Wikipedia notches up 1 million articles

The nonprofit team behind Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written by its users, is celebrating after the English version racked up its one millionth article.

The Wikimedia Foundation announced late on Wednesday that the target had been reached, after an article about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland was created.

Wikipedia was created in January 2001 and almost immediately proved extremely popular with Web users who welcomed the fact that its collaborative, Wiki-based approach allowed anyone to contribute to it. At present, it is growing by around 1,700 new articles every day.

However, last year it faced accusations that it was inaccurate, and was forced to block access from the US Senate and House of Representatives after political aides had heavily edited entries referring to their allies and opponents.

Wikipedia acknowledged on Wednesday that it had faced criticism in 2005, but pointed to a study published in Nature which found it was almost as trustworthy as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Wikipedia users have been guessing when the one millionth article would be published. This pool was won by Mészáros András. Some users had predicted that the target would never be reached.