Wikipedia passes 3m milestone

A short article about Beate Marie Eriksen, a Norwegian actress and film director, is the three millionth English language article on Wikipedia. The Wikipedia network has more than 13 million articles written in hundreds of languages, all available to view for free. The encyclopedia, which can be edited by anyone, was founded in 2001. The three million milestone was passed early in the morning on Monday, 17 August 2009 in the UK. Wikipedia has more than 10 million registered members who have created more than 17 million pages and made more than 326 million edits on the English version of Wikipedia. The encyclopedia is still achieving significant growth but in the past few years the pace has slowed somewhat. The number of articles being added has reduced from an average of 2,200 a day in July 2007 to around 1,300 today. It passed the one million article milestone back in September 2004. The German database has the most articles after English with more than 940,000 followed by French, 840,000 and then Polish 627,000.