2001. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded the project to create a publicly editable encyclopedia.
Common questions about Wikipedia
Short answers, pulled from the story.
How many articles does the English Wikipedia have and when did it reach 2 million articles?
The English Wikipedia has over 6.8 million articles. It passed the 2 million article mark on the 9th of September 2007.
What happened during the John Seigenthaler biography incident in 2005?
An anonymous editor inserted false information into the biography of John Seigenthaler in May 2005. The error remained uncorrected for four months, leading to policy changes regarding biographical articles of living people.
Why does Wikipedia face gender and geographical bias according to academic studies?
Academic studies show the average contributor is an educated, technically inclined white male aged 15 to 49 from a developed country. This demographic results in cultural bias, gender bias, and geographical bias against regions like Africa.
How many languages does Wikipedia support and which editions are the largest?
Wikipedia exists in over 340 languages. The six largest editions by article count are English, German, French, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish.
What challenges does Wikipedia face regarding AI and data scraping in 2024 and 2025?
The Wikimedia Foundation reported an 8 percent decline in traffic in October 2025 compared to 2024. Since January 2024, bandwidth use increased by roughly 50 percent due to automated programs collecting data for training large language models.